Police in a West Midlands town set up road blocks and cordoned-off a main shopping thoroughfare over the weekend, when it became clear that staff at a Woolworths store scheduled to shut down last week, had refused to obey their orders, and had carried on trading.
Officers in Dudley tried in vain to get the 35 shop assistants, till operators and shelf-stackers to 'down tools' last Friday, but when it was clear they were going to meet stern resistance, they set up a no-go area around the market square, and enforced a curfew.
Woolworths had been trading for 99 years until the Credit Crunch, when poor asset management, involving the sales of rubber bands, put the business into administration recently, and the chain shut down all stores nationwide by 5th January.
The Dudley branch, however, remained open, and customers who were determined enough, were still able to shop there by creeping through the police line round the back of the store, in a bit of a dark recess.
Leader of the renegade bunch of assistants, Karen Slugg, 49, said:
"We ay clowsin dowan. We ay got nowhere else t'gow. Dudley needs its Woolies shop, y'now worra mean, loik?"
