BHS goes down the pan

Sad news indeed that BHS appears to be going down the pan with the potential loss of many jobs.

 

I have a peculiar relationship with BHS going back a long way. Since 1976 I have never shopped there, they have had not a penny of my money. 

There is a reason for this. Back then when I was a callow youth, student actually, there was a current affairs programme on the television called World In Action. It was a good programme, won awards and was highly rated. It was made by Yorkshire Television, a reminder that ITV did used to do quality.

One week in early 1976 they did a programme about homosexuals, presented as we always were back then as some sort of problem. In it a man was seen to kiss his boyfriend, a big deal at the time. The newspapers talked about it, the establishment was shocked. The man in question worked for BHS, went into work the next day and was sacked. There was practically no employment protection legislation about in those days so he was out of a job, with no avenue of appeal.

My very first bit of gay activism was to join a picket and leafleting that was mounted the next Saturday to protest about this at the town centre branch of BHS in the city where I was a student. To protect identities, let's call it Birmingham.

 I don't think we did any good for the poor bloke who'd lost his job, but it did me a power of good. As a consequence of this I have never been able to bring myself to spend money in BHS. I have as a consequence missed out on cardigans from the years before fleabay when BHS and M&S were among the few retail outlets that had them.

That said, I do have a BHS card, bought on fleabay and very nice it is too.

While it is rather mean of me to keep up a boycott for forty years, I suspect the money that Philip Green has wrung out of the business has done more damage than the money I haven't put in.