About Corporate Watch

• Why watch corporations?
• What is Corporate Watch?
• How you can help
• Download pdf leaflet

Corporations have gained a power out of all proportion to their original purpose.
We are a research group supporting the campaigns which are increasingly successful in forcing corporations to back down. Corporate Watch is part of the growing anti-corporate movement springing up around the world.

Why watch corporations?
In the conventional economic view corporations are simply neutral providers of the goods and services that people want. They exist to serve society’s needs (and make a tidy profit in the process). This view dismisses corporate crimes as mere accidents, at worst errors of judgement, which will ultimately be corrected, since market forces have everyone’s best interests at heart. Don’t they?

There is another view - increasingly developed by alternative media, the more courageous radical thinkers and grassroots groups around the world. In this view, corporations have gained a power out of all proportion to their original purpose; the servant and useful goods-providing machine has become the master and the only true citizen. The rights of corporations - disguised as ‘encouraging foreign investment’, ‘promoting free trade’, ‘protecting the national interest’ now take precedence over human rights, community interests, and the interests of the planet itself. Corporate Watch is part of the growing anti-corporate movement springing up around the world. We are a research group supporting the campaigns which are increasingly successfully forcing corporations to back down from environmentally destructive or socially divisive projects and dragging the corrupt links between business and power, economics and politics into the spotlight, against the resistance of the complacent, corporate-led mainstream media.

What is Corporate Watch?
From Corporate Watch’s beginnings looking at PFI roadbuilding, we have broadened out to examine the oil industry, globalistion, genetic engineering, food, toxic chemicals, privatisation and many other areas, to build up a picture of almost every type of corporate crime and the nature and mechanisms of corporate power, both economic and political. We have worked with and provided information to empower peace campaigners, environmentalists, and trade unionists; large NGOs and small autonomous groups; journalists, MPs, and members of the public.

Over seven years we have transformed a loose association of activists and researchers into a respected professional research and campaigning organisation, run effectively as a workers’ co-operative. We are currently supported mainly by donations from individuals and those few independent trusts and foundations willing to support an organisation such as ours. We do not take money from corporations or government.
Please see overleaf for how you can support our work.

What Corporate Watch does...

Website and news
Our website, providing detailed profiles of some of the world’s largest corporations and overviews of each major industry sector, constitutes not just a resource for campaigners and journalists but also aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the reality of our corporate age.

Information and outreach
We regularly give talks and workshops on all areas of our work. We also advise campaigners on corporate issues and try to make our work as accessible and useful as possible.

Food and Farming project
This project aims to raise awareness of the unchecked consolidation of corporate control of food production and its negative impact on society and the environment. It aims to support activists, farmers and the general public in resisting corporate control of the food industry and and creating sustainable local food systems.

Genetic Engineering project
This is a crucial time in the campaign to stop the commercialisation of GM crops. This project looks at the key corporations in the agricultural biotechnology sector, who they are, how they are structured and the strategies that they have adopted to push forward the commercialisation of GM crops.

Corporate Structures project
This new project aims to look into the legal basis of corporate structures, rights and duties, in order to analyse how legal rights and obligations influence corporate behaviour and what changes must be made to corporate structures (or what structures must replace corporations) in order for corporate social responsibility to become a reality instead of a PR buzzword.

Public Relations Industry project
PR campaigns reinforce corporate power and work against democracy. Through deception and deceit the public relations industry reduces society’s capacity to respond effectively to key social, environmental and political challenges. This new project aims to deepen understanding of this little known industry, how it operates, and how to combat it.

News services
1. Subscribe to our bi-montly 8-page newsletter using the form below. and/or...
2. Subscribe to our free email news list (c. 1 mail every two weeks) by sending a mail with ‘subscribe [your address]’ in the body text to news@corporatewatch.org
We also produce a range of publications including a DIY guide to researching corporations.

How you can help

Donations from individuals form a large part of our funding. You can make a one-off donation by cheque or help us maintain a secure funding base by becoming a ‘friend of Corporate Watch’ and setting up a standing order using the form below. Standing orders over £10/month get a free copy of all our new publications. If you have time but no money, perhaps you can help in our work - contact our office.

1. Subscribe to Corporate Watch Newsletter
6 issues produced bi-monthly; Individuals/not-for-profits £8, profit making organisations £25, multinational corporations £5000 (or 1 minutes profit).

2. Make a donation to Corporate Watch
Click here...

The Cause of Some Confusion: By a truly extraordinary coincidence there used to be two organisations in the world known as Corporate Watch. At the same time as this Corporate Watch was restarted in 1996, a brand new web-site was set up in the USA under the same title. It is an excellent campaign resource, entirely independent of this Corporate Watch and is well worth seeing. CorpWatch (as it is now called) can be found at: www.corpwatch.org