Corporate Watch

Rank bulldozing Lyminge; Millenium Dome monstrosity; the dirty slimy oil industry; corporate genetic manipulation; the scheming, conniving PR industry ... Corporate Watch informs many campaigns and takes the fight to the heart of the corporate beast. Information is power!

We also produced reports on the Connect Consortium for A30 Action, and on Tarmac and Amec for Campaign Against Runway 2. We have helped many community groups fighting local developments and corporate abuses. Here's how Corporate Watch can work with you:

We Deal In Four Types Of Information:

What’s bad about a company - to get people motivated to challenge the company, and to help with producing leaflets etc;

How the company is structured (eg where its offices are, who makes the decisions, how it’s connected with other companies, public relations and lobbying strategies etc) - to help plan campaign strategy;

Who is/was fighting the company - to enable coordinated campaigning and to acquire new ideas for actions, as well as sharing information;

How to carry out more detailed research into the company.

How To Research Companies

Please don’t ask Corporate Watch to do all your work for you - what ever happened to DIY culture? Corporate Watch has produced a 6-page introduction to corporate research, covering the basics of finding useful contacts, using the internet, working in libraries, media searching, interview techniques and infiltration, plus some general guidelines. Call us for a copy. We also do workshops at festies, conferences and gatherings.

The Magazine

One part of the job of getting information out to campaigners is to publish the quarterly magazine. The magazine contains news from the corporate world, features on particular companies, industries and corporate issues, and updates from the campaigns against them. The magazine is available free to EF! groups on the contact list - just ask for it! Otherwise it’s £1 (unwaged) or £1.50 (waged). The magazine is available at a discount for bulk orders; if you want to sell it, you can make up to 70p per copy sold, for your group or for yourself.

Corporate Watcher's Address Book

Corporate Watch would like to see company directors more accountable for the decisions they make. The Address Book , which is also free to EF! groups, contains the home addresses of the directors of 55 nasty companies, including the likes of Tarmac, Costain, Monsanto, Tesco,Sainsbury, British Aerospace, McDonald’s, Manchester Airport, ICI, Rank etc. For individuals it costs £2 or £3.50.

Campaign Support

If you’re campaigning against a large company, give us a call. If we don’t have information on the company, we may be able to suggest someone who does, or we may be able to tell you where to look.

Obviously we can’t know everything, nor do we have the time to acquire all the information that might be useful. Rather than developing a centralised core of “experts”, we aim to facilitate a broad network of campaigners and researchers: The Corporate Information Network. We think it’s time to stop re-inventing the wheel all the time; we want to liberate files from filing cabinets. This can only work if groups feed back to us. If you want us to help you, please enable us to help other groups too. So .... tell us what you’re up to, and tell us what you know. Which companies do you have information on? What contacts do you have? What information and other resources do you have access to?

Anyone Want A Job?

Taking on the entire corporate world is obviously a pretty big job, and Corporate Watch is VERY short of people. We need help in most areas, including IT support, fundraising, information sourcing and management (both on paper and on computer), networking and admin.

If anyone fancies a change of scene, please come to Oxford - we’ll help you find accommodation, and introduce you to the joys of corporate watching. Alternatively, you could come down for a week or two, and we’ll show you how to do things, and you can take stuff home with you.