UK Uncut
Encyclopedia
UK Uncut is a United Kingdom-based protest group established in October 2010 to protest against tax avoidance
in the UK and to raise awareness about cuts to public services. Various sources have described the group as left-wing
in its political orientation. However, UK Uncut do not identify themselves as being left or right leaning but as a movement that offers an alternative to the austerity programme of the ruling coalition
.
had just published an article about Vodafone
avoiding tax so they organised a protest against Vodafone on Oxford Street
. Protesters met at Piccadilly and successfully closed the Oxford Street Vodafone store. They set up a Twitter
account to publicise their protest and it became a trending topic on Twitter.
Since then the protests have grown dramatically and dozens of actions are organised all around the UK on each day of action. The UK Uncut protests are known for their use of social networking and the internet to organise many protests around the country without central control. Messages concerning protests are advertised through Twitter, Facebook and other websites so that large groups of people can be mobilised very quickly.
to get its message across, often closing down high street stores that are owned by tax avoiders.
Vodafone
was targeted after Private Eye
exposed a deal they made with HM Revenue and Customs, which substantially reduced the amount of back taxes that they had to pay. Vodafone were originally found liable for £6 billion, but negotiated the amount to be paid down to under £2 billion.
Sir Philip Green
and the Arcadia Group
's shops including Topshop
, BHS, and Burton have been targeted as the group is owned by Phillip Green's wife, who lives in Monaco
where she does not
have to pay income tax
.
Boots
was targeted on 30 January 2011. Three people needed hospital treatment after police used CS spray on protesters.
Fortnum & Mason
and their parent company, Wittington Investments
were targeted during the 26 March 2011 anti-cuts protests
for their tax avoidance policies
. This took the form of a peaceful mass sit-in
. The police arrested and charged 138 protesters with "aggravated trespass". A video obtained by The Guardian backed up protesters' claims that senior police officers tricked them, arresting them after assurances that they were being led to safety. As of 5 July 2011, legal proceedings against five minors were dropped, thirteen were expected to enter plea bargains at City of Westminster magistrates and charges remain against 139 others.
The group has said it will support the actions of Occupy London
, a London spin-off of Occupy Wall Street
.
HSBC
have also been accused of avoiding two billion pounds worth of tax by Private Eye magazine by using a complicated system of channeling profits through the Netherlands, leading to them being targeted by UK Uncut.
On 19 February 2011, Barclays was targeted. The date was arranged to coincide with their bonus announcements, but it also emerged that Barclays was only paying 1% corporation tax in the UK.
On 26 February, a day of action was called against the Royal Bank of Scotland
and their subsidiary Natwest. The protest was arranged to coincide with the banks' bonus announcements, and once again protestors turned bank branches into services threatened by the cuts.
organised by UK Uncut in opposition to the proposed Health and Social Care Bill.
.
The protest also spread to other European countries, creating decentralized protest groups like Portugal Uncut.
A group called Take VAT targeted several companies avoiding VAT by selling goods to the UK through the Channel Islands.
Tax avoidance
Tax avoidance is the legal utilization of the tax regime to one's own advantage, to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. The term tax mitigation is a synonym for tax avoidance. Its original use was by tax advisors as an alternative to the pejorative term tax...
in the UK and to raise awareness about cuts to public services. Various sources have described the group as left-wing
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
in its political orientation. However, UK Uncut do not identify themselves as being left or right leaning but as a movement that offers an alternative to the austerity programme of the ruling coalition
United Kingdom coalition government (2010–present)
The ConservativeLiberal Democrat coalition is the present Government of the United Kingdom, formed after the 2010 general election. The Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats entered into discussions which culminated in the 2010 coalition agreement, setting out a programme for government...
.
History
The idea of UK Uncut originated in late-2010 with a group of ten activists in a North London pub who were having a discussion about the lack of resistance to the public sector cuts. Private EyePrivate Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
had just published an article about Vodafone
Vodafone
Vodafone Group Plc is a global telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world's second-largest measured by subscribers , with around 341 million proportionate subscribers as of...
avoiding tax so they organised a protest against Vodafone on Oxford Street
Oxford Street
Oxford Street is a major thoroughfare in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, United Kingdom. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, as well as its most dense, and currently has approximately 300 shops. The street was formerly part of the London-Oxford road which began at Newgate,...
. Protesters met at Piccadilly and successfully closed the Oxford Street Vodafone store. They set up a Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
account to publicise their protest and it became a trending topic on Twitter.
Since then the protests have grown dramatically and dozens of actions are organised all around the UK on each day of action. The UK Uncut protests are known for their use of social networking and the internet to organise many protests around the country without central control. Messages concerning protests are advertised through Twitter, Facebook and other websites so that large groups of people can be mobilised very quickly.
Tactics and targets
The group uses direct actionDirect action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
to get its message across, often closing down high street stores that are owned by tax avoiders.
Vodafone
Vodafone
Vodafone Group Plc is a global telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world's second-largest measured by subscribers , with around 341 million proportionate subscribers as of...
was targeted after Private Eye
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
exposed a deal they made with HM Revenue and Customs, which substantially reduced the amount of back taxes that they had to pay. Vodafone were originally found liable for £6 billion, but negotiated the amount to be paid down to under £2 billion.
Sir Philip Green
Philip Green
Sir Philip Green is a British businessman. Green was born into a Jewish family in 1952, beginning as a businessman at the age of 15. The first and last quoted company Green took lead of was "Amber Day", from which he stepped down as CEO and Chairman in 1992...
and the Arcadia Group
Arcadia Group
The Arcadia Group Limited a British company that owns the high street clothing retailers Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Miss Selfridge, Topman, Topshop, Wallis and BHS, and the out of town chain Outfit, which sells lines from the other group chains...
's shops including Topshop
Topshop
Topshop is a British clothes retailer with shops in over 20 countries and online operations in a number of its markets. Its sales come primarily from women's clothing and fashion accessories...
, BHS, and Burton have been targeted as the group is owned by Phillip Green's wife, who lives in Monaco
Monaco
Monaco , officially the Principality of Monaco , is a sovereign city state on the French Riviera. It is bordered on three sides by its neighbour, France, and its centre is about from Italy. Its area is with a population of 35,986 as of 2011 and is the most densely populated country in the...
where she does not
Tax exile
A tax exile is one who chooses to leave a country with a high tax burden and instead to reside in a foreign nation or jurisdiction which takes a lower portion of earnings. Going into tax exile is a means of tax mitigation or avoidance.-Legal status:...
have to pay income tax
Income tax
An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses . Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate...
.
Boots
Boots UK
Boots UK Limited , is a leading pharmacy chain in the United Kingdom, with outlets in most high streets throughout the country...
was targeted on 30 January 2011. Three people needed hospital treatment after police used CS spray on protesters.
Fortnum & Mason
Fortnum & Mason
Fortnum & Mason, often shortened to just "Fortnum's" is a department store, situated in central London, with two other branches in Japan. Its headquarters is located at 181 Piccadilly, where it was established in 1707 by William Fortnum and Hugh Mason...
and their parent company, Wittington Investments
Wittington Investments
Wittington Investments Limited is an unquoted British investment company. It is 79.2% owned by the Garfield Weston Foundation, which is one of the UK's largest grant-making trusts, and 20.8% owned by members of the Weston family....
were targeted during the 26 March 2011 anti-cuts protests
2011 anti-cuts protest in London
The 2011 anti-cuts protest in London, also known as the March for the Alternative, was a demonstration held in central London on 26 March 2011...
for their tax avoidance policies
Tax avoidance and tax evasion
Tax noncompliance describes a range of activities that are unfavorable to a state's tax system. These include tax avoidance, which refers to reducing taxes by legal means, and tax evasion which refers to the criminal non-payment of tax liabilities....
. This took the form of a peaceful mass sit-in
Sit-in
A sit-in or sit-down is a form of protest that involves occupying seats or sitting down on the floor of an establishment.-Process:In a sit-in, protesters remain until they are evicted, usually by force, or arrested, or until their requests have been met...
. The police arrested and charged 138 protesters with "aggravated trespass". A video obtained by The Guardian backed up protesters' claims that senior police officers tricked them, arresting them after assurances that they were being led to safety. As of 5 July 2011, legal proceedings against five minors were dropped, thirteen were expected to enter plea bargains at City of Westminster magistrates and charges remain against 139 others.
The group has said it will support the actions of Occupy London
Occupy London
Occupy London is an ongoing peaceful protest and demonstration against economic inequality, the lack of affordability of housing in the United Kingdom, social injustice, corporate greed and the influence of companies and lobbyists on government taking place in London, United Kingdom, which started...
, a London spin-off of Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street is an ongoing series of demonstrations initiated by the Canadian activist group Adbusters which began September 17, 2011 in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Wall Street financial district...
.
Banks
Through meetings on Twitter at the end of January it was decided that the next UK Uncut targets would be the banks that had caused the financial crises and had been bailed out by the government with billions of pounds but were now paying out large bonuses again whilst the public sector was facing large financial cuts. So UK Uncut called for people to stage "bail-ins" to turn banks into things that were being threatened by the cuts.HSBC
HSBC
HSBC Holdings plc is a global banking and financial services company headquartered in Canary Wharf, London, United Kingdom. it is the world's second-largest banking and financial services group and second-largest public company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine...
have also been accused of avoiding two billion pounds worth of tax by Private Eye magazine by using a complicated system of channeling profits through the Netherlands, leading to them being targeted by UK Uncut.
On 19 February 2011, Barclays was targeted. The date was arranged to coincide with their bonus announcements, but it also emerged that Barclays was only paying 1% corporation tax in the UK.
On 26 February, a day of action was called against the Royal Bank of Scotland
Royal Bank of Scotland
The Royal Bank of Scotland Group is a British banking and insurance holding company in which the UK Government holds an 84% stake. This stake is held and managed through UK Financial Investments Limited, whose voting rights are limited to 75% in order for the bank to retain its listing on the...
and their subsidiary Natwest. The protest was arranged to coincide with the banks' bonus announcements, and once again protestors turned bank branches into services threatened by the cuts.
NHS reforms
On 9 October 2011, 2,000 health workers and activists took part in a sit-down protest on Westminster BridgeWestminster Bridge
Westminster Bridge is a road and foot traffic bridge over the River Thames between Westminster on the north side and Lambeth on the south side, in London, England....
organised by UK Uncut in opposition to the proposed Health and Social Care Bill.
Spin-offs
A similar protest group inspired by UK Uncut has formed in the USA under the name US UncutUS Uncut
US Uncut is a decentralized direct action group in the United States established in February 2011 to combat corporate tax avoidance and highlight cuts to social spending and public sector jobs...
.
The protest also spread to other European countries, creating decentralized protest groups like Portugal Uncut.
A group called Take VAT targeted several companies avoiding VAT by selling goods to the UK through the Channel Islands.
External links
- UK Uncut website
- US Uncut website
- Inside UK Uncut - Guardian video 10 February 2011