http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-33520970
This is the sort of story to cause every new mother to begin quivering with horror, although Primark (this is all alleged to have occurred at the Primark store in Leicester) now says that there is zero evidence to back up the mother's story.
Let's get some indisputable facts in place first:
The Equality Act 2010 (pdf) explicitly states that it is unlawful for a business to discriminate against a woman because she is breastfeeding a child. Thus, businesses have a responsibility to ensure that a woman breastfeeding while receiving a service they provide is not treated unfairly, including by other customers.
The current background is that there have been public disputes & situations about mothers that want to breastfeed their child, leading (as one example very local to me) to 30 mothers feeding their child at a Nottingham Sports Direct store, because it had sent Wioletta Komar out into the rain after being told breastfeeding was against Sports Direct's company policy. So, there are a lot of mothers getting het up about this stuff (and quite right, too).
Caroline Starmer claimed on Free To Feed's forum that she was breastfeeding her baby in “a quiet spot” in Primark's store on Tuesday 14 July 2015, after her baby began to cry. She said that after 5 minutes a security guard then approached & asked her to leave. She stood up for her rights & refused. Then came the crucial claim: that the guard physically picked up her baby, removed it from her breast then walked down the store with the baby, saying ‘follow me if you want your child’.
Primark say that it had investigated the customer's claim and reviewed CCTV footage from the time in question:-
Who (apart from Ms. Starmer) knows what the facts on that day are? But the continuing, ongoing broo-ha-ha about breastfeeding is most interesting.
--------- Alex Kemp