Lina earns £16 a month making Tesco clothes Image: Tarif Rahman

War on Want has today launched its campaign Love Fashion Hate Sweatshops, backed by public figures including Strictly Come Dancing newcomer Jo Wood, designer Betty Jackson, pop singer Little Boots and film star Gael Garcia Bernal.

Models are parading in campaign T-shirts and carrying placards bearing the campaign slogan at London Fashion Week’s main venue, just before the first catwalk show opens. 

War on Want and celebrities will seek public support today for the biggest-ever call for British government action to stop fashion retailers exploiting overseas workers.

As London Fashion Week opens, the charity is unveiling its new drive for 50,000 names, demanding that UK prime minister Gordon Brown regulates the industry.

The initiative will be backed by Jo Wood (interviewed this month on Daisy Green), the former wife of Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, hours before viewers see her debut when the BBC series Strictly Come Dancing returns to Britain’s television screens.

The Love Fashion Hate Sweatshops push is also endorsed by actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Ashlee Jensen, pop singer Little Boots and designer Betty Jackson, who stages her own catwalk show at Somerset House in London on Sunday (20 September).

Among other backers are television personality Tony Robinson, actor-playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah, comedians Jo Brand and Francesca Martinez and gardener Bob Flowerdew.

Ruth Tanner, campaigns and policy director at War on Want, said:

We want exploitation-free fashion which makes us look good without feeling bad. This campaign gives people a chance to make a real difference to the lives of workers who produce our clothes. Now is the time for the government to take action.

According to War on Want research, workers making clothes for Primark, Tesco and Asda factories in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka received on average only £19.16 (2280 taka) a month, under half a living wage. Some employees were paid only the minimum wage, £13.97 (1663 taka) a month, far less than the £44.82 (5333 taka) needed to escape dire hardship.

The vast majority of employees live in small, crowded shacks, many of which lack plumbing and adequate washing facilities. Though forced overtime is illegal in Bangladesh, employees said they were made to toil extra hours, often unpaid. Workers complained that in the fast fashion rush to produce the latest styles, many of them suffered verbal and physical abuse as they struggled to meet unrealistic targets. Yet the Dhaka workers said none of their factories was unionised.

Lina (pictured above)  earns just £16 (1850 taka) a month, toiling 12 hours a day producing Tesco clothes. “It is not enough,” she said. “I can only afford to live in one room with my husband, two-year-old boy and mother-in-law.”

Ifat, who toils in a factory supplying Primark, Tesco and Asda, said: “I can’t feed my children three meals a day.”

Jo Wood (below), shocked by garment workers’ hardship when she visited Dhaka with a further Love Fashion Hate Sweatshops backer, fair trade fashion company People Tree, said: “The conditions that they lived in in the slums were appalling: the rubbish, the smell and the poverty. Up to six people live in a tin room on bamboo stilts above heaps of rubbish. Yet I was humbled by the people and their attitudes.”

Jo Wood is backing the campaign

Little Boots said: “I love fashion, but loathe how some retailers deny a living wage to the people who make their clothes, condemning them to a lifetime of misery and poverty.”

People Tree director Safia Minney said: “The government must work with local partners to review a living wage in developing countries. They must increase funding of initiatives that promote responsible consumerism and awareness and start to hold companies legally accountable for human rights violations overseas committed in their name.”

Another supporter, Livia Firth, founder of ethical retailer Eco Age and wife of actor, Colin, said: “I love fashion and am trying my best to wear only garments from designers who are sweatshop free. I hope this campaign will encourage both consumers like me and designers and producers to always make sure that what we wear comes from a chain of production which is 100% fair.”

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