This issue of this newsletter focuses primarily on the corporate reconstruction of Iraq. It includes an article on the attempted corporate takeover of Iraq’s oil, a profile of the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce, an examination of the doublespeak involved in ‘bringing democracy’ to Iraq, a commentary on a shameful piece of BBC pro-war propaganda, a review of Naomi Klein’s ‘The Shock Doctrine’ and a profile of the European Investment Bank.

This issue is a focus on corporations in Sierra Leone.

As an organisation that is partly dependent on outside funding, Corporate Watch often faces the dilemma of balancing its financial survival with a critique of funding bodies and grassroots activism funded by them. While maintaining a critical view of corporate and non-corporate funders, we also recognise their role in political organising and social movements and the difficulties of being totally independent. Thus, while trying our best to avoid dodgy money and money with strings attached, some difficult questions seem unavoidable: Is there good funding and bad funding? Can activists avoid compromising their politics as they go down the funding route? Can they justify being paid for what others do for free? And in the bigger scheme of things, are foundations and funding trusts part of a ‘big conspiracy’ to prevent, or channel, social change? We try to tackle some of these thorny questions in this issue.

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This year has brought with it a proliferation of different political mobilisations across the world. This edition of the newsletter Corporate Watch contains accounts of personal experiences from the frontline and examines the political effectiveness of a variety of large-scale demonstrations and convergences in the context of a global economic and political turmoil.

It has almost become a self-evident truth that unemployment has been growing progressively over the last two decades, both in scale and in its significance for social and economic policy. How and why are often ignored but a vast industry to ‘manage’ this ‘crisis’ has developed. From flourishing private companies, such as A4e, contracted by the Department for Work and Pensions to deliver what Jobcentre Plus has apparently failed to achieve, through tens of subcontracted employment services providers, to a growing sector of so-called voluntary organisations that depend on this reserve army of unemployed people to source their ‘slave’ workforce. This double issue of the Corporate Watch Newsletter takes a look at this relatively new ‘unemployment business’; its protagonists, ideological, political and economic premises and how it is being utilised by the New Labour government to dismantle what’s left of the welfare state.

This double issue of the Corporate Watch Magazine is about housing: a story of escalating privatisation and corporate gains at the expense of hard won rights for social housing; a story the intricacies of which are largely unknown. The title has a question mark after ‘crisis’ because, even though it’s a crisis for most people, for housing corporations it’s a time for profit-making, as this Magazine issue will hopefully show.

Corporate Watch has been recently expanding its work on privatisation, covering the NHS, education and other ‘public’ services. This Magazine issue on housing is part of this work, as housing is one of the main areas under attack from the ConDem government, but is also an area that can be confusing to anyone wanting to get to grips with it and take action around. Action is key at a time when the coalition government is trying to implement a new version of Thatcher’s ‘right to buy’ and when its housing strategy, announced on 21st November, Laying the Foundations: A Housing Strategy for England[1], aims to further benefit corporations at the expense of the right to secure housing. This issue aims to clarify some of the murky institutions that are central to the government’s agenda, such as ALMOs, housing associations and think-tanks, as well as companies that have been profiting from the privatisation of social housing since the late 1970s. We hope the issue will contribute to successful resistance to the current attacks on housing, but we realise that more research is needed on the corporations and related institutions.

Published in 2011.

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In 2008 Corporate Watch decided to begin writing to companies with allegations made about them by grassroots campaigners and publishing their responses. As we did so, we were drawn into several ‘engagements’ with companies designed to delay and mute dissent.

It was from these engagement exercises, some of which are described here by Tom Anderson in an article titled Dear Corporation, that we decided to produce this issue of the Corporate Watch Magazine, with the aim of exploring why corporations engage with the public and asking whether grassroots campaigners can ever win through engaging with companies.

Historically, corporations have engaged with workers through unions. Unions have become the mediators between the interests of corporations and workers, with the power dynamics of corporation/worker engagements varying according to the specifics of the workplace, company and workforce in question. In her article Partnership or Struggle?, Beth Lawrence examines the dynamics of such engagements in an era of declining union membership and co-option of many mainstream unions and looks forward to new collaborations between unions and grassroots movements.

Tom Anderson, in How Corporations Control their Public Image summarises how corporations have developed Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Public Relations (PR) strategies to manage public perceptions of corporate activities.

Peter Jacobs, in NGO-Corporate Partnership, examines a case study of a mutually beneficial relationship between an NGO and a corporation. The engagement enabled each organisation to reach their own goals, but allowed the corporate status quo to continue and reinforced corporate values in the workplace.

In an article titled Green is the colour of money, Robert Palgrave examines how Blue NG romanced Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, as well as celebrities and big name environmentalists, into making statements the company could use to counter grassroots dissent. Similarly, in Corporate Engagement at Hopenhagen, Hannah Schling explores how a group of companies emulated a popular campaign, through the Hopenhagen ‘movement’ at COP15, in order to give the impression that they were dealing with the ecological and social justice concerns raised by global justice movements.

Shiar Youssef provides a case study of how engagement with corporations was integrated into a campaign against corporate involvement in the deportation machine.
Corporations have carefully crafted their public personas with the help of PR companies. One of the largest and most controversial independent PR companies, Edelman, is therefore examined by Chris Kitchen, in this issue’s company profile.

A forum where activists often voluntarily engage with corporations is through ‘ethical investment’ and ‘divestment’ campaigns. Michael Deas and Elly Robson give two examples of such campaigns and argue that these can be forums for corporations to greenwash their business practices or tied to profit agendas. However, in the context of an effective movement employing a diversity of tactics, such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli apartheid, such campaigns have achieved considerable success.

Before corporations engage with specific sections of the public, they have manufactured their image to society at large, meaning any engagements are already massively skewed in favour of corporate values. Beth Lawrence explores how corporations control public perception of emerging technologies in her article, Upstream Engagement.

Shiar Youssef, in When Private Interest is Public Interest, and Hannah Schling, in a Campaign Spotlight piece on the Campaign for Freedom of Information, explore the uses and limits of the Freedom of Information Act to anti-corporate campaigners.

When corporations choose to engage with campaigners, unionists, NGOs or the public at large, they do so to further their own ends. This type of engagement often serves as a public relations exercise, creating the facade that companies are dealing with the criticisms levelled at them. In other words, corporations may use engagements with the public as a tool to head-off further dissent.

This, however, does not mean that the only strategy is to sever all communications. It can sometimes be useful – for example, for grassroots campaigners – to have a channel of communication through which to negotiate with corporations and articulate demands. Unfortunately, the efficacy of these negotiations is often presented by ‘community leaders’, trade union bosses or CEOs of big NGOs as determined by how ‘reasonable’ we can be, the presentation of our argument or how well we can emulate the very corporations we are opposing. In reality, the success of these negotiations is determined by where the power lies: if our movements can present a tangible threat to corporate power, we will be more likely to be listened to. If not, activists engaging with corporations will be used as a tool to maintain business as usual.

Published in 2011.