But things like that don’t happen in the UK. Do they?
You might think sweatshops are a problem far from home. A distant injustice - out of sight, out of mind. Something that happens in far-off factories across Asia or Latin America. It can be quite shocking to realise then that the reality could just be a few miles up the road.
This issues plaguing the UK Garment Industry aren’t completely hidden - rather they are hiding in plain sight. Campaigners, journalists and organisations have documented the reality of fast fashion manufacturing in the UK in recent years, in particular since the Covid19 pandemic.
Yet despite their sterling efforts, it still remain off the radar and out of the social media feeds of most consumers. Whilst some progress has been made, the problems (which we will go into here) are far from resolved.
Who’s Making Our Clothes?
If you stopped to find out who made your latest t-shirt and what their life is like, you’d probably be shocked: thousands of people making our clothes here in Britain right now, are not being treated fairly.
They’re not earning a Living Wage. They’re not working in safe environments. They’re not free to leave without risking their housing, their status, or their ability to feed their families. They’re working in sweatshop conditions. In the ‘civilised’ First World.
Many are refugees and asylum seekers. People who’ve already lived through war, persecution, or the trauma of displacement. Others are undocumented migrants, or those with No Recourse to Public Funds, meaning they’re legally shut out from help if something goes wrong. Some are simply trapped in poverty with nowhere else to turn.
In Leicester, the clothing manufacturing hub of Britain, many of these workers are women from South Asian backgrounds — mothers, daughters, sisters — cutting and stitching clothes in silence, underpaid and overlooked.
Multiple investigations in recent years have exposed poor ventilation, high temperatures, a lack of fire safety and no access to clean toilets or clean drinking water. Horrendous working conditions that most people would never accept.
One factory investigation found workers clocking over 70 hours per week in unsafe conditions (Channel 4 Dispatches, 2020). Most of these people don’t know their rights and are prevented from seeking out information, facing barriers of intersectionality that keep them from claiming their rights. If, by some miracle, they do manage to find out, they’re too afraid to speak out.
The UK Government estimated there are 10,000–13,000 victims of modern slavery in Britain (Home Office, 2020), though many charities suggest the true number could be much higher. The Leicester garment industry has been cited repeatedly as an example of modern slavery in action, with coercion, debt bondage, and threats used to control workers.
These are people being exploited for their desire to come to the UK and seek a better life, to escape hardship and danger. Their situation and personal circumstance is being used against them so that fashion brands can add a new ‘drop’ to their site, fill your feed with must-have styles and convince you that you need that top or that dress just to make yourself feel better.
Only they don’t feel better. And I doubt you do either.
Who’s at fault here?
Let’s be honest: we all love a bargain. But when you see a tshirt online slashed down in price to £10 or a jacket for £20, you’ve got to stop and ask yourself — who’s really paying the price?
Some of the biggest names in fast fashion have been linked to these exploitative factories. Brands like Boohoo, PrettyLittleThing, Nasty Gal, Missguided, and New Look have all been associated with unethical practices in their Leicester supply chains. Brands which utilise the UTC model, filling feeds with Influencer and Celebrity styles you just “have to have”. Chasing higher profit margins by fueling consumer desire, some brands have even been forcing discounted prices on items already made, causing factories to slash worker salaries even lower or not pay them at all.
When exposed, many of these brands claim they didn’t know. Some blamed subcontractors. Others promised to clean things up (Boohoo we’re looking at you). But here's the truth: ignorance is not an excuse - especially not when you ARE the fashion system causing the issues and benefitting financially.
The Truth They Don’t Want You to Know
We’ve been sold the lie that “Made in Britain” means safe, fair, and ethical. If it’s ‘Made in the UK’ it means it’s supporting the UK economy and standards and must be better, right? Unfortunately not always.
The problem is - what we don’t know, we don’t know. By keeping the reality of the part that British manufacturing plays in the fast fashion system, quiet from the consumer, it becomes a problem in the mind of the shopper that only occurs millions of miles away. And if that problem is perceived to be millions of miles away, well, what can we do? We are powerless, we can’t do anything about it. We don’t relate to it. So we forget it exists and we carry on.
When the likes of Labour Behind The Label exposed the UK Garment Industry they found an industry in crisis. From underpayments, broken promises, abuse, intimidation the reality was far from a pretty. Whilst the UK National Minimum Wage is currently between £8.60 and £11.44 per hour (depending on age), workers in Leicester factories were earning as little as £3.50 per hour (The Guardian, Financial Times, Labour Behind the Label). £3.50. A six-pack of toilet tissue costs more.
So What Can You Do?
Start asking questions: Where are your clothes really made? Who made them? What conditions were they working in?
Support ethical brands: There are companies out there doing things the right way. Seek them out. Champion them.
Use your voice: Share what you’ve learned. Talk about it with friends. Post about it. Don’t let silence be complicity.
Push for accountability: Demand that brands publish their full supply chains. Support policies that protect workers’ rights—especially for migrants and refugees.
Stay informed: This issue isn’t going away overnight. But awareness is the first spark of change.
Knowing better…
There’s that saying: If you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
Being kept in the dark, distracted by marketing, celebrity glamour, the pressure to conform, to be beautiful. To busy, too too tired - that is what keeps issues like this from reaching the consciousness of the average shopper. But learning, asking, reading and speaking about the reality of fashion can mean you can become aware of what you wear and how you ensure you don’t play a part in ongoing inequality.