“People should be free to live and work wherever they wish, and enjoy the same rights as all other residents. No one is illegal”

A bold statement and one that was written in the windows of all 95 lush shops in the UK in 2011.

The idea of open borders is one of the most controversial campaigns that Lush has been involved in, with many people having negative associations with the idea of an open borders system and few people seeing the benefits at first glance.

This week long campaign was designed to make people think beyond what the popular press were saying and look at all the evidence.

Published on the Lush website at the time of the campaign was the following: “our campaign 'No one is Illegal' hopes to show that immigration controls are inherently unjust and inhumane and that the abolition of immigration controls is not only possible, it's preferable”

The campaign at its heart was about equality, justice and human rights and went on to challenge policies rooted in racism which punish people for being poor, uneducated, or simply being born in one place and not another.

In Lush stores there would be a free NOII (no one is illegal) newspaper for customers to take home, along with a ‘world passport‘ which declared: “this document confirms that that its bearer is a human being and not an alien.” These passports were to be used by Aaron Barschak and members of NOII to try and board the Eurostar to Paris to mark the start of this campaign. Unfortunately they were unsuccessful in their bid to board.

Also as part of this campaign, Lush promoted Teresa Hayters book “Open Borders: the Case Against Immigration Controls”