My mission as the government’s new Co-operative and Mutuals Champion
Rochdale Pioneers Museum, regarded as the birthplace of the modern co-operative movement on Toad Lane, Greater Manchester (Alamy)
4 min read
In a world dominated by war, distorted by social media, exploited by corporations and scared of the future, it is hard to believe in hope.
Yet within the co-operative movement exists the seeds of social solidarity and economic prosperity, and the answer to the pressing urgencies of our age. This is the co-op moment.
The modern co-operative movement was founded in 1844 in Rochdale, Lancashire, by pioneers who knew the system was failing them, their families and their communities. Rapid industrialisation had created a few winners and many losers. Working people were working ever longer hours, recycling their wages to rapacious landlords and retailers, becoming unwell through pollution and overwork, and could see little way of escape.
On Toad Lane, Rochdale, just 28 artisans and weavers, inspired by Robert Owen’s communitarian ideals and the Chartists’ democratic demands, formed a co-op shop. They sold butter and oatmeal free from poisonous additives, and at a fair price. They rejected private profits in favour of a dividend to members. They provided a practical solution to the horrors of Victorian laissez-faire capitalism.
They sparked a revolution. From these idealistic beginnings grew a practical and thriving co-operative movement: shops, funerals, homes, credit unions, bakeries, energy companies, and farms. From that Co-op store in your neighbourhood to the mighty Barcelona football club, the co-op ideal endures. In 1917, in Swansea, co-operators formed the Co-operative Party to contest elections and win support for co-op ideas. The new party’s first general secretary was Sam Perry, father of Fred.
Today, people are still being failed by the economic system. Just as in the 1840s, people feel alienated from their work, concerned about the food they’re eating and the environment around them, and are prey to greedy landlords and rip-off retailers. People feel they have lost control over their lives, work and neighbourhoods. As the Prime Minister said in his speech at the Labour Party conference, Britain took a wrong turn with privatisation and deregulation of our essential services, austerity hollowing out local democracy, and Brexit making us poorer.
The cooperative and mutual sector in the UK is Britain’s best kept secret. The latest figures by show that co-operatives and mutuals made £241bn year and supported 1.7 million jobs. I stood on a Labour manifesto commitment to double the size of the co-operative sector in the UK. That’s why it is so exciting to be appointed the government’s Co-operative and Mutuals Champion to foster new links and bring good ideas home to the UK.
From household names like John Lewis and Nationwide through to your local neighbourhood co-op food store, the movement is the expression of good growth in every postcode. Mutuals keep wealth in our communities, employ local people and pay taxes here. And we can do so much more.
Co-ops are robust – they have an 82 per cent five-year survival rate compared to just 40 per cent for UK businesses as a whole. They are more than four times as likely to be Living Wage employers. Women hold a quarter of leadership positions in co-ops compared with just one in 10 of FTSE 100 companies. Co-ops have saved community pubs, lidos and shops on our struggling high streets.
Around the world, governments are struggling with issues of trust, economic resilience and commitment to places. The co-operative ideal is global in scale from agriculture and retail to housing and social care. It speaks to a universal truth – that humans want a stake in the things that effect our lives, from where they live, to what they eat.
In a bitterly divided world, threatened by a technology we can barely control, the ideals born on the streets of Rochdale speak to our modern anxieties. Co-op ideas provide a route map away from the conflict, competition and fear that leads to division. This is the co-operative moment.
Andrew Pakes is the Labour (Co-op) MP for Peterborough, newly appointed as the government's Co-operative and Mutuals Champion
