Copyright 2001 The Financial Times Limited
Financial Times (London,England)

April 17, 2001 Tuesday
London Edition 3

SECTION: NATIONAL NEWS ; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 419 words

HEADLINE: NATIONAL NEWS: Consumer group feared more than ministers BUSINESS FEW CHIEFS WORRIED BY POLITICIANS' CRITICISM:

BYLINE: By ROBERT SHRIMSLEY

BODY:


British business leaders are more frightened of the Consumers' Association and the environmental group Greenpeace than they are of ministers and trade unionists.

A new survey of chief executives and finance directors of 150 businesses showed that the once frightening prospect of being denounced by a cabinet minister causes far fewer sleepless nights than politicians might like to imagine.

Equally the demise of trade union militancy and power has left them less fearful of the angry words of a shop steward or general secretary.

Asked from which groups they would most fear an attack, those questioned listed consumer and environmental groups as the most worrying.

While those two groups scored 23 per cent each, only 16 per cent of those surveyed said they most feared criticism from politicians, and 13 per cent said trade unions.

Unions fared worse than human rights activists, who scored 14 per cent in the survey of large, small and medium-sized enterprises for Weber Shandwick, the public affairs organisation.

The survey also showed that businesses believe Labour is significantly better at communicating with them than the Tories.

Just over half rated Labour as good communicators with business, compared with 32 per cent for the Tories.

Perhaps surprisingly, the fear of attack from anti-corporate internet websites came bottom of the options listed, with only 9 per cent of companies being most fearful of an attack from this quarter.

This comes in spite of the immense damage done to Huntingdon Life Sciences by a small group of animal activists who have listed information about the drug-testing laboratory on the internet.

The use of the internet to target businesses has now been taken up by rightwing groups as well.

A Eurosceptic website, Candidlist, which had previously specialised in listing the attitudes towards the European Union of parliamentary candidates, has branched out into targeting companies that support the euro.

It lists companies that have made donations to Britain in Europe, the pro-euro campaign, or those that have made public statements in support of the single currency.

As well as "shaming" those companies, it lists their directors, corporate addresses and products.

The Candidlist website also promises to list directors' addresses.

Sean Gabb, the compiler of Candidlist, said: "The purpose of the 'roll of shame' is to help provide an opportunity for judgment to be passed and expressed on those who for private commercial advantage are betraying their country."