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6-12-2002 Scotsman Why IKEA is a target of terror bombers By GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN TO ANYONE who has ever wrestled with an IKEA wardrobe, the answer to the question "but why would anyone bomb IKEA?" is obvious. To anyone else, it is harder to imagine why someone could get so worked up about this ubiquitous purveyor of flatpack furniture and cheap and cheerful household objects, to the point where they would want to blow up one of its trademark blue and yellow stores along with the shoppers who graze its aisles. After all, IKEA is hardly a hate object on a par with McDonald's. When anti-capitalist protesters take over city centres, there are never pictures of masked demonstrators throwing bricks through the windows of an IKEA outlet - and not just because its stores lurk on the outskirts, rather than at the heart, of the urban landscape, nor because they are notoriously short of windows. All the more surprising, then, that this week IKEA should find itself the target of bombers who planted devices in two of its Dutch stores. Two policemen were injured when one of the bombs detonated and all ten outlets in the country were closed while officers searched for a suspected third bomb. And then, yesterday, a man telephoned a bomb threat to the company's shop outside Budapest, Hungary. The shop was evacuated after an anonymous caller warned two men would plant explosives at about noon. No bombs were found and the call was almost certainly a hoax, but the bad news for IKEA is that it appears to have graduated overnight from being a simple furniture store into an institution and as such, a viable target for anyone with a grudge against big companies or society in general. Despite expanding into 29 countries, IKEA has so far managed to avoid the attentions of those who blame multinational companies for everything from the hole in the ozone layer to the collapse of society as we know it. Not for IKEA the accusations of chopping down the rainforests to graze cattle to turn into burgers. Anyone who buys an IKEA meatball believes in their heart of hearts that the meat came from happy cows who led a long and fulfilling life grazing in a meadow before finally happily expiring at a ripe old age. Nor does IKEA find itself besieged by environmentalists demanding it change its production methods. The company goes out of its way to stress its environmental credentials, boasting that its aim is to source its wood from "verified well-managed forests" and sponsors students to study forestry. In Kosovo, it works with Save the Children, rebuilding 49 schools damaged by the war in 1999. In India, it is working with the World Health Organisation and UNICEF on a project to halt child labour. In Helsingborg, in southern Sweden, it has even started building communal housing schemes, creating model communities operating on what the writer Roland Huntford has described as "benign Swedish totalitarianism". Ironically, it is an earlier experiment in social engineering that has caused the company most embarrassment in recent years. The political background of Ingvar Kamprad, the company's founder, came under the spotlight after his pro-Nazi leanings as a youth were exposed by a Swedish newspaper seven years ago. Mr Kamprad - who founded the company in 1943 under a name comprised of his own initials and the initial letters from Elmtaryd, the family farm where he was born and Agunnaryd, the village where he grew up - had attended a number of pro-Nazi meetings led by Per Engdahl, the Swedish right-winger, between 1945 and 1948. It was from his grandmother - whose husband shot himself in 1897 when he could not pay the mortgage on his farm three years after moving his wife and three children from the Sudetenland - that his interest in Adolf Hitler came. She regarded Hitler's seizure of the Sudetenland as liberation, but anyone hoping to hang Kamprad out to dry for his politics had to think again when he issued a full and abject apology for his youthful indiscretion. His 25,000 employees all received a letter entitled The Greatest Mistake of my Life. "This is part of my life I bitterly regret," he said. "At first, I got in touch with a pair of Nazified organisations and perhaps I even became a member. I have forgotten. However, after a couple of meetings in pure Nazi style, I quit." There was also an awkward moment when a Swedish documentary in the early Nineties suggested the company was acquiring rugs from a factory in Pakistan which kept child workers chained to their looms. Since then, the company has gone out of its way to stress its commitment to stamping out child labour among its suppliers and their sub-contractors. Even anti-capitalists find it difficult to criticise a company which models itself on such ideals as "waste of resources is a mortal sin" and which eschews suits, ties and titles. Mr Kamprad himself insists that good leadership comes from setting a good example to his employees. "How the hell can I ask people who work for me to travel cheaply if I am travelling in luxury?" he has asked. And yet the actions of one or more unidentified bombers in the Netherlands suggest that the continuing growth and success of IKEA now makes it a target for those who believe they can achieve their ends through violence. IKEA says it has been advised not to speculate on the reasons for the attacks, but it seems likely blackmail was at the heart of the Netherlands bombs. Since September, the company is reported to have been receiving threats from extortionists demanding millions of euros, and the bombs found in its shops in Sliedrecht and Amsterdam were said to have been professionally made and difficult to defuse without detonating. There have been no public claims of responsibility and IKEA officials in Budapest and the headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, said they believed there was no connection between the cases in the two countries, factors which suggest it is unlikely they were the actions of extremists with a political agenda. Rather, the Budapest call looks like the work of an opportunist hoaxer, while the attacks in the Netherlands bear striking similarities with previous campaigns against high-profile corporate bodies. Edgar Pearce, aka the Mardi Gras bomber, waged a four-year campaign involving 36 attacks against Sainsbury's, the supermarket giant, and branches of Barclays Bank until he was jailed for 21 years for plotting to extort £3.6 million from the firms. The 61-year-old made his bombs in his garden shed in Chiswick, in London. The judge concluded that his motives were "greed and an insatiable appetite for notoriety". Smaller companies are not immune to the attentions of the determined loner. Waterford Dairies, of Hyde, was warned its stock would be contaminated with E.coli bacteria unless it handed over 30,000 pounds. The loner in question, Alan Hadfield, was jailed for seven years. Some insurance firms believe companies often quietly pay off the blackmailers rather than face the damaging publicity a campaign against them would bring.
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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