Next Monday 30th June, 9am, sees the opening of the Harrods Summer Sale, one of the three big events of the year for the only department store in the country which continues to sell real fur. With just a week to go, Harrods is yet to announce which celebrity has been given the dubious honour of cutting the ribbon and being personally greeted by the store's owner, we'll put a contact alert out when we know. We have been informed that at least one famous celebrity has refused to open the sale because of the fur campaign, and another for unknown reasons.

Some of you will remember the very successful protest from last year's Summer Sale Opening on July 2nd, where the guest was American actress Sarah Michelle Gellar (from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series) see picture above, which appeared on the BBC website. We managed to get across a very strong anti-fur message to the media who are always there in large numbers. We repeated the success at the Winter Sale opening in December when Lily Allen was the guest, and recently when Victoria Beckham launched one of her products at the store.

Indeed so sensitive are Harrods about this event, that they recently went back to the High Court for a variation of the injunction which they were granted over two years ago to regulate fur protests at the store. The High Court hearing lasted a whole day, and almost all of it was taken up with arguments by Harrods' lawyers about the conduct of the protest at the Summer Sale opening on 30th June. Although there were some restrictions imposed, for this event only, the court accepted our right to be present at the event and to be visible to the public and the media. If you are planning to attend, it may be worth contacting us at  london@caft.org.uk for an explanation and how this will affect the protest.

This is a great opportunity to get the anti-fur message to a huge audience and to remind Harrods that the campaign will continue as long as they continue to sell fur. We'll be gathering from before 8am, but please turn up any time between then and 9am, when the opening ceremony takes place.

Harrods is the only UK department store still selling fur, among the fur seen on sale at the store are garments made from beavers, chinchillas, red and arctic foxes, mink, muskrats, rabbits, wolves, coyotes and squirrels.

Whether or not you can make the protest, please take time to contact Harrods by phone, email and/or fax to request they stop selling fur.
Address and contact details for Harrods.

Harrods Ltd 87-135 Brompton Road
Knightsbridge London SW1X 7XL
Telephone 020 7730 1234
Fax 020 7581 0470
 customer.services@harrods.com

To get to Harrods, take the tube to Knightsbridge (Picadilly Line), look for exit marked Brompton Rd/Harrods. The protest is planned for door number 5.