A PIPER led dancing BHS staff as the doors closed for good at a Scottish branch of the collapsed retailer.
Workers at the Stirling store joined arms for traditional country dancing accompanied by a solo piper after attempts to save the department store chain failed.
The shop was one of several to shut on July 23, with many more due to close on Saturday.
A video posted on the Team BHS Facebook page, which has almost 7,000 members, shows onlookers applauding with signs reading “Everything must go” visible in the background.
Peter Stewart, who posted the clip, wrote: “Resilient to the end, Good luck to all who closed their doors this weekend”.
More than 11,000 employees are losing their jobs after the high street chain collapsed into administration in April. The shutters will fall on all 164 branches by August 20 in a phased closure programme.
Staff at the remaining 114 shops were formally notified of redundancy yesterday afternoon.
Fiona Thomson, who worked at the Stirling shop, said she had “loved every single minute” of her six years in the job. “On behalf of myself and my co-workers we have enjoyed working for BHS, it is a family and we are all proud to be part of it. We honestly didn’t want to go,” she said.
“Thank you to all our customers for their support especially over the last few weeks. Onwards and upwards: what’s for us won’t go by us.”
Shops in Ayr, Cameron Toll in Edinburgh, Falkirk and Kilmarnock are amongst Scottish branches set to close this week, as well as others in Hamilton, Kirkcaldy and Leith.
Yesterday, Downing Street said a damning report into the fall of BHS and the role of former boss Sir Philip Green is “clearly concerning”, stressing Prime Minister Theresa May’s desire to “reform capitalism” and prevent “reckless” corporate behaviour. A spokeswoman said May will “learn lessons for the future” from the parliamentary inquiry which branded Sir Philip the “unacceptable face of capitalism”.
The tycoon and his family pocketed £400 million in dividends during his 15-year ownership of the company, with BHS’s pension scheme showing a £571m deficit when it fell into administration.
Calls to strip Green of his knighthood and force him to put money back into the pension fund are now growing after an excoriating joint report by two Commons committees.
May’s spokeswoman said the independent Honours Forfeiture Committee should be left to make a decision on his knighthood, adding: “The Prime Minister has already set out that we need to tackle corporate irresponsibility, reforming capitalism so that it works for everyone, not just the privileged few, and that means in the long run doing more to prevent irresponsible and reckless behaviour.
“It’s right now that we look carefully at the policies linked to that and work out the best way forward.”
The two committees – Work and Pensions and Business, Innovation and Skills – accused Green of seeking to blame anyone but himself for the firm’s failure and said he has a “moral duty” to make a “large financial contribution” to the 20,000 pensioners facing substantial cuts to their benefits.
While the committees were damning about Dominic Chappell, who bought BHS for £1, and the “directors, advisers and hangers-on” associated with the deal, they said ultimate responsibility lay with Green.
Labour shadow business secretary Jon Trickett called for an “immediate and through” review of corporate governance structures and said Green must “pay back the millions of pounds to the pension fund”.
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