Acceptable protest slogan? My a**e!
Controversy over a cheeky word has been causing red faces in Northampton town centre after staff in a cosmetics store were asked to take down their window display.
Lush has joined forces with human rights campaign Reprieve to try to raise awareness of alleged human rights abuses in Guantanamo Bay for a national campaign.
As part of the campaign, staff in the Grosvenor Centre store have been wearing orange knickers with the slogan FAIR TRIAL MY A**E emblazoned on them, and have had a giant pair hung in the window.
On Tuesday, a shopper complained about the original word and two letters were replaced with asterisks, so the window display was changed to read 'a**e' instead. But the saga continued yesterday when a member of Grosvenor Centre management asked staff to take the whole display down.
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Shop manager Emma Loxam said: "Someone came into the shop and told us we had to take the entire window down. They didn't give any reason why.
"I can understand the word being perceived as offensive but we had changed that, and she said the whole subject matter needed to come down. We are not pushing this on people. It's just in the window and we are just trying to make people aware of this."
Andrew Butler, campaigns manager for Lush – founded by Northampton woman Rowena Bird – said while some other shopping centres had also asked that the word should be altered, Northampton was the only place in the country where staff had been asked to remove the whole display.
He said: "Some of the big centres like Lakeside in Essex were initially concerned about our campaign but once we explained what it was about they had no problem with it. The response we have had from staff and customers has been extremely positive."
A spokesman for the Grosvenor Centre said the shopping centre catered for a cross-section of society, particularly young families and older people.
He added: "We have a duty of care to our shoppers. We believe that some people might be offended by seeing the word in a shop window, so we have politely asked Lush to change it."
alex.valk@northantsnews.co.uk
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