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Corporate Watch

Research group based in the United Kingdom

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ16951801
Source-derived summary

Corporate Watch (The Corporate Watch Co-Operative Ltd.) is a research group based in the UK. It describes itself as a "research group that helps people stand up against corporations and capitalism." And as a "not-for-profit co-operative providing critical information on the social and environmental impacts of corporations and capitalism." It was established in 1996.

Corporate Watch is run as a workers' co-operative. It is incorporated as a company, limited by guarantee, and registered in the United Kingdom, number 03865674.

Research

Corporate Watch has two main research approaches:

"Targeted research for grassroots campaign groups". For example, researchers have worked with neighbourhood housing campaigns, precarious workers' trade unions, environmental groups, migrant solidarity groups, care workers, and families of prisoners. This research can support campaigns by "e.g. profiling a particular company, digging into its accounts, uncovering scandals, finding weak points."

"Broader research and analysis into how capitalism works, issues and news." This includes producing books on subjects such as the AZ of Green Capitalism, The UK Border Regime, or Prison Island (on UK prison expansion).

Corporate Watch encourages "individuals and groups to contact us with information and requests about companies they think need looking into."

Training

Corporate Watch also provides training and resources so that more people can learn how to investigate companies. These include:

Tailored training sessions for "groups, organisations and individuals who want to investigate a company and its actions." These are run free for unfunded grassroots groups and campaigns; larger groups such as unions, universities and NGOs pay on a sliding scale.

The free "Know Your Enemy" online course

Investigating Companies: a Do-It-Yourself Handbook, which can be downloaded for free from the Corporate Watch website

Research areas and notable investigations

Environment

"Wreckers of the Earth" map.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Corporate Watch” is research group based in the United Kingdom. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Corporate, Watch and Research, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1996—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Corporate, Watch and Research is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “research group based in the United Kingdom” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16951801. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Corporate Watch”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Corporate Watch primary sources, Corporate Watch archive and Corporate research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Corporate Watch”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Corporate Watch” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.