Survivors and relatives of those killed in the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse are seeking funding to travel to Liverpool next month, where they plan to press UK political and fashion industry audiences on long-running grievances over representation and financial hardship.
The National Rana Plaza Survivors Association and the International Rana Plaza Alliance (IRPA) intend to launch a survivor-led international campaign tour, branded #ShutUp4RanaPlaza, built around a fringe event at the Labour Party’s annual conference on September 27, according to a report by trade publication Ecotextile News. The Labour conference runs from September 27-30 at the ACC Liverpool venue.
The push comes more than 13 years after the Rana Plaza building collapse in Savar, near Dhaka, killed more than 1,130 garment workers and injured thousands more, in what remains the deadliest disaster in the history of the ready-made garment industry. The tragedy prompted a wave of global reforms, including the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, but survivor groups say compensation and support mechanisms set up in its aftermath have failed to deliver lasting justice.
IRPA has previously accused the International Labour Organization’s Rana Plaza Donors Trust Fund of running an opaque and discriminatory compensation process. In an earlier Ecotextile News feature, the alliance’s leaders alleged that traumatized victims were denied access to independent legal counsel, that early emergency payments were later clawed back from final settlements, and that no full independent audit or verified list of beneficiaries has ever been published. Survivors cited in that reporting described chronic health complications tied to their injuries alongside unexplained deductions from the compensation they eventually received.
The decision to target the Labour conference reflects a strategic shift by survivor groups toward direct engagement with Western political institutions and the fashion brands whose supply chains sourced from the collapsed complex, which housed five garment factories producing for international retailers. Fringe events at UK party conferences have increasingly become a venue for labor rights campaigners seeking to influence trade and business policy discussions among lawmakers, unions and corporate representatives.
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Organizers of the #ShutUp4RanaPlaza tour have not yet disclosed the full itinerary beyond the Liverpool event, though the campaign name suggests further stops are planned. The survivor groups are appealing for financial support to cover travel and attendance costs, underscoring the economic hardship campaigners say continues to affect many of those impacted by the disaster more than a decade later.
The renewed advocacy arrives amid heightened scrutiny of labor conditions across South Asian garment supply chains, with Bangladesh’s RMG sector facing separate pressures this year from energy costs, wage disputes and evolving Western due-diligence requirements. Neither the Labour Party nor representatives of the ILO’s Rana Plaza Donors Trust Fund had issued public comment on the survivor groups’ conference plans at the time of the Ecotextile News report.