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.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Various sources have described the group as left-wing in its political orientation.[7][8][9][10] 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.[11]
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The idea of UK Uncut originated in October 2010 with a group of ten activists in discussing resistance to public sector cuts in the Nags Head pub, Islington.
Three issues primarily framed the discussion: First, civil disobedience. They had just attended a march against the Comprehensive Spending Review in Central London. They were highly concerned that the emerging anti-cuts movement would consist of endless A to B marches listening to the same tired speakers. They felt this would be demoralising and would provide zero challenge to the coalition government. The activists in the Nags head wanted to inject civil disobedience into the anti-cuts movement from the very begining.
Secondly,George Osborne's key messages were "there is no alternative" and "we are all in this together".
Thirdly, The Private Eye had just published an article about Vodafone avoiding 6bn in tax.
Thus they decided to hold a civil disobedient action, shutting down Vodafone to highlight that there is an alternative to the cuts: clamp down on tax avoidance by the richest people and corporations.
On Wednesday October 27th about 40 protesters met at the Ritz Hotel at 0830am and then successfully closed the flag ship Oxford Street Vodafone store for the majority of the day.[12] They set up a Twitter account the day before the action in order to publicise their protest. After some considerable debate, the twitter account was called @UKuncut. During the first action #ukuncut became a trending topic on twitter as people across the country tweeted that they too wanted to shut-down their local Vodafone store.
That evening, a UK Uncut website was made, and a call-out was issued for people across the country to shut-down Vodafone stores on their local high street on Saturday October 30th. That day, all four Vodafone stores were shut simultaneously on Oxford Street and actions took place in around 10 other locations, from Edinburgh to Hastings. UK Uncut was born.
Since then the protests have grown dramatically and dozens of actions are organised all around the UK on each day of action.[13] 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.[14]
In December 2010, the UK Uncut movement hit mainstream news headlines around he world for their two days of action focusing on Billionaire tax-avoider Phillip Green and his Arcadia Empire.
On 4th December, 6 activists in Brighton super-glued themselves inside a Topshop window, while hundreds of activists forced security to shut down the giant four-storey Topshop on Oxford Street. Similar actions took place over 50 locations.
In January 2011 UK Uncut targeted Boots.
February saw the start of a new campaign called the "Big Society Bail-In". The idea was occupy local bank branches and turn them into the public services that are being cut your local area. Hundreds of occupations occurred in RBS and Barclays Branches. Making the banks pay their own crisis was UK Uncut's second alternative to the UK government austerity measures.
The group uses direct action to get its message across, often closing down high street stores that are owned by tax avoiders.[1]
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.[15]
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.[16]
Boots was targeted on 30 January 2011. Three people needed hospital treatment after police used CS spray on protesters.[17][18][19]
Fortnum & Mason and their parent company, Wittington Investments were targeted during the 26 March 2011 anti-cuts protests for their tax avoidance policies.[20] 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.[21] 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.[22]
The group has said it will support the actions of Occupy London, a London spin-off of Occupy Wall Street.[23][24]
In November 2011, the legal arm of UK Uncut took HM Revenue & Customs to court. HMRC had been accused of failing to provide substantial reasons for not collecting billions of pounds in tax revenue. [25]
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.[26]
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,[27] leading to them being targeted by UK Uncut.[28]
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.[29]
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.[30]
On 9 October 2011, 2,000 health workers and activists took part in a sit-down protest on Westminster Bridge organised by UK Uncut in opposition to the proposed Health and Social Care Bill.[31]
A similar protest group inspired by UK Uncut has formed in the USA under the name US Uncut.[32]
The protest also spread to other European countries, creating decentralized protest groups like Portugal Uncut.[33]
A group called Take VAT targeted several companies avoiding VAT by selling goods to the UK through the Channel Islands.[34]