Have a Break, Don’t Have a Kit-Kat

Is boycotting an effective form of peaceful protest, or just a self-righteous waste of time? Sarah Wakefield investigates…

IMAGINE LIFE without juicy steaks, Aston Martins (or any car at all), holidays to exotic destinations, Gap’s latest jeans, Yorkie bars, Tesco’s cheap baked beans, McDonald’s and Coke Zero.

Before you think this is the end of the world come early and rush to the shops to stock up, don’t worry, these items were in plentiful supply at the time of writing. However, these are all things which some people choose not to buy or even consume, and not just because they make a dint in an overdraft.

Boycotting is a non-violent protest designed to undermine a person or organisation by not using, buying, or dealing with them. To justify this, boycotts founded on some moral principle. Some dismiss boycotts as ineffective and label those who carry them out as “goodie two shoes” or “self-serving egotists”. Felix Martin, who is studying Business Ethics, believes: “There is a militant associative element to boycotting and I would say that I do not boycott in that sense.” However, he does choose to boycott certain items that he feels clash with his personal beliefs. This shows the other side of boycotting, people who, in the words of Alex Castro, “don't wanna constantly reinforce the power of unethical companies.” But is this a good reason to boycott? Does it really make any difference? Does it actually achieve its goals, if anything at all?

You can’t miss the sign in the Students’ Union shop explaining why it doesn’t sell Coke and Nestlé to students seeking a quick sugar high. Put simply, Coke has been allegedly involved with active union suppression in Columbia, going so far as to kill union leaders. There are also separate criticisms that they have encroached on farmers’ land in India, stealing some of their limited water supply. The boycott against Nestlé involves baby milk; a scandal surrounding their aggressive marketing of low quality powder to poor families who can barely afford to feed themselves, let alone buy expensive substitutes for breast milk. This often leads to babies becoming sick or even dying because the powder is mixed with dirty water. The World Health Organisation estimates 1.5 million children die every year because they are not breast-fed. Those who boycott Nestlé claim that excessive pressure is put on those who can least afford baby milk and who don’t actually need it. All this has been done purely in the name of profit, of which Nestlé receives around $9 billion per year.

This mind-boggling amount of money prompts some people to wheel out the classic phrase ‘with great power comes great responsibility.’ In a capitalist system, not only money, but also promises of investment and jobs can encourage governments into luring big companies to their shores with tax breaks and looser controls on working conditions. Those who boycott argue that companies only have power as long as there is a demand for their products to keep the money rolling in. However, many multinationals that are attacked through boycotts have huge turnovers, higher than the Gross Domestic Product of many small nations. Boycotting seeks to hold companies accountable for their actions and seeks to remind them of their duty of care to those they employ.

There have been examples of boycotts that have broken the ethos on which they are built. Second year Science student Kar-Wei Lung notes very astutely that, “boycotts are as fallible as the humans who use them. They are just as dangerous as they are beneficial.” He is referring to the German boycott of Jewish shops in the lead up to the Holocaust. This reminds us how effective, but also how dangerous boycotts can be. However, the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955-56, which gave momentum to the Civil Rights movement in America and the boycott of products linked to the Apartheid regime in South Africa, also show how this peaceful form of protest can be hugely effective.

Many people argue that in a capitalist system voting with your wallet is the most effective way to make your opinion known. The reason boycotting has big companies on their toes is because the demand for their product can’t be recreated by creating snazzy new branding. It can only be achieved through concrete action; even then their reputation has already been tarnished. It can be seen that companies are increasingly aware that the way they treat workers or the environment can act as a factor in what people buy. For example, the Fairtrade movement is entirely based on the assumption that consumers care about the supply chain of their products and the fact they do not wish to be implicit in abuse.

However, some argue that if the very biggest companies cannot even be controlled by the countries they have their factories in, they are not going to be influenced by a little boycott on the other side of the world. Aerospace Engineer, Victoria Williams is disillusioned with the concept. “If a large enough group of people boycott then it can be effective, however it depends on the size of the company or product that they are boycotting.” Shell, for example, is now infamous for hanging nine campaigners in Nigeria who fought against the irreversible environmental degradation in the Ogoni region (an area which has seen little oil money return as investment for their communities). Following this there were calls to boycott Shell and also other oil companies such as Exxon (Esso) who strenuously deny climate change, but with them all receiving record profits can there really be any stopping them?

Those who support boycotting say that every drop in the ocean counts. But to really make a difference, a campaign has to be big and get wide media coverage, exposing the questionable ethics of the company. Andy Hodges, who is studying for a PhD, believes that: “Although clichéd, every difference each person makes does add up to making massive distinctions for the collective good.” Skeptics may scoff, but there has been a massive boom in the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This is based on the idea that companies give something back to the communities they work in. It has become standard for companies to produce glossy booklets to show how they are ethically responsible, though the very best produce it on recycled paper.

Coca-Cola brought theirs along to show Student Direct, though unfortunately declined to comment on the effects of boycotting. Examples of CSR from the past few years have included Cadbury donating £1 million to coco workers in Ghana and even Esso donating $475,000 to local farming communities (though this was in Canada.) Coca-Cola even includes a section in its CSR report on workers rights in Columbia and water use in India. Though a huge amount of the ‘good’ these companies are doing seems to be based upon spin, at least it shows the beginnings of accountability. Without very prominent boycotts from organizations such as Greenpeace, these powerful companies would have little inclination to donate a penny of their profit back to local communities or create a sustainable working environment. For many this is not radical enough, but it does seem to provide the building blocks for possible future action.

Boycotting is often personal and people have their own reasons for avoiding certain newspapers, shops or chocolate. Institutions such as the Students’ Union may not sell certain protects for moral reasons. Dan Lee, Campaigns Officer Elect, was quick to defend the Coca-Cola ban: “Unions are meant to be united with each other, and so when people in other unions are being abused and attacked we should stand with them in any way possible...You don't have a right to buy anything in the Union, I can't buy a Ferrari in there, so nobody has a right to buy Coca Cola there.” Enough students agreed with this to pass the motion at a General Meeting bringing the ban about in the first place.

Those who can’t be bothered to vote and make their opinion known can’t be that bothered about not having a particular brand of cola in the shop. The awareness it has raised around the issues has been massive – would Coca-Cola have felt compelled to write about unions in Columbia if there had not been prominent publication and action over it? Or would the issues have been broken thrown out with the recycling.

On the whole it seems that effective boycotts are well organised and well publicised. When large groups of people and organisations make their dissatisfaction known, some of the most powerful businesses in the world have to rethink their strategy. As with any attempt to challenge the status quo, there will be limitations to its success, which provide targets for cynics to criticise the process. However, spreading information about companies’ behavior combined with boycotts is arguably having a large affect on the way they think through their policies, by hitting them where it really hurts; where they keep their wallets.