Skip to main content
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.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
WAR ON CLAIMANTS: Liz Kendall outside the Department of Work and Pensions, March 2025
Features / 20 May 2025
20 May 2025

While claiming to target fraud, Labour’s snooping Bill strips benefit recipients of privacy rights and presumption of innocence, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE, warning that algorithms with up to 25 per cent error rates could wrongfully investigate and harass millions of vulnerable people

The vote count on May 1 at Grimsby Town Hall, Lincolnshire, for the Greater Lincolnshire Mayor election
Features / 6 May 2025
6 May 2025

With Reform UK surging and Labour determined not to offer anything different from the status quo, a clear opportunity opens for the left, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE

Children sit and play on the remains of a tank, at the river
Features / 21 April 2025
21 April 2025

Keir Starmer’s £120 million to Sudan cannot cover the government’s complicity in the RSF genocide or atone for the long shadow of British colonialism and imperialism, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE

NO SAFE ZONES: Children walk by the destroyed house of journ
Features / 8 April 2025
8 April 2025
As Israel’s crimes escalate, Keir Starmer’s government must not subvert, block or ignore the investigation and prosecution of British citizens involved in acts of genocide, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE
Similar stories
Shoppers in central London
Britain / 17 January 2025
17 January 2025
A man carrying bags in the Broadmead shopping area of Bristo
Britain / 19 November 2024
19 November 2024
Features / 4 July 2024
4 July 2024
Labour’s refusal to restore council funding is a betrayal of the vulnerable, and particularly of Send children and young people, says independent candidate CLAUDIA WEBBE