Business came to a standstill in Marks and Spencer's  Carmarthen store  for half an hour this afternoon (Saturday 3rd of August) as members of Cymdeithas yr Iaith refused to pay for their shopping.
 
Trollies were filled with tins and jars of food and taken to the checkouts where campaigners said that they did not want to buy the items because Marks and Spencer had not kept its promise that bilingual signs would stay after the store was re-branded.
 
Hazel Charles Evans, one of the organisers of the campaign said:
 
“A number of people in the area shop here and want to do so in Welsh, Marks and Spencer should respect that. We came here today to do our shopping but not much has changed since we met them about their Welsh language policy. They are still failing to provide a Welsh language service and we are very disappointed with them, so we refused to buy what we intended.
 "M&S is showing no respect for its customers in Wales, which has caused a lot of bad feeling in Carmarthen town and the area. Just a fortnight ago almost 100 protesters surrounded this shop with pants to tell Marks and Spencer their language policy is 'pants'. Hopefully, by us taking this action, Marks and Spencer will come to see that people are unhappy, and maybe one day we can come here to shop again. We don't want to disrupt shoppers and staff, but they understood our complaint.”
 
Staff and customers at the shop were surprised to see the protesters bring the shop to a standstill and the deputy store manager came to to talk with the protesters.

 

Hazel Charles Evans added:

 
“The store manager told us that they are discussing Welsh language signage and their language policy internally. We met with the store manager and company officials before they re-branded the shop at the start of the year - the English signs went back up but not the Welsh ones. Since then we have picketed and protested, and two new signs have gone up recently - 'lifft' (lift) and 'neuadd fwyd' (food hall). Now we have another promise but when we will see something change? People in Carmarthen want to live in Welsh - and that includes shopping.”

 

Protesters bring shop to standstill - Carmarthen Journal 07/08/13