History of Successful Boycotts

Boycotts have a long and important history of contributing to progressive social change, as well as succeeding in their more immediate goals.

One of the earliest examples was the boycott in England of sugar produced by slaves. In 1791, after Parliament refused to abolish slavery, thousands of pamphlets were printed encouraging the boycott. Sales of sugar dropped by between a third and a half.

By contrast sales of Indian sugar, untainted by slavery, rose tenfold in two years. In an early example of fair trade, shops began selling sugar guaranteed to be have been produced by 'free men'. 

Recent examples of successful boycott campaigns:

2019

MAY: Brunei announced that it would not impose the death penalty for those convicted of having annal sex, following boycott calls. The decision followed international condemnation of the country’s decision to roll out strict laws making anal sex, adultery and rape punishable by stoning to death.

Celebrities such as Elton John and George Clooney had called for a boycott of the Dorchester Collection, a chain of hotels owned by the Sultan of the country, which includes The Dorchester and 45 Park Lane in London.1 Several large companies including JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank followed suit, telling their staff to avoid Brunei-owned hotels in the wake of the new laws.

2018

JANUARY: The Body Shop successfully ended, after the company's owner declared itself cruelty-free. Natura, which bought the high-street chain in 2017, announced a clear animal testing policy after hundreds of consumers wrote to the company. Naturewatch lifted the boycott call, after 11 years of campaigning, and has invited both Natura and The Body Shop to join its list for cruelty-free cosmetics brands. 

FEBRUARY: Multiple companies cut ties with the NRA, following boycott calls.

• Delta Airlines, United Airlines, Hertz, Budget, Avis, Best Western and Wyndham Hotels all stated that they would no longer offer discounts or other special offers for NRA members. 
• The insurer Chubb dropped cover for NRA Carry Guard insurance.
• Enterprise Rent–A–Car announced that is was severing ties.
• First National Bank of Omaha stated that it would end a Visa credit card it offered with NRA branding.

The companies all faced boycotts for their links to the NRA after the association called for teachers to be armed and spoke out against student gun control activists, in the wake of the Parkland high school shooting.

JULY: Ivanka Trump closed her fashion brand, after boycotts from consumers following her father's election. The brand was a target of the Boycott Trump campaign due to Ivanka's links with the President and her own role as a senior adviser. According to the Wall Street Journal, which cited research from Rakuten Intelligence, online sales of the brand at Amazon, Macy's and Bloomingdales fell almost 45% in the year to June. Several retailers also dropped the brand.

The Irish Senate approved a bill that would ban the import of goods from the Palestinian occupied territories. If the bill passes Ireland’s lower house it will set a precedent within the EU. The Act will prohibit “trade with and economic support for illegal settlements in territories deemed occupied under international law”, which would make Ireland the first EU country to introduce a national boycott of Israeli-settlement goods. The bill does not name Israel but instead refers to “occupying powers” and “illegal settlements” – both terms that the Israeli settlement fulfil under UN law. 

SEPTEMBER: Burberry announces that it will join Armani, Versace, Gucci, Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney, and others in banning fur after a long-running boycott campaign from animal rights group PETA.

DECEMBER: HSBC announced that it had fully divested from the Israeli drone manufacturer Elbit Systems, known for selling weapons to the Israeli military used in attacks on Palestinian civilians.

Elbit Systems has been the target of a long-running divestment campaign for supplying surveillance systems and other technology to Israel’s Separation Wall and settlements in the West Bank as well as for the US-Mexico boarder. The company has also manufactured the white phosphorous and artillery systems that can be used for cluster munitions. More than 24,000 War on Want supporters emailed HSBC asking the company to end its investments in Elbit Systems and other arms companies selling to the Israeli military.

Cartier pledged to stop buying gems from Myanmar and gemstone exports from the country fell 65% during the course of 2017. Human rights activists called for jewellers to boycott gemstones mined in Myanmar, which are funding the country’s military.

Myanmar’s military dominates the country’s gemstone industry, with military-affiliated companies controlling distribution of licensing and permits and running gem auctions that raise hundreds of millions of dollars. The long-running campaign, led by SumofUS and The International Campaign for the Rohingya, responds to the military’s attacks on communities of Rohingya Muslims in the country.

2017

JULY: Picturehouse agreed to negotiate with its workers' trade union BECTU, following strikes and a consumer boycott of the cinema chain. The company had previously refused to meet with the union, which workers said it would not recognise.

SEPTEMBER: Local councils' right to boycott was upheld by the UK's High Court. In November 2015, the government announced new legislation that would black local councils from divesting their pension funds, for example for climate change, or human rights reasons. The legislation was challenged by Palestine Solidarity Campaign, War on Want, Campaign against Arms Trade, and Quakers as well as individuals and trade unions. 

NOVEMBER: Boots dropped the price of its own-brand emergency contraceptive pill, after the British Pregnancy Advisory Service threatened to call a boycott of the company. Boots had previously said that it would not drop the price, in line with other retailers, because it did not 'want to be accused of incentivising inappropriate use'. 

2016

JANUARY:  The United Methodist Church, a Protestant denomination that numbers over seven million members, said it will not invest in the five banks for financing "settlement activity" over the 1949 Armistice lines.

The five banks to be boycotted by the church's pension board are:

•     Bank Hapoalim,
•     Bank Leumi,
•     First International Bank of Israel,
•     Israel Discount Bank and
•     Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot.

Colette Nies, a spokeswoman for the pension board, said that the guideline, approved by the board in 2014 and carried out last year, applied to 14 different regions around the world, including the Middle East.

MARCH: Seaworld have announced that they will end all ocra breeding programmes this year, making this generation of captive orcas the last to be kept in SeaWorld's tanks. They will also phase out of orca whale shows in all the parks. 

This is a huge victory for animal rights campaigners and follows pressure from numerous campaign groups including PETA and the Captive Animals' Protection Society from the UK. 

2015 

MAY: Global security services giant G4S provides services to Israeli prisons in which human rights campaigners have documented systematic torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners, including child prisoners. In 2015, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sold its stake in G4S. 

JUNE: After its AGM in June 2015 was severely disrupted by protesters, G4S announced that it will end its Israeli prison contracts in the next three years. 

The United Church of Christ, a Protestant denomination in the USA with around a million members, unanimously approved an Israel divestment resolution in June. Their General Synod voted 508-124 in favour.

Reverend James Moos, executive minister of UCC Wider Church Ministries and co-executive of Global Ministries, told Business Insider that the vote was representative of the church’s commitment to peace in the Middle East.

“The United Church of Christ condemns all forms of violence and anti-Semitism, and affirms Israel’s right to exist within secure and internationally recognized borders,” Moos said in a statement. “We similarly assert the right of Palestinians to have a sovereign, independent and viable state within secure and recognized borders.”

AUGUST: French multinational Veolia was involved in the Jerusalem light railway, which connects Jerusalem to illegal Israeli settlements.  It also operates a landfill site in the occupied Jordan Valley which takes waste from Israel (in violation of international law) and formerly ran settler-only bus routes in the West Bank.

In 2013, Veolia stopped its settlement bus services and in August 2015 sold its remaining stakes in the Jerusalem light railway.

2014

JANUARY: The biggest Dutch pension fund, PGGM, announced it would withdraw its investments from Israel’s five largest banks because of their operations in settlements and/or financing of construction in the settlements. 

JULY: Palestinian solidarity activists were celebrated in July 2014 after a double victory over SodaStream, a company with facilities in the occupied West Bank.
 

First came the news that SodaStream was closing its flagship eco-store in Brighton. This was followed a day later by a decision from John Lewis to stop stocking SodaStream products.

Nestlé agreed to stop promoting its baby-milk formula as the ‘natural start’, after pressure from the Baby Milk Action boycott campaign.

2013

Good Energy stopped using G4S as a supplier of meter reading services following pressure from consumers. G4S were under a boycott call due to their activities in the occupied territories in Palestine.

2012

Mini Babybel offered an apology and withdrew a number of products after disability campaigners called for a boycott of their cheese after the company ran a marketing campaign that used the phrase ‘Mentally ill holidays’. 

Following a short sustained campaign by activists around the country, fashion chain Flannels announced it would stop selling fur products.

DaitoCrea, the Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories agent in Japan, announced that they would no longer be distributing Ahava products. The decision was the direct result of a concerted campaign by the Palestine Forum Japan starting in 2010 to educate DaitoCrea and Japanese consumers about Ahava’s practices.

Johnson & Johnson reformulated all of its baby products to remove a formaldehyde-releasing preservative. This move occurred in response to a report and boycott call from the US Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (CSC) over the company’s use of harmful chemicals in its baby shampoo. 

2010

The John Lewis Partnership has taken a stand against mulesing. In a letter to campaign group PETA they said, “John Lewis... will require all suppliers of  merino wool products to satisfy us, through declarations, that the wool used in their products comes from non-mulesed sources”.

Nestlé gave in to pressure from Greenpeace and promised a zero deforestation policy in its palm oil supply chain. After just 8 weeks of intense campaigning and meetings with the company Nestle came come up with what Greenpeace described as a “comprehensive policy” that will be monitored by the Forest Trust.

Nearly 1.5m saw Greenpeace’s spoof Kit Kat advert, over 200,000 emails were sent and activists demonstrated at Nestlé HQs worldwide. Greenpeace said “We didn’t expect Nestlé to come up with this policy so quickly.

The company also agreed to stop claiming its formula is The new “Gold Standard” in infant nutrition after receiving thousands of emails from Baby Milk Action boycott supporters.

Fruit of the Loom crumbled in the face of pressure from the largest ever student boycott. In an incredible about-face the company re-opened a Honduran factory it had closed after workers had unionised. Furthermore, it also gave all 1,200 employees their jobs back, awarded them $2.5 million in compensation and restored all union rights.

The campaign started in 2009 when United Students Against Sweatshops started a campaign that led to 96 US colleges severing their contracts with the company. Ten British universities followed suit. The campaign was estimated to have cost the company $50million.

Reyna Dominguez, who worked at the factory, told New Internationalist that “without this pressure the company would never have come to the negotiating table. There has never been an agreement like this in Honduras or the world.”

2009  

AUGUST: Kimberly-Clark announced a new paper procurement policy that would reduce its impact on ancient forest in North America that were being destroyed for tissue brands such as Kleenex and Andrex. You can read more about the successfull Greenpeace campaign here.

2008

MAY: Donna Karan and the DKNY brand are no longer on our boycott list because of a welcome campaign success from the National Mobilization Against Sweatshops and the Chinese Staff and Workers Association. US workers in supplier factories came to a settlement with the company over their claims of discrimination and failure to pay minimum wages or overtime.

2007

MAY: The De Beers boycott has been called off by Survival International after the company sold its diamond deposit at Gope on the lands of the Kalahari Bushmen. The Bushmen have been forced from their ancestral homelands.The campaign had made Gope ‘a problematic asset for De Beers’.

Whether there is a just outcome for the Bushmen remains to be seen. De Beers sold the Gope deposit to Gem Diamonds for $34 million and will not benefit from the estimated $2.2 billion-worth of diamonds there.

New owners Gem Diamonds says it is currently formulating its policy regarding allowing the Bushmen back onto their land and obtaining free and informed consent before mining goes ahead. Survival is monitoring progress.

2006

JUNE: The Burma Campaign UK announced that sustained pressure had led to Austrian Airlines, Eastravel and FromersGuides joining the growing exodus of companies ending their promotion of tourism to Burma. Austrian Airlines subsidiary Lauda Air was the only airline in Europe with direct flights to Burma, and the regime had welcomed the flights, hoping they would boost tourism and investment.

Gill Clothing formally pledged to stop sourcing from Burma.

2005

JULY: The Captive Animals’ Protection Society (CAPS) claimed that the Automobile Association(AA) had told them “no wild captive animals will feature in future AA advertising.” This was in response to a customer furore, following an AA ad featuring Anne, an elderly Asian elephant on loan from Bobby Roberts Circus.

AUGUST: Snow+Rock announced it would no longer be selling real fur garments following a campaign by Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade (CAFT). The managing director, Dion Taylor, said: “We feel there are enough man made equivalents to satisfy the needs of our customers.” More info on CAFT's other campaigns on 0845 330 7955.

Aon Corporation informed the Burma Campaign UK it intended to terminate all business in Burma. The company had appeared on the Burma Campaign's ‘Dirty List’ of companies directly or indirectly funding the regime in Burma. The campaign group welcomed the decision: “Aon have acted responsibly by ending their involvement in Burma,” said Director John Jackson.

OCTOBER: The Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade (CAFT) stated that Inditex Group, which owned fashion chain Zara, had decided to withdraw fur from all the group's 2,064 stores in 52 countries. The fur was phased out over a period of several weeks and Inditex ceased sale of fur in its shops from 31 December 2004.

Inditex stated in a letter to its customers that a formal policy had been established and as of 1st January 2005 no fur was to be used in Inditex Group clothes or other products. The policy was announced 3 days before a planned international day of action against Zara.

Nike became the first in its industry to publish a full list of suppliers, five-years after the end of a boycott call against it following claims that it was not responsible for the notoriously poor working conditions in its supply chain.

2004

MARCH: PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) confirmed its decision to pull out of Burma. The company had featured on Burma Campaign UK's boycott list of companies directly or indirectly funding the regime in Burma.

MARCH: The Stop Staples Campaign declared victory following the office-supply giant’s announcement that it would meet the campaign’s goal of moving the company towards environmentally-preferable paper sales.

Staples pledged to achieve an average of 30% post consumer recycled content across all paper products it sold. It also pledged to phase out purchases of paper products from endangered forests, create an environmental affairs division and to report annually on its environmental results. More information. 

SEPTEMBER: In response to a three-year Animal Aid campaign, Focus pledged to end the sale of all animals, including fish, in its stores throughout the UK. The massive DIY chain promised that animal sales would stop over the next two years.
 

OCTOBER: Marine campaign group Oceana's boycott of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd led to the company installing Advanced Wastewater Purification technology (AWP) on all its ships. Oceana campaigns Triumph International was the subject of a boycott call over its manufacturing operations in Burma. The company announced that it would be closing down its Burma-based manufacturing site, located on a military-owned industrial estate north of Rangoon. The company had been listed on the Burma Campaign UK 'Dirty List'.
 

APRIL: The Focus store group announced to Animal Aid that it was to cease the sale of all birds and small mammals. Animal Aid began its Focus campaign in February 2000, originally concentrating on the company’s sale of reptiles. Following hundreds of demonstrations at the company’s stores around the country, Focus' reptile sales ended in October 2000.

2003

Nestlé announced that it would stop promoting complementary baby foods from before 6 months of age, nine years after The World Health Assembly adopted the same Resolution in 1994, during a week of campaigning by the Baby Milk Action Boycott.

2002

APRIL: The four year boycott run by the National Anti-Hunt Campaign (NAHC) over John Lewis'staff pheasant shoots finally ended in victory, with the closure of the company's Shooting Club. The campaign gained a higher profile in 2000 when Animal Aid added its voice and membership capacity to the boycott.

The NAHC/Animal Aid victory comes despite John Lewis trying 'every trick in the book' according to NAHC's Niel Hansen, including libel writs and attempting to have one campaigner jailed for distributing leaflets on company property.

2000

APRIL: Following a long campaign of protest, Mitsubishi surprised campaigners by announcing that it was pulling out of an industrial salt project in Mexico for environmental reasons. The project to extract salt from sea water in evaporation ponds was to be located in a World Heritage Site - the Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve. Potentially covering 116 square miles, it threatened a breeding ground for whales and other endangered species.

A 'Mitsubishi: Don't Buy It' campaign was launched, more than 40 Californian cities passed resolutions condemning the company, and over 700,000 letters of objection were sent. Homero Aridjis, one of the campaign's leaders was reported as saying: "It has been a tough fight for five years with one of the richest corporations in the world and the Mexican government."

NOVEMBER: Baby Milk Action and its Nestlé boycott campaign work with Richard Howitt MEP on the first public hearing into corporate malpractice held by the European Parliament’s Development Committee, examining Nestlé and Adidas' practices.

Nike committed to independently monitored social audits across its supply chain and began publishing audit details on its website, after a boycott call caused its revenues to fall by 16% and its share price to drop by 57%. The boycott call followed claims from the company that the notoriously poor conditions in its supply chain were not its responsibility.