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Gifts from The Morning Star
Wilko: the killing-off of our high streets
It's clear ‘market forces’ cannot be trusted with our workplaces, our essential shops and our communities — we need to look at worker control and co-operative ownership models, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE MP
A man walks past the closed Wilko store in Barking, east London

IN SOLIDARITY, we must enable the development of worker-recovered companies and the government must act to support retail workers and to protect local high streets and communities that depend on them.

These are the clear lessons following the collapse of yet another major high street chain — and one on which many struggling people relied for low-cost essentials.

Offers from various investors to buy Wilko, which was founded in Leicester in 1930, have fallen through, and all 400 of the retailer’s stores are now set to disappear from our high streets by early October, putting around 12,500 staff out of work through no fault of their own.

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