Anti-corporatism in Britain?

When I saw this very heartening headline in the Guardian: Firms face corporate killing law, I had hopes that Britain was about to enact a ‘death penalty’ for corporations, an idea whose time I think came long, long ago. But it’s not that: it’s a law holding corporations, and their officers, criminally liable for acts of, well, criminality:

The government is expected to announce tomorrow that it will introduce a new offence of corporate manslaughter in a move which will see companies held to account for deaths caused through gross management negligence.

[] The new offence could mean that a director of a corporation would be guilty of corporate killing if a management failure by the company were identified as one of the causes of death and that failure constituted conduct far below what could reasonably be expected.

That’s pretty neat. Pierce the corporate veil, says I. People make the decisions; and if those decisions amount to gross negligence, those people are just as responsible for the results as, for example, people who decide to drive drunk. (Union Carbide, I’m looking at you)

Filed under: politics