There a five main sources of information:

1. CAMPAIGNING GROUPS
Consumer, environmental and special interest groups, trade unions and their intemational bodies etc.have criticised companies for a variety of reasons; some have also done some structural research.

2. THE COMPANY ITSELF
Most important is the Annual Report: these must be produced by law by pic.s; larger and high profile limited companies may also produce annual reports or something similar. They will generally send you a copy on request - get their address/phone number from the library. It will give company accounts, list of directors, summary of areas the company works in (geographical and industry) and their financial performance, list of political donations, environmentaVethical policy etc. There may be other useful information such as lobby groups membership, major shareholders, etc. and probably some interesting quotes. It may also be worth posing as a student or journalist and asking the company questions directly - the PR department will be most willing to provide information, although it will be very carefully tailored; other departments might let things slip which they don't want you to know. Some larger companies produce their own intemal journals (e.g. Costain's Blueprin`,which they may send you if you have a good enough reason.

3. BUSINESS LBRARIES
Most local libraries have a business section. In London try: City Business Library, 55 Basinghall St., EC2, 0171 638 8215; Science Reference Library, 25 Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, WC2,0171 323 7457; Statistics & Market Intelligence Library (part of DTI- information on British overseas trade & invest- ment), 1 Victoria St., SWI, 0171 215 5444. N.B. Many specialist business publications start with a guide to using them - reading this guide can save a lot of time. Library assistants are oflen very knowl- edgeable as to what's the best book for your purposes.

Useful publications are: Who Owns Whom - Vol. 3 gives corporate family trees for ultimate holding companies (parents) registered in the UK. Also given are levels of ownership (%age of shares) and in which countries each sub- sidiary operates. Vol. 4 is an index of UK companies and gives each one's ultimate parents. Other volumes deal with elsewhere in the world. If a company doesn't appear, check you've got the name right and that the edition of Who Owns Whom is up-to-date. Otherwise the company may be too small to appear.

Directory of Directors: 2 volumes, published annually: useful for companies without annual reports(incl. subsidiaries of pies).
Market Research Guides and Industry Reports (e.g.Keyno~e, Jordans) - describe particular industries. Kompass: Vol. 2 - addresses, phone numbers, prod- uct areas, listed by geographical area, with index of companies at the front. Vol. I - thorough breakdown of companies' product areas. Other volts - financial data, industrial trade names, product profiles.
DTI Q~ Directory - addresses and phone numbers of "quality assured" companies. Trade Joumals - in business or periodicals section Newspapers - reading every newspaper every day can be time-consuming and expensive, but the task is made much easier by McCarthy Cards (press cuttings on major companies printed on sheets) and newspaper indices,.It is made even easier by computer search, but this can be expensive.

Directorv of Employer's Associations. Trade Unions. Joint OrpanisaJions - this lists industrial associations (whose functions include lobbying, research and development and maintenance of professional standards). They are indexed by industry at the back. The book doesn't give membership lists, but it does give the association's addresses and phone numbers, their aims and functions, the size and nature of their mem- bership etc. Many will provide subscription lists on request, but often for a fee. Repister of Member's InJerests - tells you who MPs are paid by, but the register is voluntary, so not com- prehensive. Better are A Bit on rhe Side by Paul Halloran and Mark Hollingsworth (Simon and Schuster, 1994) and the Independen'on Sunday's Who Lobbies Whom supplement,in its 30/10/94 edition. Also the Nolan Committee's report makes interesting reading.

4. COMPANIES HOUSE
Part of the DTI which all UK companies must by law supply with up-to-date information. By visiting its offices (Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester), you can obtain microfiche copies of a company's annual reports, documents of incorporation, directors' home addresses etc. can be obtained for £3 per company. They will take a couple of hours to arrive. You have to give your name, and may or may not be asked for ID. Infommation can also be obtained by post or fax, but thus costs more. The general enquiries line is on 01222 380 301.

5. THE INTERNET
With the Net you've got millions of documents at your fingertips - assuming you've got a computer and a connection. If you haven't, join an Intemet Service Provider or pay a visit to your local Iibrary, Intemet Cafe or a friendly University computer lab - although you need an account to send and receive e-mail. Then what? Most importantly, you have to know what you are looking for and where, or you'll quickly become overloaded with information and tum into a Nerd. You also need to know the basic differences between e-mail, newsgroups and the Web, but there's not time for that here. Sorry. Assuming you've found your Net-legs, here's a few pointers: listserv~sjuvm.stjohns.edu with thc following in your message body: sub earthsave cyour first & last name here> Believe me, there's many, many more.

E-Mail listsers: One of electronic mail's biggest plus points is that it allows multiple distributed at no extra cost. So one person can send out a report to a thousand people worldwide as easily as they can send it to their friend nextdoor. This is the basis that mail servers work on. You can join them and be forwarded hundreds of useful bits from all over the globe. You can also be buried under mountains of digital junk, so be careful when putting your name to anything. I. ACTIV-L is meant for announcements of interest to activists and is highly recommended but very busy. They have a digest which is preferable to the full list. To subscribe, send email to listserv~mizzoul.mis-souri.edu with no subject line and subscribe activ-l (your name) in the message body. 2. ~ (Green Student Network) has some great stuff such as RoadAlerts, eviction alerts addresses to moan to etc. It's meant to be for students, but that isn't necessarily exclusive of everyone else.To subscribe, send email to list- serv~ed.ac.uk with the message body subscribe gsn (your name).

3. EatthSave Discus~:~a~ CkQup (EDIG) EarthSave Mailing List. To subscribe, send an e-mail to

Another Intemet route to try is newsgroups. Here you can post a message for everyone to read, and wait for responses from like-minded people. Or not In the real world, much newgroup discussion has degenerated into half-wit ted rants between rival factions of narrowmind ed idiots. That's the information society for you... Try misc.activism.progressive, alt.talk.politics, uk.environment, alt.activism for starters. Some companies have specific newsgroups looking at them such as alt.mcdonalds - but be warned that much of this is &n-mail.

Web sites are new media publishers of mate - including graphics, text and even audio anf video. Load up your Web browser, and off you surf Here are some useful bookmarks: McSDot0: htip://www mcspotlight.org/ Without doubt the best of the anti-multinatio al Web sites. Reams of material that McDonald's doesn't want you to know and would love to censor. McOonaldS~ Page: http://www mcd... alds.org - everything they do want you to now. For more business pages see the UK Yellow Pages on http://www.yell.co.uk

Corporations' home pages don't tend t~ be very interesting, since they usually contain advertising or PR crap rathe than infommation for shareholders, concemed citizens or activists.