There's a crowd gathered around the Oxford Street branch of Vodafone, but the 50 people sitting cross-legged outside the shop on this grey Saturday aren't after the latest hi-tech handset. They are here to tell the world how the phone company has legally avoided �6bn in tax by cutting a deal with HM Revenue and Customs. (To put that in perspective, the planned cuts to the UK's welfare budget amount to �/bn.) It's a popular message - some shoppers even join in the chanting.
The protesters are from a group called UK Uncut, which burst on to our high streets in late October last year. Its model - peaceful direct action highlighting a tangible alternative to cuts: namely, uncollected tax bills - has had a warm response. After all, a 2009 YouGov poll found that 77 per cent of us would like the government to crack down on the estimated �25bn lost each year through tax avoidance.
Yet, despite the column inches and the noise that the group has made, surprisingly little is known about it. Many of its leaders prefer to use false names when dealing with the press, and they are keen to stress that there is no "central command".
Nevertheless, it is possible to pinpoint where UK Uncut began: the Nag's Head pub in Islington, north London. Twelve friends - some of them recent Oxford graduates, all of them in their twenties - had gone for a drink after the coalition's "austerity" Spending Review was announced in October.
They'd read a piece by Richard Brooks in Private Eye about Vodafone's tax avoidance, explaining how HMRC (backed by Gordon Brown's Labour government) had taken the company to court to recover �6bn in unpaid tax. After a lengthy legal fight, HMRC won, only for George Osborne's Treasury to let Vodafone off the hook.
The 12 graduates decided that something had to be done - and they had to do it themselves. Or as Ben, one of the founding group, puts it: "We just couldn't bear the thought of going to marches and listening to boring speakers for the next five years."
They posted a message on Twitter: "This is the official Twitter account for tomorrow's direct action in London. Meet 9:30AM at the Ritz - look for the orange umbrella #UKuncut." Word started to spread, helped by a retweet from the Independent columnist Johann Hari. A week later, on 27 October, 70 activists met. Within minutes, they had closed down Vodafone's flagship store. UK Uncut was born.
"I don't think anyone really had a plan," says Lucy, one of the original group, when we meet at her house. "As a protester, you're used to people thinking you're a massive inconvenience. But there was such a positive response on that Wednesday that we called a big day of action for the following Saturday."
To the surprise of the organisers, on the Saturday, Vodafone stores from Bristol to York were forced to close. Subsequent protests expanded the focus to Topshop - its proprietor, Philip Green, now an adviser to the Tories, has legally avoided �28 5m in tax by putting his Arcadia group of companies in the name of his wife, a resident of Monaco.
The group swiftly set up a website where anyone can post details of "actions". Groups and individuals use this - along with Facebook and Twitter - to keep others informed. The actions range from sit-ins at high-street stores to remarkable one-off protests. A "sports day" atTopshop's flagship store on Oxford Street highlighted cuts to school sports - although the planned relay races and mass star jumps weren't possible due to the heavy police presence. A silent "read-in" at Vodafone the same day drew attention to cuts to library budgets.
The internet and social media have enabled the movement's strikingly decentralised, non-hierarchical structure. Anyone can get involved at any time by organising a sit-in and posting the details online. Professor Carlo Ruzza, a political sociologist at Leicester University, notes a trend. "New technologies mean that you don't need very strong hierarchies any more," he says, "because you can mobilise people in other ways."
The London activists have swelled from 12 to more than 30, though they remain largely anonymous so as to keep the press focus firmly on their actions, rather than personalities. "Any fragment that the media could pin a leadership on is just so unhelpful," Lucy explains.
While we are at Lucy's house, Ben checks the UK Uncut account on his iPhone and shows us a photo that a stranger has sent in. It is a mock-up of a Vodafone advert, detailing its tax avoidance, which has been pasted on top of an advert on the Tube. "You feel like because you have the log-in for the Twitter account and the email account, you have ownership of this thing, but you really don't," he says. He is right. It belongs to us all - as do those missing tax payments.
[Author Affiliation]
Samira Shackle writes for the NS Staggers blog
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