A lesson in survival from pre-21st century Marks & Spencer

When I wrote last week about business-to-business pain-sharing for survival, I was naturally thinking first about UK companies. I say ‘naturally’ because in every aspect of this crisis, ­national interest has, as it were, trumped trans­national co-operation. That’s particularly the case where medical supplies are concerned — as in the US President’s attempt to stop the Minnesota-based manufacturer 3M exporting respirator masks to Canada. But wider questions about global supply chains have been brought into focus by one vivid case: the wipe-out of fashion orders from factories in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam, whose operatives — low-paid but lifted by their jobs out of greater poverty — are the flagbearers of globalisation en masse.

Bangladesh’s four million garment workers account for 84 per cent of their country’s exports, but most factories there are now closed. How should western retailers respond, given that their own shops face ‘high-street Armageddon’ with jobs at risk, warehouses full and cashflows breaking? There’s a range of answers so far.