Few people realise the power they have to make companies do what they want. Up till now, it's the companies that have led people (who they call 'consumers') in the directions they wanted. They have been the 'masters' of their consumer 'slaves', who were fed endlessly-repeated advertising to get them to go out and buy what the companies wanted to sell. And it's all been incredibly successful! Consumers buy what they are told to buy, really believing that they want or need whatever it is.

It doesn't have to be like this. Companies (corporations - same thing) exist first and foremost to make money for their shareholders (people who own the companies). If something the company makes sells well, the shareholders make lots of money. If it doesn't sell, the company loses money so it starts making something else instead or goes out of business. Just occasionally, consumers have shown that they have muscle too. They band together to stop buying products from companies which are doing wrongful things. They carry out boycotts.

Boycotts which worked

  • genetically modified food in Europe. People boycotted foods that contained GM ingredients. Supermarkets, at first strongly in favour of GM, quickly changed their views. Governments followed and GM-containing foods must now be labelled so that people can choose. (In America, there is no labelling although there have been campaigns to force food companies to do so.)
  • dolphin-friendly tuna fishing
  • South Africa used to be controlled entirely by the white people who migrated there. The black people who had always lived there had no power at all. People around the world stopped buying South African companies' products and within a few years, the government was forced to allow free elections. The country now has a government which was elected by most of the people in the country, regardless of skin colour and race. And South African companies' products are now welcomed once more around the world.
  • the Shell oil company wanted to dump an old oil platform in the North Sea a few years ago. A boycott in Europe of Shell fuel stations quickly changed their minds.

 

Boycotts and campaigns which are happening now