People are threatening to boycott Wetherspoons over the owner’s comments during lockdown

Many people have not forgotten the Wetherspoons’ owners remarks in the early lockdown stages and have started a #neverspoons boycott.

Tim Martin was infamously quoted as telling his 43,000 Wetherspoons employees to get a job in a supermarket as they would not be paid until the beginning of the furlough scheme from the government. 

He received tonnes of backlash for this and did a u-turn on his statements.

Martin is a multi-millionaire but perhaps best known for actively supporting the Vote Leave campaign and publically backing the Brexit Party in the 2019 general election.

The party failed to win, but the Conservative landslide led his business to jump 10% in value, according to Indy 100. 

Despite this, the people supporting the Boycott Wheterspoons campaign are insisting this is not due to his anti-EU politics but due to his ‘appalling’ handling of the pandemic, particularly his treatment of staff.

Contrastingly, many people have said that boycotting Wetherspoons would actually hit the staff hardest through job cuts and hour slashes.

Instead, people are suggesting to respect picket lines and encourage workers to join a union and encouraging people to ’empower the workers’.

This also comes after new research shows that 32 million people have pledged to support local and small business owners online throughout the lockdown, which is set to continue post-lockdown.

You can easily find local independent businesses to support on a new directory that promotes independents that have been open throughout lockdown.

You can also use this map to find the places doing takeaway pints, which are predominantly independent businesses. 

Many people are really excited to get back to the pub when they reopen on July 4th – with Wetherspoons set to reopen 750 pubs in England on this date – but will you be boycotting Spoons and going local? Let us know…