Byron burger restaurants have been the site of a series of protests from London to Manchester with support on #BoycottByron. They came in the wake of news that 35 workers from Albania, Brazil, Mexico, Nepal and Egypt were lured to what they thought was an early-morning training session concerning food safety, according to an email sent to 12 branches. After some waiting, immigration officers arrived with a list of names and photographs, telling the gathered staff to wait as they were called one by one into a separate room.
As of Friday evening, 25 of those arrested in the operation have now been removed from the UK. One chef described being taken to three detention centers prior to his deportation – from Tinsley House near Gatwick, to the Verne, a former prison in Dorset for a week then on to Harmondsworth near Heathrow.
One side brands it a sting, the other calls it upholding the law
Surrounding the protests, two very different conversations have been happening. One side brands the move by Byron a sting, an insidious collaboration between a private company and the Home Office to deport migrant workers, with the added bonus of avoiding an estimated £700,000 fine. On the other are those who feel that all Byron did was uphold the law.
While much of the commentary surrounding the protests has been tilted toward the latter (with some going so far as to cheer the removal of those supposedly ‘undermining British workers’) a much more politically significant conversation and grassroots struggle has been apparent.
Last week, at the same time as separate picketing of Byron restaurants, activists from London Black Revolutionaries and the Malcolm X Movement took “direct and affirmative action against Byron Burgers to protest their treatment of migrant workers”. This action took the form of releasing crickets, locusts and cockroaches inside their restaurants. As Michael Segalov notes in his coverage: “this action was going to cost Byron money, hitting the company where it hurts at a time when the PR nightmare wasn’t looking likely to go away.” Speaking to VICE, one member of LBR highlighted the scope of the coming challenges for progressive politics: “We needed to develop strategic actions right now in terms of the black grassroots and the immigrant grassroots and the context of the growing fascism on a state level.”
This was an expression of solidarity with migrant workers and those feeling the brunt of xenophobia
On the evening of Monday 1st August, protesters turned out in the rain outside Byron’s Holborn branch, which was shut down hours before. Contrary to the lazy journalism of Bryony Gordon’s “#BoycottByron mob” headline in the Telegraph, there was a vast variety of groups present. From Unite Hotel and Restaurant Workers branches to Black Dissidents and London Latinxs (who have been involved in direct action in support of refugees); from Lesbian and Gays Support the Migrants to War on Want; and anti-detention and migrant support groups such as Detention Action and Movement for Justice.
Rather than a ‘mob’ solely directing anger at a business over its practices, this was an expression of solidarity with migrant workers and those feeling the brunt of xenophobia in the wake of the Brexit vote and a stand against a poisonous climate for those deemed ‘unwelcome’. It was a moment of collaboration between groups with increasingly shared goals.
Asserting the illegality of the workers leaves the obvious link between policy, law and power uncriticized
The separation of ‘good’ legal migrant workers and ‘bad’ illegal workers is a path designed to create further harm and division, shifting the terrain inevitably to the right. What ran through these protests, despite its critics, was an affirmation of humanity, a protest against the hardening of borders in the midst of the refugee crisis, a defense against an increasingly authoritarian and xenophobic approach to immigration and against a dangerous notion that equates Britishness with whiteness. As one speaker noted at Monday’s protest, those gathered “can see the writing on the wall”. The shaping of public opinion through dehumanizing language such as swarm, cockroaches and parasites and the fear of the other seen across Europe, is a dangerous path.
There is a benefit in closing off the more radical and politically significant edges of the conversations around Byron’s treatment of its staff. To shut it down by asserting the illegality of the workers the operation targeted leaves the obvious link between policy, law and power uncriticized. It posits that those policies are a natural given rather than the construct of a declining imperial power that while no longer able or willing to provide for many of its own citizens, chooses to divide them and blame the vulnerable while promising things will get better if you stick with it and stay in line.
The challenge is pushing back against those who would decide who is more or less deserving and instead face the real impacts of a system that makes promises with one hand, takes from someone else with the other all the while pocketing profits behind its back.
While some have held Byron’s charitable work as a ‘case closed, argument won’, in reality it is also a mere reflection of this system. I leave you with the words of one former Byron staff member:
“On the 6th of October 2015, Byron decided to embark on the ‘charitable campaign’ One Feeds Two, where they sold every burger for 25 pence to everyone that became a member of the ‘Byron Burger Club’. They claimed that all earnings would go to their charity whose raison d’être is to ‘support children in some of the poorest countries in the world by providing a nutritious school meal’.
Thousands and thousands of people turned up outside Byron restaurants throughout the UK that day. The queuing extended several blocks, from early hours in the morning till way past midnight. What this meant for the working staff — 13 hours (or more) shifts of exhausting, non-stop work, not being able to have lunch or a break in all the duration of the shift, being yelled at by my manager to the point of being reduced to tears, and not receiving any tips or any other form of retribution during the whole day, despite having worked as hard as any other day as a Byron employee. People paying for their meals with 50p coins and not leaving anything for us, when our sweat, stress and, in my case tears, were visible for all to see. I never felt so humiliated in my life.
My central London branch made more money that day than any other busy day. And it was US, the staff, who had to cope with the stress, lack of resources and angry customers once we had simply run out of supplies after they had queued for hours. It was us, the staff, who were exploited for Byron’s good Samaritan role-play day.
All for the fallacy of ‘charity’. If they wanted to donate money to children in need, why do it at the expense of their staff? You cannot do charity by exploiting other people. What it all really was — a PR stunt disguised as charity, a carefully designed strategy to attract massive numbers to their Byron Burger Club and, therefore, produce profit for no one else but the company itself. Not for ‘children in some of the poorest countries’.
I quit Byron two days later.”
Image: Marco Verch
