Corporate Watch exists to investigate corporations, explain and analyse how corporate power and capitalism work, and provide research for people striving for social change. Gaining an understanding of the role corporations play, the specific mechanisms of how they operate and how they can be successfully targeted is crucial for everyday struggles against exploitation, as part of confronting and challenging corporate power and capitalism more broadly. We hope to show that genuine alternatives can be built and that systemic change can happen.
We were founded in 1996 with the motto ‘information for action’, to give people access to information that’s accurate, reliable and useful. We believe research that is independent from state or corporate institutions is more reliable and useful for those seeking change. We often work in tandem with other groups, including social movements, unions, community and campaign groups, both in the UK and around the world. We work on a wide range of areas, from privatisation to climate change, choosing to focus on what we think is most useful to those taking action.
We aim to bring our work to as wide an audience as possible and make sure all our published materials are available online free of charge. We believe in the democratisation of research and run ‘DIY’ trainings so that more people are able to investigate corporations effectively.
Corporate Watch is run non-hierarchically as a workers’ co-op. We make decisions collectively and by consensus. While we don’t make a profit we do pay ourselves (relatively low) wages and so are reliant on securing sufficient funds to operate. To maintain our independence we do not accept funding from corporations or the state.
While we are committed to being factual, accurate and honest in all our outputs, we do not pretend to be neutral or impartial. We recognise that the supposed objectivity of the media, and other research organisations, is a veil to cover inherent biases and we freely acknowledge our political perspectives and principles. We aim to write in a way that is clear and non-dogmatic, basing our work on reliable and thorough investigations.
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