Little John's Big Weekend Blog
For a very long time now I have been interested in issues related to corporate misbehaviour and how corporations are able to get away with ‘blue murder’.
As a citizen of a developing country, I have witnessed with dismay how mega-corporations from the ‘developed world’ engage in business with people from ‘undeveloped’ countries -for which, read inferior, primitive, backward, sub-human, jungle-bunnies. They seem indifferent to the human rights abuses they commit, even when these have deadly consequences in countries similar to mine.
Take, for example, the Anglo-Australian company, Rio-Tinto, which has operations in far-flung regions like Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, South Africa, Namibia, Argentina, Colombia and many others. This company has been deeply and repeatedly criticised for operating practices that would not be tolerated in the UK (see http://corporatewatch.wordpress.com/2008/03/28/17th-april-2008-public-meeting-on-anglo-american-and-rio-tinto).
The myth is that these global corporations have escaped national criminal justice systems, by diffusing responsibility between parent, child and sibling companies, and that it is impossible to govern a corporate subsidiary located in a host country at a distance from the ‘home’ jurisdiction of its parent. This myth needs to be exploded. UK businesses are born out of the Companies Act. If Governments can bring corporations into being by giving them life then they can also take it away.
Although not a British company, one of the cases that stays firmly lodged in my head is the Bhopal Union Carbide gas leak tragedy where more than 3,000 people died (see http://www.bhopal.org/whathappened.html) and thousands more are suffering the effects of the toxic gases that leaked from the tanks of the factory. The victims are seeking still a legal remedy against Dow Chemicals, who also own Eveready batteries.
As such, I have been following with great interest the progress of the Corporate Manslaughter Bill, which began its laborious passage through Parliament in 2002. This finally resulted in the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act (CMCHA) 2007, which came into force a few months ago, on the 6th April 2008.
There had been vigorous campaigning for this legislation, over many years, by groups like Trades Unions, Amnesty International, CorpWatch, UK Watch and other bodies committed to protecting individuals from corporations. There was a perceived need to simplify the process by which companies could be held legally liable for deaths caused by their gross negligence, where profits were put ahead of lives.
To give a sense of the size of the problem, the total number of recorded UK homicides for the last 10 years is 8,345 (see www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/recorded-crime-1898-2002.xls and http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/recorded-crime-2002-2007.xls). These figures include the 52 deaths from the London bombings and the 58 Chinese illegal immigrants who suffocated in the container that was being used to ship them into the country. That is an average of 834 per year.
By comparison, in the UK alone, there is on average some 250 people per year killed at work (see www.politics.co.uk/press-releases/economy/industry/tgwu-deaths-at-work-statisticss-$447889.htm). This does not count the much larger figure for overseas casualties. In one Rio Tinto case alone, that of the Bougainville copper mine, the deaths resulting from corporate activity and the civil war that ensued is conservatively estimated to have cost the lives of 10% of the population or 15,000 souls (www.hagens-berman.com/rio_tinto_lawsuit). Unable to bring the case to the UK, where Rio Tinto is headquartered, a hearing was sought in the US.
The Centre for Corporate Accountability (CCA) is not convinced that the CMCHA 2007 will be effective, arguing that big corporations are unlikely to be concerned with it for many years to come as a result of ‘retrospective’ clauses contained in the act. These not only state that any deaths must have taken place after April 2008, but also that any evidence relating to those deaths cannot be from an earlier date. The fact that companies have a track record of bad management dating back many years will not be admissible (see www.corporateaccountability.org/press_releases/2008/apr02newman.htm).
But the most crippling feature of the act, for future overseas victims such as the Bougainvilleans, is the section on ‘extent and territorial application’, when boiled down means that British companies cannot be prosecuted for deaths that take place abroad.
Compare this with the common law, which says that individual British citizens who commit homicide abroad can be prosecuted through the British courts. In my view, this is a clear case of double standard and a form of institutional racism.
Little John
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7 comments:
It is another fine example of the rich and powerful looking out for each other. Again!
And we're all involved in it. How many of us have not bought that "bargain" that was made in China. Communist workers paradise? Biggest capitalist bastards of the lot! One of my ex bosses dealt with foundries in China and India. They had barefoot 8 year olds working with molten metal and he got away with it by never being in the works while the kids were working. His excuse - the inevitable "If we don't do it our competitors will."
Maaarrghk!
Too right, AngryDave.
I agree, we are all involved in it, Maaarrghk, but Britain should be able to do something about its own corporations to hold them accountable. This country is all too ready to point the finger at others - they have criticised both Myanmar and China recently. However, they can't be bothered to put their own house in order.
This legislation has been a total cop-out.
Too right Little John and one of the most lamentable aspects of the Act is that it confirms the dreadful suspicion that we as a society prioritise the property of some classes over the lives and limbs of another. The Act does not permit the possibility of convicting and jailing those corporate individuals whose wilful negligence and acts of omission in the pursuit of profit lead to death and injury, yet a company director can be jailed for a gross breach of their duty of care towards shareholders' investments.
The most damning thing is these loop holes are kept quiet.
Have I got this right? If British companies are negligent abroad and as result of this negligence, lets say deaths occur abroad, of say Black or minority ethnic people, then under this legislation British companies are not culpable, but they might be culpable under that country's law? If they catch the Director's that is?
Yet if a British company was negligent in this country and this led to a death here then they might be culpable? So we can colonialise, make profits, take short cuts abroad and kill? Unbelievable. And they say we have race equality?
Hi Sarge,
I would say that you had that pretty much right.
Although it is fair to say that any 'gross negligent' death caused by a corporation in any country abroad would not be eligible for prosecution under the Corporate Manslaughter Act, the effect of this exclusion will be felt most in undeveloped and developing countries.
The reason for this, of course, is that developed countries like the US have sufficient clout to hold British businessmen and corporations accountable (see the Nat West 3, for instance).
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