Everybody is boycotting something, or threatening to do so
By Faisal Islam
LONDON: Boycotts are back. The Stop Esso campaign reached new heights last week when Greenpeace activists abseiled onto the roof of the company’s UK headquarters in Surrey, shutting it down in protest against the firm’s environmental policies. About 100 Esso garages were closed for a few hours as activists dressed as tigers chained themselves to the pumps.
It is not just left-wing students who are now involved in consumer activism now. Everybody is boycotting something, or threatening to do so. Greenpeace’s action sought to plug into the global wave of anti-war protests that brought a record 1.5 million people onto the streets.
In the United States, patriotic support for the government has led to boycotts of French wine and attempted legislation to rename French fries ‘freedom fries’.
The English cricket team is suffering after boycotting Zimbabwe at the Cricket World Cup.
Iraq and North Korea are boycotting the American dollar.
More amusingly, Italian and Greek consumer associations have been attempting to boycott the euro after suggestions that retailers used the changeover from the lira and drachma to raise prices.
Anti-fur campaigners are back invading the catwalks.
Minnesotan pensioners are boycotting GlaxoSmithKline as it attempts to stop its drugs being sold at the cheaper prices in charges in Canada.
In the Arab world, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s are suffering boycotts protesting at US support for Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The US even boycotts this boycott: American taxpayers fund a federal department called the Office of Anti-Boycott Compliance which can fine companies proved to have participated in any boycott of Israel.
So do these boycotts bite? Esso, the subject of the most high profile of them, says not. “The Stop Esso campaign has waged a campaign of misinformation against our company in the UK for almost two years. While it has not affected our fuel sales, we are not complacent because we owe it to employees, customers and all those with whom we interact to set the record straight,” says a company spokesman.
Greenpeace accuses Esso’s American parent company, Exxon Mobil, of being a driving force behind President Bush’s push to invade Iraq by fostering American dependence on oil, a claim vigorously denied by Esso. This has prompted a solid response from Esso, which offers a series of leaflets on its forecourts explaining its line on climate change. The Stop Esso campaign, however, claims there was a 7 per cent drop in regular petrol buyers by June 2002.
Greenpeace’s 1995 campaign against Shell over its plans to dispose of the Brent Spar oil platform in the Atlantic, triggered a slide in sales of up to 70 per cent in some countries. It led to a complete ban on the dumping of all oil rigs in the North-east Atlantic. In the Eighties, Barclays, which traded in South Africa, lost 10 per cent of its student customers because of the anti-apartheid campaign.
Today, Ethical Consumer magazine lists 50 active boycotts of countries, companies, presidents — and even the singer Janet Jackson. Recent successes include shutting down the John Lewis staff hunting club and stopping Focus DIY’s sale of birds and small mammals.
Most do not change much, however, apart from making participants feel better about themselves. A drop in Coke sales is unlikely to lead radical change in Bush’s Middle East policy. What really changes things is when negative publicity arises from a boycott.
Last December, Nestle caved in to international pressure following bad publicity about its attempt to recover a Pounds sterling 6m debt from Ethiopia. Just a threat of consumer activism made the Swiss company backtrack.
“Boycotts go in and out of fashion, but they are just about the only thing that corporations are frightened of,” says Patti Rundall from Baby Milk Action, which has conducted a 24-year campaign against Nestle’s marketing of powdered milk in developing countries. “They are an instantly understandable signal that something is seriously wrong with a company. That’s why corporations spend so much time learning the language of NGOs and luring them into partnerships. In partnerships everything is behind closed doors.”
The threat of a boycott and its attendant publicity is probably far more important than the boycott itself. Activists can now deploy an armoury of extra weapons to act as hard and soft levers on corporate behaviour, however. Shareholder power is a growing force.
The growing ethical-shareholder industry is also affecting corporate behaviour. Esso has seen how the bad publicity from being a campaign target can collide with investors’ interests. Cindy Baxter of the Stop Esso campaign says: “We saw this at last year’s Exxon Mobil AGM where 20 per cent of shareholders (Pounds sterling 35m worth of shares) supported a resolution against the company on renewable energy. Major investors supporting the resolution said Exxon’s policies, highlighted by the campaign, had affected the company’s reputation.”
Organizations such as Oxfam have engaged with major investors in GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) over developing countries’ access to Aids drugs.
The carrot-and-stick campaigning route yields dialogue. Governments are chipping in too.
Corporations are hitting back by hiring former campaigners and targeting opinion formers by funding think-tanks and advocacy groups modelled on the campaigns against them.
Boycotts have to compete with one another for attention. Driving becomes difficult if both Esso and Shell are to be avoided. The popular campus campaigns against Nike led people to Adidas, but the German company is itself being boycotted by campaigners for using kangaroo skins. And it’s hard to boycott both Unilever and Procter & Gamble, which are both on Ethical Consumer’s list, without sacrificing at least some conventional standards of hygiene.
The Internet has changed everything, enabling disparate concerns to coalesce into a campaigning forces in hours. It is also a tool for corporations to get their message across more directly. Ultimately, their biggest weapons are not being the worst offender and a dose of activism fatigue.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.
