In August, the Reverend came over to London, without his choir and with his partner Savitri D, where they met about thirty London activists of various stripes and paid a visit to two Starbucks branches on and near Oxford Street. This event involved all the participants becoming enamoured with an object within the Starbucks store – whether a bin, a packet of sugar or a cup of coffee – and then imagining the history of that object, right back through all the stages it had experienced, whilst describing this out loud and slowly raising the object above their head.

Meanwhile, over the cacophony of incantations, the Reverend loudly preached against Starbucks in his camply evagelical style and fawn polyester suit. As confused and entertained crowds gathered, the police appeared (one of whom asked if it was a stunt for Channel 4) and a passing teenage boy jubilantly announced that he had the whole performance on his mobile and was sending it to all his friends right now. Jo Littler talked to the Reverend and Savitri D after the event to find out more about what was going on and to ask them about their red-green politics.

Can you tell us was this action in London was about?

Reverend Billy (RB): Today’s action was called ‘Shoplift’. In this action we hoped to encourage the labour and earth resources history of products. We hoped to create the products’ past. And this is an act of imagination; it is an act of subversion; it undercut’s advertising’s façade. We hoped to go back as a group of thirty people together in a collective memory of the origins of coffee.

Savitri D (SD): We aimed to stimulate memory and change the physical environment of the Starbucks itself. The idea was to separate everything there from its tether, from the typical way that retail environments are laid out, so that the room itself actually changed and alternative spaces open up between things and their place. So it was both an implosion of the room, a kind of deconstruction in a way – in the literal sense of the word – and a construction of a memory and a narrative of its products. We were reclaiming the history and the story of the product. It’s the loss of those stories, that amnesia, that allows consumerism: that allows us to repeat ourselves and our mistakes over and over. It allows us to carry on with this absurd economy, where things just magically appear and we’re entitled to them.

RB: We had a second agenda item, which was, in our collective memory, to reach past the impoverished coffee workers, all the way into the sky, beyond the beginning of the coffee, the growth of the coffee, in the tree. Do you think that we succeeded in doing that? [laughs]

SD: I do. Well I know that personally I did, I had a sort of couple of revelatory moments [laughs] with leaves, and sunlight, and sky. I was going ‘the sky! The sun! the rain!’ and I looked over and their was a woman looking at me, like, what a New Age Hippy! But I also think it’s important when you go into a retail environment like Starbucks, you know, every surface is artificial, is coated with some kind of synthetic plastic. So just evoking the earth in a place like that feels radical. Coffee is an elemental substance.

Is pushing an ecological agenda something you’re increasingly interested in?

RB: Well, it’s famous that something progressive activism forgot to do was to be generous with people in matters spiritual. We forgot that part of it. And so we tend to be totally rational – we just whine, and whine, and whine, until we’re all depressed, and then we get together. Whereas the right has a whole machinery – they run cultures, narratives, fun, think tanks…

SD: …..they’re more willing to create a value system in which people live and to call it meaningful. I think that on the left we’re afraid to do that because in doing that we’re stepping on the toes of other people. I also think it’s really important right now to try every strategy possible. If you go up to people and someone and you say, well children are dying to make that coffee, and that doesn’t make any difference to them, I’m going to try something else. I’ll say, well how about that the soil is completely polluted from that? How about that they’re busting unions? How about that it’s ruining our neighbourhoods? All those things are true. My agenda is to slow consumerism: so, for me, it’s about finding something that people will respond to.

RB: We’re from the Church of Stop Shopping. Our main agenda is to slow down the pursuit of consumerism as the definition of joy. It’s always ecological. Consumerism is a fossil fuel supporting the economic system. So if you oppose consumerism, very quickly you find yourself thinking about ecological concerns.

So this is embracing a big system. We’re against chain stores and supermalls partly because they destroy independent shops, our public space, our community, our markets: they come in and damage that. They also damage the ability of our citizens – of us – to create original culture in our talk. To have that playful, jagged edge in and between our personalities. As we get more consumerised, we get increasingly depoliticised. The war on Iraq was sold to us as a product. We accepted it because we were consumers. When the weapons of mass destruction were nowhere to be found, that didn’t matter at all, because that was advertising, and advertising doesn’t have to have any connection to the product.

SD: And that’s our ecology. If you think about a tree having a healthy environment, where it can grow, and get light, and get sun, I believe that a human’s natural ecology is similarly one of freedom, where we can talk with our imaginations and explore -like a tree explores towards the light. We underestimate how important the living, moving possibility of our imaginations is to our health and to our evolution.

So the idea of The Church of Stop Shopping is to change restrictive consumer ecologies.

SD: Absolutely! I mean, I want organic milk, right, for a number of reasons, but I also want my imagination unthreatened by consumer culture. It’s just as important as having a healthy kidney.

RB: Once you resist consumerism, you’re called four things, because you’re erasing four different leftist categories of consumer. Boom! You’re some sort of post-religious spiritualist. Boom! You’re an environmentalist. Boom! You’re a community defender! Boom! You’re looking after public space issues, etc etc.

Your action was in Starbucks, yet Starbucks sells a fair trade line. What do you think of that?

RB: That’s greenwashing. They sell such a small amount of fair trade, its just enough to make it possible to put a little chalk up on the oard ‘fair trade’. The NGOs we talked to, including Global Exchange, estimated that their worldwide sell of certified fairtrade coffee was overall they sell under 2%. ActionAid estimated that in the UK it was less than 1%. Starbuck’s relationship to fairtrade is a neoliberal lie. Harold Schulz is a billionaire. 2% isn’t good enough.

Where would you like to see people drinking coffee right now?

RB: Well, there’s a couple of choices. One is to go to chain store cafes that have fair trade coffee. But it’s difficult because we don’t like chain stores. We support independent cafes. So in London we like to go into independent cafés and ask for fair trade.

Why come from New York to do this action in London?

SD: It’s also really important for places like NY and London to talk to each other, as they have a lot in common, and share a lot of similar problems, like gentrification and monocultural takeovers. So I think it’s important for us to come here and be loud and obnoxious about how bad it is. If we can come to London and give any help to you’re your movements, that’s great.

RB: And we gain a lot too. We learn from the UK activists. For example, through our discussions about the difference between fairtade coffee and a fairtrade cup of coffee in terms of the extra non-fairtrade mark-up]; and about the attempts to close Berwick Street market to make way for more chain stores. London has a real relationship to New York: we feel a connection there. And one of the problems that we share is that we both have between 200-300 Starbucks.For more information see [http://revbilly.com and Bill Talen, What should I do if Reverend Billy is in my store?, New Press, 2003.

It makes auntie’s old bones tickle to see someone sucked in by such an obvious bribe. For the confused, the CTF is a savings and investment account started up with a government cash gift for all UK-resident children born after 1 September 2002.

First, let’s be clear: you must put the money into one of three CTF accounts. Investing in a savings account is the safe bet, but won’t yield much: according to fund management group F&C, if the CTF had been invented 18 years ago, that initial £250 would be worth a measly £652 today. You could also invest in shares (chosen for you by a government-approved financial adviser). F&C says £250 invested in the UK’s largest companies 18 years ago would be worth £1,427 today. Or you can choose a stakeholder account: the money is invested in shares until the child is 13, at which point some of it is moved to safer investments to guarantee summink remains by the time the kid’s 18.

The Co-operative Insurance Society has teamed up with the Children’s Mutual to offer the only ethical CTF at the mo. But while it excludes tobacco, weapons and nuclear companies, ethical giants like BP and GlaxoSmithKline still get your loot.

The government hopes you will add to the fund yourself, and stick everything on the stock market. Parents are allowed to invest up to £100 extra a month. That could net £45,000 by your daughter’s 18th birthday. But think about this: by the time today’s tots have graduated they are expected to be in debt by an average of £43,825. Surely that’s just a coincidence.

Still privately owned by German entrepreneur Dieter Schwarz, Lidl is one of the fastest expanding retail companies in Europe. In addition to operating 2,500 stores and having more than 151,000 employees in its domestic German market, it has outlets in 16 other European countries and is planning to expand into Asia and Canada. Providing the impetus for this rapid growth are the sunrise economies of Mittel Europa: countries like Slovakia and Poland, where the combined privations of Stalinism and shock-treatment neo-liberalism mean that independent trade union structures are young and weak.

According to Uni Commerce, the international umbrella organisation of retail unions, Lidl is trying to copy US retailer Wal-Mart’s model of “pressing down wages and benefits and squeezing as much as is possible from its personnel”. Uni Commerce also castigates the company’s culture of secrecy, suspicion and anti-union dirty tricks. In one instance the company reacted to a successful union recruitment drive at its distribution warehouses by reconfiguring its entire corporate structure overnight.

In the new EU member states the most famous, or infamous, allegation of Lidl abusing its workforce came to light in August last year. It was claimed that menstruating workers in Poland and the Czech Republic had to wear white headbands if they wanted to be allowed to use the toilet during working time. Of course, this very serious charge was sternly denied by Lidl’s senior management. But the story had enough substance to feature in Lebensmittelzeitung, Germany’s leading commerce magazine.

Bullying and intimidation are not restricted to Lidl’s operations in “new” Europe. When the German retail union Ver.di opened a weblog enabling workers to report on the company’s bad practices it was contacted by more than 3,500 present and former Lidl employees. The reports, which form the basis of a “black book” published by the union about the firm’s tawdry employment practices, chronicle how “the company is obsessed with control to the extent that it becomes a serious violation of the integrity of its workers. Everyone is treated with mistrust, as a potential thief”.

A culture of constant surveillance extends to every nook and cranny of Lidl’s retail environment, with workers being subjected to frequent checks for contraband. Pockets are searched, as well as workers’ cars. Even mandatory periods away from the shop floor take on a Big Brother aspect. One Finnish worker said: “Everything that is consumed at the workplace during the breaks, be it a yoghurt or a soft drink, must not only have a cash ticket taped to it; the ticket must also be signed by the supervisor.”

So if you’re ever in a once noble town that’s fallen on hard times in this austere post-Thatcherite era you may happen upon a Lidl. Please try not to be beguiled by any of the company’s weekly special deals (when I looked, it was offering a pink velour two-piece of the type favoured by Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard at an amazing £5.99). Those prices may not bust your wallet, but you may inadvertently help to bust the union.

Now, I must remember to get some crème fraîche. Anybody in Islington fancy an early night?

Beneath the facade of corporate social responsibility, however, lies the grim reality of modern British capitalism. What Wilko presents as charitable acts are in fact a clever and tax-deductible form of marketing, which involve little more than giving away store vouchers. The Wilko website boasts of a number of charities supported by the company, but a closer look reveals that far from helping the poor and needy, Wilko is actually supporting the exploitative and greedy.

For example, Students in Free Enterprise is a kind of capitalist missionary organisation that includes in its “Dream Team” (board of directors) senior representatives of Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Nestlé, pharmaceutical firm Pfizer, fag company Philip Morris, Shell and Aramark.

While the crimes of Coke, Nestlé and Shell are common knowledge, the lesser-known Aramark is a US company reaping rich profits from the misery of human incarceration, both in the US and here in the UK, where it has an almost complete monopoly over the lucrative prison “canteen” system.

Prison profitability is something Wilko knows all about. It is currently the number-one corporate target of the British-based Campaign Against Prison Slavery (Caps). In Britain prisoners are forced to work. If they refuse, they are placed in segregation, lose family visits, and even have their sentences extended. With no pension or trade union rights, no minimum wage, no holidays and no sick pay, they represent an ideal workforce for greedy and ruthless companies like Wilkinson, which uses them to do its packing work, paying them around £1 per day.

Wilko is not alone. The use of prison labour by private companies has soared in direct proportion to savage cuts in prison education and training during the past 10 years; companies are using it as a third option to paying the minimum wage or going overseas. Perversely, the profits from this slavery are actually being subsidised by the taxpayer to the tune of at least £7m per year. And the Prison Service admits that some of the private companies exploiting prison slave labour are even ripping it off, with firms systematically failing to pay for work. Even the TUC now recognises this is undermining the pay and conditions of workers generally.

To fill this void of representation and action and to fight this 21st-century system of slavery, Caps was established 18 months ago. Since then, more than 100 pickets of Wilkinson stores have taken place around the country, as well as other actions aimed at the company. Wilkinson’s initial response to the campaign was to deny using prison labour. When that was exposed as being untrue, it changed its position (though that’s not stopped it from occasionally reverting to its original story when dealing with the press). The company now claims it is helping to “rehabilitate prisoners and increase their employability”. The reality is, of course, somewhat different.

Wilkinson’s commitment to employing offenders soon evaporates once they are released; no doubt because they’d then be entitled to proper wages and employment conditions. And as a recent internal Prison Service report on prison industries admitted, the “noddy shop” work, as the service calls it, is “mundane and repetitive” with “little value apart from keeping prisoners occupied”.

Tony “Whiplash” Wilkinson presents himself as a benevolent employer doling out jobs and cheap goods to a grateful public; but now we know different. His company refers to its 18,000 non-prison employees as “team members”. The workers themselves, however, talk of a ruthless anti-union company that underpays and under-employs. There is every reason for Red Pepper readers to boycott Wilkinson, and to support the Campaign Against Prison Slavery.

The Campaign Against Prison Slavery is urgently in need of funds. Cheques should be made out to CAPS and sent to Brighton ABC, PO Box 74, Brighton BN1 4ZQ

www.againstprisonslavery.org

Subcomandauntie’s mailbag has once again been bulging with letters on ethical-consumer issues (don’t you people have any real problems?). I”m afraid there’s no easy answer, but you mustn’t feel guilty about buying sweatshop labour products: half the world’s workers are denied the basic right to even join a trade union, so most clothing we buy reeks of exploitation.

Nor should you treat the ethical purchasing of trainers as an act of self-indulgent consumer choice, as many ‘bourgeois boycotters’ do. Your power to choose is a luxury most of the world’s working classes don’t have: Chinese or Indonesian workers in tax-free, anti-union export-processing zones cannot suddenly decide to go and work in better conditions.

As a stand-alone act, boycotting sweated labour products in favour of a ‘fair-trade label’ usually means redistributing wealth from one country’s working class to another. This does nothing to eradicate sweatshop labour itself.

There are ‘ethical footwear’ options out there, however. Ethical Wares is run by vegans who seek to trade goods that are non-exploitative of animals, humans and the wider environment. A similar venture is Vegetarian Shoes. Check out the websites www.ethicalconsumer.org and www.nosweatapparel.com for outlets.

But ultimately, whatever trainers you purchase, someone or something will always be exploited as long as you continue to work for the system. Auntie ‘sub-commands’ you to cut down on selling dodgy pensions and partying all night.

Visit www.nosweat.org.uk or www.labourbehindthelabel.org, and become an active campaigner yourself. Oh, and Dancing Queen, one last thing: we don’t wear trainers for guerrilla warfare. Tut.