Members of a parenting website are challenging the site’s owners Johnson and Johnson over its association with the commercial arms trade.
The parents, who post on BabyCentre.co.uk, have besieged its owners with messages and postings, after they discovered that Johnson and Johnson was exhibiting at the Baby Show, which is owned by Clarion Events.
Clarion's involvement in the arms trade has previously triggered a backlash from their own exhibitors, with Bounty withdrawing as a sponsor and Unicef refusing to accept donations from ticket sales.
Clarion's ownership of arms fairs was brought to exhibitors' attention by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and by the freelance journalist Emily Apple.
The Baby Show begins at Birmingham NEC today. It has previously faced demonstrations in London and Manchester.
Over 300 comments have been posted in the last 48 hours by irate parents on the website BabyCentre.co.uk after they read an article on the thinktank Ekklesia’s website about Clarion and the Baby Show.
One mother who is a member on the website, told Ekklesia: “My fellow members and I are horrified at the notion of a parenting website being linked to a company that owns and promotes arms fairs and have been campaigning as hard as we can over the past 48 hours.”
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