Flash-mob mums in civic protest

Mothers’ unionised: DEFIANT mums Helen Charnley, Clare Darraugh, Emma Gleave, Rosie Jennings, Karla Thomasson and Jenny Croce stage a protest over the breastfeeding scandal at Oldham Civic Centre.

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DEFIANT mums staged a protest over the breastfeeding scandal in Oldham’s civic centre.

But when the eight-strong flash mob turned up unannounced and began breastfeeding en masse, they felt like they were welcomed into the building.

The Chronicle revealed earler this month how Emma Mitchell (32), from Shaw, was asked to leave the building when she wanted to feed her son Aaron, because staff told her doing that would “cause an uproar.”

The mums, who met on the National Childbirth Trust page on the social networking website Facebook, agreed to the protest over the way Miss Mitchell was treated.

After an hour of waiting in the centre, deputy chief executive Carolyn Wilkins and Councillor Shoab Akhtar offered to speak to the group, both apologising once again for the council’s actions.

Organiser Rosie Jennings said she was furious how Oldham Council had failed to support Miss Mitchell in exercising her right, under the 1975 Sexual Discrimination Act.

She said: “We’re doing this today to demonstrate that such lack of understanding and support will not be tolerated by the wider community.

“When we posted a message about this online, another mum came forward to say the same thing had happened to her last year in the civic centre. We just wanted to make a point that it should be OK to breastfeed anywhere.”

Ms Wilkins said that councillors and staff would be trained, “breastfeeding welcome” signs would be going up and that they were looking into having fold-away screens and/or an area for mums to use.

She said that she encouraged people to give feedback if they hadn’t had a positive experience.

Rosie added: “We are glad we did it and put our message across. We feel better that the staff are having training.”

Councillor Aktar said: “The council does support breastfeeding.

“We are putting training in place to make sure something like the earlier incident does not happen again. We know it was a bad experience.”

Miss Mitchell told the council staff: “There were only five people there, I could have easily fed him discreetly.

“I left the building in tears and I had to feed Aaron in my car.

“It’s a big difference from the way I was treated when I was in Shaw Library — a woman and a man working there brought me a cup of tea and a biscuit.”

After the Chronicle ran the exclusive story, it was followed up by national and international papers, including the Toronto Sun in Canada.