These qualities can attach only to natural persons – never to corporations.  It took me some time to discover the evils of “reification”, i.e. “considering an abstract concept to be real or concrete” – God as silvery-whiskered patriarch, angels with actual wings, and so on.  And thinking of Marks & Spencer as a friendly, public-spirited aunt or uncle, discharging “corporate social responsibility”.   Reification makes fools of us all.  And Business in the Community has always been engaged on just such a process of misleading reification: see Director Julia Cleverdon, writing in the Financial Times.

The whole CSR movement is a sophisticated PR initiative to divert public attention away from the ruthless profit orientation which – rightly and inevitably - regulates corporate affairs.  I do not criticise the corporations for that: as organisations, they are legally designed to do just that.  “They” can do no other.  It is nonsense for anyone to rely on the “social responsibility” of a neutral abstraction.   

Of course, some managers are nicer than others, and they may be able to get their personal values reflected in the actions of the corporations they temporarily manage.  The Caparo Corporation recently decided to honour their pensions commitments to staff, when they were not legally bound to do so.  And I have no doubt that the decision was deeply influenced by the sheer decency and political principle of Lord (Swraj) Paul, the prime mover of the company – a socialist and committed Labour peer.   

That's great when it happens, but “the company” deserves no credit for it.  Companies should be thought of as puppets, abstractions which dance strictly to the tunes of their puppeteers.   I have devised the word abdroid – i.e. an abstract droid - all corporations are abdroids, ciphers, complete slaves of the men and women who manipulate them, with “their” actions constrained only by law and by the judgments of the puppeteers.  The abdroid has no moral sense, no principles, no conscience, no substance of its own – it is a cipher, a nebbish.  It is a mere tool for the delivery of the schemes of its founders and puppeteers.   For judgments, you must look to Rupert Murdoch, or Richard Branson, or Bernie Ebbers - not to the artificialities of the companies behind which they seek to hide.   

It is only the Directors and senior managers who have any moral capacity.  And they should be called to account, for their actions and the key judgments they make. That will never be achieved unless we open up the darkest corners of company law to enable the public to get to grips with their oppressors  – check out my campaign at Tame the Corporations…

What do you think?  Drop me a line

I believe in cities.  I believe in the dynamism of city government, the power of city loyalties, the cogency of city identities.  Life would be richer, more diverse, more exciting, more challenging – if we gave our cities their head, and organised them properly.  

I rejoice in a role which is almost defunct.  I am Director of the City Region Campaign, founded in 1994, and still limping along.  In 1996, the Campaign published (working with leading constitutional theorist Simon Partridge) an essay outlining my constitutional vision for the UK.  It consisted of a single, strong national Government (for I am a unionist), some twelve provinces (the Government’s “Regions” of England, with London, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland) and 40-or-so city or urban regions, with boundaries not far removed from those of the counties.  Thereafter, New Labour’s constitutional caravan started to roll in a different direction, and four of the provinces have now been endowed with different provincial solutions.  The other eight provinces are now under consideration, in Nick Raynsford’s current round of talks on English Devolution.

And if you share my perceptions, please let me know - drop me a line