BOOHOO APTLY NAMED 

Leicester’s Dickensian fast fashion factories are a blight on our nation

My sources tell me some garment makers – most of them Asians or new migrants – are paid £3.50 per hour in hellish Victorian-style workshops

By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
July 6, 2020 7:38 pm

Boohoo clothes are so cheap that you can wear them once and then choose another outfit

Families keep secrets and cover them with lies. Communities, businesses and nations do the same. People don’t talk because of loyalty, self-interest, patriotism or fear. New revelations about appallingly treated workers in garment factories in Leicester are not new. Satanic factories are all over this land.

Turn over rabid industrial capitalism and you find monstrously greedy bosses. The spotlight is on Leicester because the city was forced to lock down again.

As rates of Covid-19 rose, politicians and the press began to look into possible causes. Stories began breaking. The biggest one involved suppliers for Boohoo, the online fashion company. A factory, which displayed the sign Jaswal Fashions, was allegedly operating last week during the localised coronavirus lockdown without additional hygiene measures in place, according to an undercover investigation by The Sunday Times.

Boohoo was co-founded by the billionaire Mahmud Kamani, whose sons control vast empires now. It would be good to know their personal reactions. Boohoo is investigating its suppliers.


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Two years ago, Sarah O’Connor of the Financial Times warned that “part of Leicester’s garment industry has become detached from UK employment law”, and was “a country within a country”. The journalist claimed that local government, the retail sector and central government knew about this.

Boohoo clothes are cheap and popular

She quotes Anders Kristiansen, who was CEO of fashion chain New Look until 2017. “When I came to the UK and I discovered what was going on in Leicester, it was mind-blowing,” he said. “This is happening in front of your eyes and nobody’s doing anything?! How can society accept it? Not even society – how can government accept it? I’ve not spoken about it for a long time because it frustrated me so much.”

My Asian acquaintances in the Midlands tell me some garment makers – most of them Asians or new migrants – are paid £3.50 per hour in hellish Victorian-style workshops. Mahesh (not his real name) used to manage a clothes unit belonging to another Asian manufacturer. He left because his conscience couldn’t take it any more.

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“Poor people are the lowest caste of all. For my boss they were nothing. In the temple they treat him like a god.”So are Asian business leaders especially wicked? No. Amazon staff have made serious complaints about their treatment, and in 2016 MPs accused Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley of not treating his workers like humans.

Having said that, I do feel more agitated and inexplicably responsible when the allegations relate to businesses run by Asians. I feel as though they betray our history. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, some Asian people opened small shops or restaurants but most were working class. They joined unions and mobilised against unfair employers. Some of those who eventually made good turned into bad entrepreneurs. No one called them out. And they still won’t. More blood, sweat and tears will be shed.

Consumers will still buy; the rich will get richer and their communities will guard their ugliest secrets and lies. What a book Charles Dickens could write about this cruel circus.