Corporate Watch

Corporate Watch (The Corporate Watch Co-Operative Ltd.) is a research group based in the UK. It describes itself as a "research group that helps people stand up against corporations and capitalism." And as a "not-for-profit co-operative providing critical information on the social and environmental impacts of corporations and capitalism." It was established in 1996.[1]

Corporate Watch is run as a workers' co-operative.[2] It is incorporated as a company, limited by guarantee, and registered in the United Kingdom, number 03865674.

Research

Corporate Watch has two main research approaches:

Corporate Watch encourages "individuals and groups to contact us with information and requests about companies they think need looking into."[4]

• "Targeted research for grassroots campaign groups". For example, researchers have worked with neighbourhood housing campaigns, precarious workers' trade unions, environmental groups, migrant solidarity groups, care workers, and families of prisoners. This research can support campaigns by "e.g. profiling a particular company, digging into its accounts, uncovering scandals, finding weak points."[2]
• "Broader research and analysis into how capitalism works, issues and news."[2] This includes producing books on subjects such as the AZ of Green Capitalism, The UK Border Regime, or Prison Island (on UK prison expansion).[3]

Training

Corporate Watch also provides training and resources so that more people can learn how to investigate companies. These include:

• Tailored training sessions for "groups, organisations and individuals who want to investigate a company and its actions." These are run free for unfunded grassroots groups and campaigns; larger groups such as unions, universities and NGOs pay on a sliding scale.[5]
• The free "Know Your Enemy" online course[6]
• Investigating Companies: a Do-It-Yourself Handbook, which can be downloaded for free from the Corporate Watch website

Research areas and notable investigations

Collaborations and re-use by media

Research by Corporate Watch is often reused by news outlets, and some Corporate Watch investigations are co-published with commercial media outlets. Examples include:

• Homelessness charity involvement in immigration raids. In 2017, Corporate Watch revealed the role of UK homelessness charities including St Mungo's and Thames Reach in working with Home Office immigration officers. Charity outreach workers carried out joint patrols with Immigration Enforcement teams, and passed them information on rough-sleeping migrants, who were then targeted for deportation.[38] The results of this investigation were co-published with The Guardian newspaper.[39]
• Targeting of nationalities for deportation. In 2015, Corporate Watch won a legal "Freedom of Information" battle with the UK Home Office to release information which showed that the Home Office was targeting specific nationalities for "removal" from the UK. The Government had previously denied this. This was reported on by The Guardian.[40]

Publications

Corporate Watch also publishes books, all of which are copyright free or licensed under Creative Commons licenses, and can be downloaded from the website.[3] A list of other Corporate Watch publications can be found here

• TECH: A Guide to the Politics and Philosophy of Technology (2020)[45]
• World's End (2019)[46]
• The UK Border Regime (2018)[35]
• Prison Island (2018)[47]

External links