TACTIC: corporations make all kind of claims about their brands’ values, what their products bring to the world. And they have obligations under international human rights and labour laws in the countries where they operate. But is what they say what they do? If it isn’t, maybe there’s some leverage for your trade justice activism.
“Fazer ‘Blue’ Chocolate Cocoa School Campaign“ A corporate charity fundraising campaign by Fazer. Campaign advert in Helsingin Sanomat above.
Finland’s favourite chocolate company Fazer takes out a full front page ad in a leading daily newspaper. They promise to give 5 cents from every bar of Fazer Blue to a school building project in the Ivory Coast. This is where the company’s cocoa beans are grown by child slaves. Do these children need a school or something more from Fazer?
Page reference: Eeva Kemppainen (2024) Fazer ‘Blue’ Chocolate Cocoa School Campaign. followthethings.com/fazer-blue-chocolate-cocoa-school-campaign.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Fight the Heist“ An NGO campaign by Global Labour Justice & the Asia Floor Wage Alliance. Campaign videos embedded in playlist above. Campaign webpage here. Campaign report here. Campaign X feed here.
Summary paragraph to be added.
Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Fight The Heist. followthethings.com/fight-the-heist.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Ghosts“ A documentary-drama film written by Nick Broomfield, Jez Lewis & Hsiao-Hung Pai, directed by Nick Broomfield for Beyond Films Official trailer embedded above. Available on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here. Search online here for other streaming availability. The movie website archive is here.
Documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield is known for his quirky, in-front-of-camera documentaries but, after a 2004 disaster where 23 Chinese migrant workers picking cockles were drowned by a fast-incoming tide in the UK’s Morecamble Bay, he decides to make a docu-drama to show what happened and why. This is a tale of people smuggling, modern slavery and violent, corrupt gangmasters sourcing and providing cheap slave labour in the UK to pick vegetables like spring onions and seafood like cockles for sale in mainstream supermarkets (which the film names). The script was co-written with Hsiao-Hung Pai – a Taipei-heritage UK journalist and writer – and was researched through the writers’ visit to China to visit the victims’ families. The film starred former illegal immigrant Chinese non-actors working with an improvised script, using traditional and undercover filmmaking, and ends with a plea for audience members to donate to a fund to help the dead workers’ families pay their people-smuggling debts. The tale is told from the perspective of a female worker called Ai Qin. She and her compatriots speak in Mandarin so that that ‘Ghosts’ – their white gangmasters – can’t understand they are mocking them. In the final scene, just before Ai Qin drowns, she calls her son in China to sing him a farewell lullaby on her mobile phone. The film encourages viewers to ask who is to blame for their deaths? The migrant workers? The people smugglers and gangmasters? The supermarkets? The government? In the UK? In China? Ghosts was made to be put to use, and to have a positive impact, on public attitudes to migrant workers, on the law and on the victims’ families. In contrast to a documentary film, a docu-drama can script and film anything, anyone, anywhere. So a fuller picture of the challenges that workers and trade justice activists face can be pieced together to provoke change.
“Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle“ A music video by Sofia Ashraf published on YouTube. Embedded in full above.
Chennai rap musician Sofia Ashraf’s Nicki Minaj-sampling protest song ‘Kodakainal Won’t’ goes viral on YouTube in 2015, drawing attention to a Unilever factory in India dumping mercury into the environment. A year later, she releases this video to draw attention to the most notorious industrial disaster in Indian history: an explosion at the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal in 1984 which released poisonous gas that killed more than 15,000 people and sickened over half a million more. A campaign has been running ever since for the victims to be compensated and the toxic legacy of the explosion to be cleaned up, even after Union Carbide was bought by Dow Chemical. Ashraf revived a rap written and performed in 2008 to support an NGO petition to the US Government’s Department of Justice to hold Dow Chemical to account. If the petition reaches 125,000 signatures, the DoJ is obliged to respond. In the video, Ashraf performs both sides of the argument as she sees it: the Indian activist side calling Dow Chemical to account, and the US government’s disdainful approach to those demanding compensation. The video encourages people to sign the petition. The 125,000 goal is reached. But what does this unlock? What can protest music do for trade justice activism?
Page reference: Nicole Sparks, Ginny Childs, Allie Short, Kat Cook, Lauren Warner & Sophie Wolf (2016) Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle (taster). followthethings.com/dow-vs-bhopal-a-toxic-rap-battle.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Ahava Stolen Beauty“ An activist campaign organised by CODEPINK Women For Peace. 12 video YouTube playlist compiled by the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights embedded above shows protests taking place at multiple sites selling Ahava products in Canada, USA, The Netherlands, Israel & France. Click here for more footage of campaign protests and explainer videos. Click here for Code Pink’s ‘Ahava Stolen Beauty’ campaign website.
After the aftermath of Israel’s invasion of Gaza in 2008-9, members of the American women-led grassroots peace and human rights organisation CODEPINK visit a factory on the bank of the Dead Sea which makes cosmetic products from its salts and minerals on occupied Palestinian land. According to the Geneva Convention, occupying forces cannot take or profit from the natural resources of an occupied territory. Sold in department stores, spas and Ahava stores around the world, Ahava products are stamped as ‘Made in Israel’. Critics say that the company’s profits support the illegal settlement where the factory is based. So CODEPINK encourage women are concerned about beauty and disgusted by the occupation to use their consumer power to boycott Ahava products, and to use their citizen power to protest at their sites of sale (in bikinis and bathrobes to attract attention). When the US arm of Ahava later launches an #ahavareborn rebrand campaign on twitter and asks for suggestions, critics pile in with sarcastic slogans about aspects of the occupation that Ahava products can help to conceal or wash away. As the boycott gathers momentum, supporters of Israel criticise it – and the wider Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement that it became part of – as antisemitic, and pro-Israel consumers start counter-campaigns, buycotts, encouraging people to buy as many Ahava products as they can from targeted stores. But, despite this, Ahava stores shut, retailers refuse to stock Ahava goods, governments pass legislation forbidding ‘Made in Israel’ to be printed on goods produced in occupied Palestinian territories and, eventually, Ahava moves its factory to an unoccupied site. To add to this mix, laws forbidding the boycotting of ‘Made in Israel’ goods are passed around the world. This is an epic, controversial example of effective trade justice activism. The message was simple: there was no beauty in occupation. The repercussions of this actvism are with us today
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Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Ahava Stolen Beauty (taster). followthethings.com/ahava-stolen-beauty.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Tackle The Shackles“ Two protests organised by Reprieve, Amnesty International, Save Omar Campaign & the Birmingham Guantanamo Campaign at Hiatt & Co, 111-115 Baltimore Road, Birmingham, UK (see map) on 8 September 2005 & 11 January 2007. Selected photographs above. Featured in a scene from the documentary film ‘Taking Liberties since 1997’ (check streaming availability here and start at 1hr 20 minutes).
British citizens and residents are detained in the USA’s Guantanamo Bay detention centre, but none are charged with a crime. They notice the Hiatt & Co. leg irons restraining them are ‘Made in England’, or ‘Made in Birmingham’, just like them. When some go on hunger strike in 2005, and when the 5th anniversary of the camp’s opening takes place in 2007, musicians, doctors, lawyers, comedians and activists protest outside the Birmingham, UK factory where they are made. They dress as Guantanamo inmates and dance the ‘shackle shuffle’ to a live band performing on a flatbed truck. Former detainees, their family members, lawyers, celebrities and activists carry photos of detainees and give speeches. People chain themselves to railings and deliver a cake to the factory. Historically, protestors say, leg irons and other restraints were made in Birmingham to chain enslaved African people in the days of the British Empire. Their use at Guantanamo, they argue, is unethical and illegal. Does the export of these leg irons comply with the UK Government’s obligations under International law? Especially as Hiatt is owned by the UK’s BAE Systems and because the New Labour Government of the time had been loudly trumpeting its ‘ethical’ foreign policy. One detainee’s lawyer says, ‘If an ethical foreign policy means anything, it means not profiting from the torment of our own people.’ The protestors want to make this paradox mainstream news, and they succeed. In this trade justice activism, the violence and exploitation is found not where the commodity of produced, but where it is ‘consumed’. Hiatt closes its Birmingham factory and moves production to the USA. So, does this trade justice activism count as a success?
Page reference: Diana Shifrina (2013) Tackle The Shackles. followthethings.com/tackle-the-shackles.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Santa’s Workshop“ An NGO Report written by Krista Bjurling for Swedwatch and a documentary directed by Lotta Ekelund & Krista Bjurling and produced by Lotta Ekelund for Lotta Films and The Fair Trade Center. Screenshot slideshow embedded above. Download the report here. Search online to stream the film here.
Swedish toy companies and retailers seem sure that the things they have ‘Made in China’ are produced ethically. But what can they know about working conditions from audit reports and their own factory visits? NGO Swedwatch travels to China to find out, working with local labour activists to write a report and make a short film. What they find may temporarily ruin Christmas, but can it also change the ways that consumers and companies source toys in the future? As one commenter put it, ‘It’s fascinating to watch the blame being pushed around. It’s the worker’s fault, no, it’s the factories’ fault, no, it’s the client’s fault and last but not least, it’s the customer’s fault. The head in the sand attitude is quite remarkable.’ What’s fascinating to us is that, despite one union official in the film asking consumers NOT to stop buying the toys that the workers make, for some audience members that’s the only way to respond. So what other ways can audiences react? How can filmmakers control this? Will there always be audience members who simply want to disengage?
Page reference: Matthew Chambers, Millie Daglish, Sophie Rendell, George Stapleton, Georgie Thompson & Franziska Nuss (2024) Santa’s Workshop. followthethings.com/santasworkshop.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
"A little deeper into the squalour and another rung down the ladder of exploitation. Children. Several young boys working on the same Primark vest we saw those women sewing earlier...
... one could be as young as 9 or 10. They're testing the stitching so the sequins don't end up falling off in the hands of customers back in Britain. When we asked their ages, their manager kept silent."
[The film then briefly shows the vest's 'atmosphere' label. This is a Primark band promising customers affordable fresh fashion]
“Primark – on the rack“ A documentary film presented by Tom Heap & produced by Frank Simmonds with Dan McDougall for BBC TV’s Panorama series. Screenshot slideshow of the contested scene embedded above. Watch on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here.
The BBC produces an exposé of cheap clothing retailer Primark. It finds children making its clothes, and sewing and testing their sequins, in factories, slums and refugee camps in India. Primark is asked to contribute to the film before it’s shown. Instead, they decide to cut ties with the supply chains featured, then launch a website to counter the film’s claims. They research the film’s research to pick apart its claims, and then complain to the BBC that one 45 second scene (the one in the screenshots above) is fake. Their critic-silencing strategy has mixed success. The BBC is forced to admit that it cannot be 100% sure that the scene wasn’t faked, and the Panorama team are forced to hand back an award they were given for the film. But Primark’s persistent public attempts to silence this investigative journalism draws attention – for years – to the company’s reputation as the ‘poster boy of child labour in the UK’. Supporters of the film highlight the other 3,555 minutes of the film that Primark didn’t claim the producers had faked? Then, 5 years after the film was broadcast, the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapses and over a thousand garments workers are crushed to death making high street clothes. Journalists, filmmakers and others keep this tragedy relentlessly in the news. UK newspaper headlines refer to this as the ‘Primark factory’. There’s no way that this footage is fake. Primark has to react differently this time.
Page reference: Kate Adley, Richard Keeble, Pippa Russell, Noora Stenholm, William Strang and Tuuli Valo (2025) Primark – on the rack. followthethings.com/primark-on-the-rack.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“The Messenger Band“ A protest girl band / labour rights NGO including Em [aka Saem] Vun, Leng Leakhana, Chrek Sopha, Nam Sophors, Kao Sochevika, Sothary Kun, Van Huon & others based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Band profile and selected music videos on YouTube embedded in playlist above. The Messenger Band YouTube channel here & facebook page here.
One of the most fascinating, inspiring examples of creative trade justice activism we have found. Made by garment workers, for garment (and other) workers. In 2005, a labour rights NGO based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia hold a talent concert for women working in the city’s garment factories. They want to form a girl band. Inspired by Bob Marley, it’s called ‘The Messenger Band’ because its songs and performances will carry a message to garment and other workers about their rights. They will write and perform in the style of contemporary Cambodian pop music. Sweet and beautiful songs with choreographed dance routines. But the lyrics will come from their community research with garment and other workers about their lives and struggles, and their knowledge of global trade and labour rights. They will record CDs and music videos to post online, and will perform at local concerts and during labour rights protests. Their audiences will learn the lyrics and sing along. The ‘MB’ wants to empower its audiences to claim their rights and to hold their employers to account. They sing in Khmer for Khmer-speaking audiences. They are not talking to overseas consumers, asking them to do anything to help their situation. They take advantage of the fact that women and performance are not taken seriously by the Cambodian authorities. But they are taken seriously by the working class audiences who love and learn from their music. What they do has a huge impact. Much more impact than a labour rights workshop! Labour rights organisations and NGOs outside Cambodia admire their work. They are an inspiration.
Page reference: Lily Bissell, Grace Hodges, Fran Ravel, Julia Sammut & Ellie Reynolds (2020) The Messenger Band. followthethings.com/the-messenger-band.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“No Pride In Primark“ Popular activist campaign against Primark’s ‘Pride’ clothing & accessories made in anti-LGBTQ+ countries. To see what sparked this, watch Primark’s promotional video above.
UK LGBTQ+ rights charity Stonewall collaborates with high street fashion retailer Primark on its 2018 ‘Pride’ range of clothing and accessories. They will be sold throughout Europe and North America and 20% of their profits will go to Stonewall. But none of the proceeds will go to the organisers of Pride celebrations, some of whom are struggling for money. And many of the countries in which this ‘Pride’ merch is being made – like Turkey, Myanmar & China – ban LGBTQ+ events and NGOs and imprison people for homosexuality. So what should Primark & Stonewall do? Where should people shopping for Pride merch go? And what’s it like to be an LGBTQ+ worker in Turkey, Myanmar or China making t-shirts and other merch that ‘celebrates what you are not allowed to be’? These are the questions asked by social media critics and the journalists who pick up their criticisms. It’s not a huge orchestrated campaign. No NGO or other organisation orchestrates it. Nevertheless, it becomes a notorious case of a high street brand ‘pink-washing’ (a form of ‘woke-washing’) their supply chain operations. In the wake of these criticisms, Primark continues to support LGBTQ+ organisations in many countries, but has it addressed the crackdowns on LGBTQ people in those countries where its rainbow merch is made? Should it withdraw its orders from these countries? Or keep working there, supporting – via Stonewall and other organisations – the LGBTQ+ organisations and workers who need it? Does it do so? And how can it convince the media, activists and consumers that it’s doing so? LGBTQ+ people represent a big market for clothing sales.
Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) No Pride In Primark (taster). followthethings.com/no-pride-in-primark.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
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