I fear for one of my favourite t-shirts. It is a medium V-neck, white with a carnival-style scene depicted in charcoal printed on the front, bought for £3 in the Manchester branch of Primark, made (much to my pleasure) from 100% organic cotton. It is a good t-shirt (I can wear it with almost anything else I own) and it's a good t-shirt, being organic. But what is worrying, what is putting the fear in me, is the 'made in' sticker. I can find 'made in China,' 'made in Turkey,' 'made in Bulgaria,' and 'made in Mexico' in my other clothes. On the Primark t-shirt the label reads 'made in Bangladesh'. And the more I think about it the more it seems my innocent looking Primark t-shirt could be the source of riots halfway across the world.

Obviously it is not THE source, but it could be part of the straw bale that broke the camel's back. Or, more specifically, the t-shirt that killed the garment worker from Bangladesh. Last week, after facing salary cuts and unpaid wages, over 6,000 garment workers began protesting outside their factories; the police responded with swift action - shooting one protester dead. The protests escalated quickly, drawing a crowd of 50,000 angry Bangladesh workers in the Ashulia industrial zone, 19 miles outside Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. Police responded by firing rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowd, injuring over 100 protesters. Meanwhile, protesters took to burning their workplaces; NoSweat reported that over 50 factories were vandalised, and over five factories were set alight.

Unfortunately, you'll be hard pressed to find this information in the Guardian or The Times, which is a shame as in many ways this is as much a 'UK story' as it is a 'Bangladesh Story'. Only last year journalist Fred Pearce found sweatshops in Dhaka paying workers as little as 50p a day; they were the same sweatshops that provide clothes for H&M, Reebok, and Gap. War On Want found the same situation with Tesco (profits of £2.8 billion), Asda (£638 million) and Primark (£223 million).

Despite the ferocity of the protests, this is not the first time Bangladesh has been confronted by the issue of sweatshop labour. Three years ago thousands of workers protested poor wages, torching over 12 factories, the protests only stopping after unions and the government agreed to a $25 monthly minimum wage;  but with less than 20% of factories adhering to the minimum wage, 25,000 textile workers protested a year later.

While it's impossible to say whether my Primark t-shit passed through the hands of a 50p-a-day worker on the opposite side of the world, I have to accept that it is pretty likely. But the world of fashion doesn't have to create a world of misery.

Before traveling to Bangladesh, Fred Pearce went to India to visit an ethical company, Maral, with a fair-trade and organic approach. Despite having a long way to go, Maral paid it's unskilled workers up to 36p an hour - a marked difference from 50p a day. Despite the pay still being a pittance, Maral is willing to be un-economical to provide a slightly fairer deal for workers. And that is just one working on being ethical producer. There are countless ethical fashion retailers on the market - Quail, By Nature, People Tree, for example. Despite my t-shirts source, I'm going to keep it. I won't wear it, but I'll hang it in my wardrobe, next to my old, old, old Limp Bizkit hoodie and my wannabe rebel, two sizes too big leather jacket - my memento's of fashion stupidity.


Photo: Provided by Flikr user Sabeen Virani, of a sweatshop just outside of Dhaka.