Vodaphone Manchester
26 November 2005
Vodaphone donate money to Oxford University; currently the focus of the
campaign to stop the new animal lab at the Uni is to encourage the
funders to stop giving money, hence a day of action was called to
boycott Vodaphone to encourage the company not to donate any more money
to such an animal abusing establishment.
A loud and visual demo took place at the busiest Vodaphone shop in
Manchester for the day of action. It is situated on the main pedestrian
street and over the duration of the protest, hundreds of leaflets were
handed out and many hundreds of people were made aware of the boycott
call of Vodaphone. The response was very positive; several people went
into the store to complain, while many more showed their disgust at Vodaphone and said they would not be going there for their Xmas
shoppping! Several members of the public even said they would be
cancelling their contracts due to this!
The protest was only visited by one lowly 'friendly' police officer who said there wasn't a problem (!!) and made his way off. Presumably
Vodaphone weren't particularly happy about this though as they then
called in the street wardens!!! These officious meglomaniacs tried to
throw their weight around but most people on the demo just ignored them
and realising they don't actually have any power to remove the protest
or try to infringe upon it in any way, they were soon off on their way.
The protest was a definite success and more will be held until Vodaphone
sever their financial ties with Oxford Uni.
For more information on this campaign, please visit www.speakcampaigns.org.uk