Profiles of campaigning groups

When you are doing what you can as an ethical consumer, it's heartening to know that there are other people like you campaigning for things to be better. 

In this feature, we profile organisations that are working hard to challenge corporate power, to make society better for people and planet. Check out what they're doing, sign their petitions, raise their profiles and support their work where you can.

This is part of our growing Challenging Corporate Power series. Additional organisations will be added every two months, as we feature them in our magazine. 

Read on to find out more about: 

• We Own It
• Global Justice Now
• Balanced Economy Project

What has We Own It achieved so far?

We Own It is a tiny organisation of only around five staff supported by donations from the general public. This makes it very careful about what it chooses to campaign on, focusing only those things that it feels have a likelihood of success.

Some of its successes include:

• 2014 it helped to save child protection services from privatisation.
• 2016 it won a campaign to keep the Land Registry public and to prevent the privatisation of Network Rail.
• 2017 it prevented the sell off of NHS Professionals.
• 2018 it fought successfully to bring the East Coast line into public ownership.
• 2019 it helped to bring probation services into public ownership.
• 2020 it pushed the House of Lords to pass the NHS Protection Amendment to the Trade Bill.
• 2021 it successfully campaigned for public control of the buses in Greater Manchester and against the presence of US insurance company Centene in a London borough’s GP surgeries.
• 2022 it won pledges in 11 regions across England to ban private companies from NHS boards.
• 2023 it won a campaign to stop the sell off of Channel 4, helped to bring TransPennine Express into public ownership, and it forced a government U-turn on proposals to close 974 railway ticket offices.
• 2024 it successfully campaigned for public control of buses in West Yorkshire.

We Own It's model for public ownership

In 2019, it published a ground-breaking report called When We Own It: A model for public ownership in the 21st century.

Rather than being controlled by a central government department or quango as is current practice, its model public company would be run by professional managers but controlled by a supervisory board with representation from:

• Customers (in a representative formation called participate)
• Workers (through trade unions)
• Civil society (though campaign groups like Surfers Against Sewage)
• Government (through an Office of Public Ownership to ensure that standards are high)
• Other companies in that part of the public sector (based on a successful 'sunshine' model used in the Netherlands).

Such boards and managers might operate at local, regional, or national levels as appropriate. They would also have new duties, for example:

• to decarbonise
• to ensure access for all to crucial services
• to work with communities
• to steward public assets and land.

And if we begin to doubt that such complexity could be practical, given failures experienced in the past, We Own It explain how technology and business have changed out of all recognition in the last twenty years. They also provide examples of how such approaches are working elsewhere.

Below is one case study from the report.

Public ownership of water in Paris

In 2010, the city of Paris brought water into public ownership after 25 years of privatisation. 

Citizens are represented on the board of directors and they influence policy through the Water Observatory. Paris Water’s board is made up of city councillors, staff representatives, representatives of the Observatory, a consumer rights group, an environmental association, a local democracy expert and a water scientist. The Water Observatory represents different water users – housing management agencies, tenants’ associations, consumer associations, trade unions, and environmental associations. 

Since public ownership was introduced, water bills have been cut, leakage levels have halved, an innovative new lab has improved water quality, and Paris has introduced water fountains of both still and sparkling water!

For more information and to get excited about public ownership again visit the We Own It website.

Founded: 2013
Based: Remote working
Income (est): £220,000

Featured in Ethical Consumer Magazine 216.

Global Justice Now's campaigns on trade deals

Campaigning against trade deals, particularly those that embed “corporate courts” which give companies the right to sue governments, has become a bit of a speciality for Global Justice Now. As part of large coalitions, they have been able to see off 'TTIP' (a US/EU trade deal) and more recently the Energy Charter Treaty. Both of these tried to give “rights” to companies to sue for lost profits if governments decided to do outrageous things like reduce carbon emissions or protect human health outcomes.

GJN are focusing on three trade deals in 2025:

1. The UK/Colombia trade deal. GJN are campaigning to terminate the deal.
2. The recently announced US/UK trade deal which is likely to try to restrict the way the UK can tax and regulate Big Tech.
3. The UK/India trade deal which may try to restrict India's ability to produce cheaper medicines.

Nick Dearden said to us: "I think trade deals are more like corporate charters, and that we probably need to emphasise this more. They are effectively saying "you will encourage more investment and more trade if you do the following things that big corporations want ..."

Highlighting monopoly power

Global Justice Now is also working on specific sectors where there are monopolies. These include:

• Pharmaceuticals – their campaign provides evidence on how for-profit models lead to poor health outcomes everywhere.
• Food – in favour of food sovereignty and against giant agribusiness.

GJN's views on our challenging corporate power focus

We asked Nick about our new Challenging Corporate Power project, which is asking questions about the nature of the corporation and the licence to trade that societies give them. 

He said: "We were once told that our corporate-dominated global economy was the perfect partner for a flourishing liberal democracy. But corporate power has fuelled inequality and climate change to such an extent, that it's now increasingly incompatible with even the pretence of democracy. So, fighting corporate power is not just an abstract question – it's a fight for democracy itself.

“Big Tech has dropped the pretence of liberal values, not just to appease Trump, I think it's realised that its high growth, high energy use, monopolistic model is inconsistent with climate action. They've had to choose between curbing their activities and redistributing some of their power on the one hand, or fascism on the other. They've chosen the latter.

“So, I agree that it looks like a good time to be asking deeper questions about corporate legitimacy. International charities and campaign groups used to talk about this more than they do now, but I think it is coming back.

“Trump's upending of the international economic order is not just a threat but an opportunity. There is a chance for us to describe the kind of global economy we want and the kind of rules we want. Campaigning for this is not easy though. It is perhaps easier to stop a trade deal that we don't like than to say what it is that we really want. It needs a strong, international movement, rather than a series of disjointed campaigns.

“I think that Naomi Klein's No Logo looks prescient now. The contemporary economy is less about companies competing for consumers, more about competing for investors. And the investors are demanding short-term returns – even if that means hollowing out the business itself. Capitalism is eating itself."

To find out more about Global Justice Now and to join up or support their work visit www.globaljustice.org.uk

Individuals can join as members and there are local groups who get together to campaign too.

Founded: 1970
Based: London
Income (2023): £1,335,834

Featured in Ethical Consumer Magazine 215.

Key people in Balanced Economy Project

Balanced Economy Project was founded in 2021 by Nicolas Shaxton and Michelle Meagher with help from John Christensen at Tax Justice Network.

Nicholas Shaxton is a journalist and writer specialising in financial abuses. His books (including the 2011 'Treasure Islands' about tax havens) and films (including the 2016 'Spiders Web') have played an important role in popularising understanding of widespread corporate financial abuses.

Michelle Meagher is a competition lawyer who has worked for regulators and international institutions. She also became well known for writing the excellent 'Competition is Killing Us' which details the serious consequences of the failure to regulate corporate monopolies effectively in the 21st century.

Tax Justice Network (TJN) has been a long-time ally of Ethical Consumer's work around tax and of the Fair Tax Mark particularly. John Christensen was one of the founders of TJN in 2003.

TJN provided incubation and partial funding of the Balanced Economy Project in 2021. Reassuringly, Balanced Economy Project secured grant funding in 2024 to recruit and grow, though individual donations play a critical role too.

Sign up to its Counterbalance newsletter 

One of the core outputs of Balanced Economy Project are its weekly email newsletters called The Counterbalance. These unpick abuses of corporate power in detail and usually specialise in one sector at a time. In the summer for example they ran a series on monopolies in the music industry. Before that they looked at private equity in healthcare.

Much work is focused on the critical impacts of tech monopolies.

Collaboration on policy papers

The other main way they tend to operate is to work on publishing lobbying or policy papers in collaboration with other campaigners across Europe. Here, by way of example, are three recent ones.

1) Taken Not Earned

To coincide with the Davos conference in January 2024, they published a report in collaboration with Global Justice Now and others called "Taken, not earned: How monopolists drive the world’s power and wealth divide".

The report argued that concentrations of corporate power were "fuelling inequality and division, undermining democracy, worsening the climate crisis, manipulating people in insidious ways, and fundamentally altering how we communicate and interact with each other".

2) Rebalancing Europe

In April 2024 they were involved in a report called "Rebalancing Europe: a new economic agenda for tackling monopoly power". Another collaboration with a range of organisations including the Dutch Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), it argued for the EU to begin a new way of thinking around monopoly regulation of the kind that Michelle Meagher was proposing in her book mentioned above.

Although the report talked about 'innovating structural remedies', it would have been great to see it exploring the idea of 'equity fines' too. This is one of the approaches that Ethical Consumer is supporting as a potentially transformative way forward.

3) Beyond Big Tech

In September 2024 they were involved in another publication called "Beyond Big Tech: A framework for building a new and fair digital economy." The other partners were IT for Change and People vs Big Tech. The paper was accompanied by a Beyond Big Tech manifesto, signed by more than 70 civil society organisations.

Critical elements of their vision included the eminently sensible ideas of: using competition law to break up big tech; using digital services taxes to address extreme tax avoidance; enforcing human rights safeguards; and investing in a public digital infrastructure.

More information on the Balanced Economy Project, on how to sign up for the Counterbalance newsletter, and on how to donate is available on their website.

Founded: 2021
Based: Remote working
Income (est): £200,000

Featured in Ethical Consumer Magazine 217.