The Co-operative Movement and Communities in Britain, 1914-1960

Minding Their Own Business

Nicole Robertson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138278325
• eBook ISBN: 9781317037231
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The co-operative movement has played a notable role in the retail, wholesale, productive, political, educational and cultural life of Britain. As a movement it has consciously represented consumer interests and has carried out work in the arena of consumer protection. However, its study has suffered relative neglect when compared to research into the Labour Party, trade unions and the wider politics of retail and consumption. This book reassesses the impact of the co-operative movement on various communities in Britain during the period 1914-1960, providing a comprehensive account of the grass roots influence of co-operatives during both war and peace. This is a national study with a local dimension. It considers how national directives and perspectives were locally applied, if indeed they were applicable within the context of individual societies. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of the co-operative movement by examining various societies in England, Scotland and Wales. Particular attention is paid to the midlands, due to the movement's expansion here during the interwar period, with consideration also given to comparative developments in Europe. The author explores: the movement's relationship with other labour organizations; its cultural and social aspects (including the role sport played in co-operative societies); the politicization of the movement and local response to the formation of the Co-operative Party; the education of co-operators; what co-operative membership entailed and how co-operative ideology was expressed; the economic impact membership could have on families (including the provision of financial assistance and credit); and the co-operative movement's development alongside consumer activism. The book is a major national study of the growth of Co-operation during this crucial period of British social, economic and consumer history. Given the few modern scholarly works on Co-operation, it is a timely and much needed reassessment.

Chapter 1
The Co-operative Movement in Britain

The primary function of the co-operative movement is to promote and serve the interests of its members. In the nineteenth century, the Rochdale Pioneers established a society for the ‘benefit and the improvement of the social and domestic conditions of its members’. Each member had only one vote whatever their shareholding, and profits from the enterprise were distributed to members in proportion to the goods they purchased.¹ In the twenty-first century, these basic principles are no less relevant.

The movement continues to play a significant role within towns and cities by providing members with a broad range of services. As an article in the Observer noted, ‘You could almost live your life with the Co-op. Eat, drink, bank, insure, travel and die with it.’² The business ethic focused on self-help, social responsibility and democratic member control which remain of central importance to many consumers. As Martin Beaumont, Chief Executive of the Co-operative Group (2002–2007), declared: ‘At a time when communities are becoming increasingly dominated by a handful of large and impersonal business, we want to show UK consumers that there is a better alternative, one which is ultimately owned and controlled by them.’³ Although no longer relied upon as an essential component of the family’s economy, the ‘divi’ has been revived and enhanced, and the Community Dividend Scheme, where 1 per cent of the trading surplus is given to charities and the community,⁴ has been introduced.

This book explores the activities and experiences of the co-operative movement and its members, and its association with various communities, from 1914 to 1960. Community is an ambiguous concept with several different definitions. One of the most common meanings of ‘community’ is the spatial–geographical notion, where it is used to describe a particular locality and deal with groups, institutions and organisations in their specific local setting.⁵ Due to the democratic nature of the cooperative movement, this definition has particular relevance to the movement, and this book draws on the experiences of co-operative retail, political and educational committees at a grass roots level.

The type of ‘community’ envisaged by Robert Owen in the early nineteenth century comprised villages of co-operation in which people living and working there would produce goods to meet their own needs and, where necessary, exchange these with other villages on a co-operative basis.⁶ Termed the ‘complete community ideal’, this did not come to fruition. However, the notion of a ‘cooperative community’ evolved and became used by co-operative leadership to describe a ‘state within a state’ in which ‘almost every variety of the necessaries of life was … co-operatively produced’, whereby local societies, alongside the Co-operative Wholesale Society, would become ‘a practically self-supporting and self-employing community’.⁷ As Johnston Birchall describes:

In their encounter with the modern world, co-operators first tried to opt out into complete communities, but then changed tack; they found that by setting up different types of co-op within the existing society they could better serve their members’ needs. No doubt something was lost, but the vision of a co-operative commonwealth did not die; it merely changes shape, became more realistic.⁸

This book explores various facets of this so-called community of co-operative organisations, including the retail, educational and political aspects. It considers the interactions of these with each other, with consumer–members and with organisations outside of this co-operative community.

Yet a community of any type is not necessarily homogenous: it can become divided and undergo internal conflict. As Jeremy Black and Donald M. MacRaild have commented, ‘community’ is a value-loaded term, meaning different things to different people.⁹ A theme throughout the book is the multi-layered nature of cooperative membership and the different meanings members could draw from it.

In their discussion of the uses of the term ‘community’, Eileen and Stephen Yeo have explored the idea of community as service: service to a constructed, public entity. They describe the focus on buildings and institutions as the location of community life that tends to accompany this definition. To demonstrate this, they cite the definition of one of the studies of the Liverpool University Department of Social Science, which states that: ‘A community is constituted of neighbourhoods of different kinds, from the unskilled-labourer neighbourhood to the professional class neighbourhood. It requires playing fields, and a group of public buildings, churches, schools, a shopping centre and a community hall in a centralised position.’¹⁰ This has a particular resonance with the co-operative movement, as its shops, buildings and recreational spaces gave it a physical presence within towns and cities throughout Britain where it could occupy a central position within community life. The impact of the movement on the towns and cities in which it is based continues to be relevant to contemporary debate concerning public service reform.¹¹

Within this context, this study seeks to explore how co-operative retail societies served the community life of towns and cities not only in terms of providing shopping facilities and the impact they had on shopping habits, but also how the movement served the needs of consumers more broadly through its work in consumer protection and its political and educational activities. It examines the impact that retail societies, educational committees and co-operative parties had on the social and recreational life of the towns and cities in which they were situated. In this way, it engages with Savage’s study of how recreational activities could enable institutions to become established as neighbourhood organisations,¹² and considers how this can be applied to the co-operative movement. It also considers instances where the towns and cities in which individual societies were located had an impact on the co-operative movement rather than vice versa (for example, during periods of depression in the local economy).

Historical Approaches to the Co-operative Movement

The co-operative movement deserves to occupy an important place in economic and social history. Compared to the attention given by historians to the Labour Party and trade unions, however, it is generally under-represented in labour history. The role of the co-operative movement, as part of the labour movement, is only briefly mentioned in a number of prominent studies on labour history.¹³ Peter Gurney argues that one of the reasons leading to the marginalisation of the co-operative movement within historiography stems from the fact the post-war generation of labour historians was ‘drawn either to the more “heroic” phases of popular or working-class struggle’ or else to the history of institutions, namely the Labour Party and trade unions, whose power and influence were more clearly demonstrated during the period after the Second World War.¹⁴ Others have attributed the under-representation of the co-operative movement in this literature to the marginalisation of co-operation within the labour movement itself. Matthew Hilton has argued that the Fabians’ socialist vision dominated the Labour Party leadership and that as a result this, coupled with the apparent failure of the co-operative movement’s ‘revolutionary potential’, ensured that the labour movement as a whole did not adopt the alternative consumer-oriented politics that were promoted by co-operation.¹⁵ Yet the significance of the co-operative movement lies in the fact that it attempted to mobilise support around issues relating to consumption rather than production. Co-operators offered a very different vision, one that shifted the focus beyond male workers, wages and unionism, and broadened out to incorporate the ‘woman with the basket’, prices and consumerism.

For a considerable time, writing on the co-operative movement was limited to celebratory histories published by individual societies. Often compiled by members serving on the board of management of the individual societies, these were used to record the progress and achievement of co-operation in a particular town or city. Containing photographs of the stores and their personnel, they were published to coincide with special anniversaries in a society’s history (for example, the jubilee or centenary celebrations). These so-called ‘institutional histories’ continued to dominate much of the interest in the movement during the first half of the twentieth century, exemplified by work of Percy Redfern, G.D.H. Cole, Jack Bailey and Arnold Bonner.¹⁶ Although informative, the authors held important positions within the co-operative movement, or had a close association with it. This does not in itself devalue their work, but such connections need to be taken into account when using these institutional histories.

Other academic historians have not ignored the movement completely, with a variety of historical approaches being taken to the history and context of the co-operative movement. The co-operative movement has been featured in certain debates within labour history. The movement has been mentioned in the history and development of the Labour Party, although comments tend to be confined to a few generalised remarks relating to the controversies surrounding its relationship to politics or basic details concerning the committees on which its representatives served.¹⁷ The co-operative movement has also been incorporated into discussions of the existence or not of a labour aristocracy. Focusing on the nineteenth century, the co-operative movement is often cited as one of the voluntary associations connected with thrift and the social identity of the ‘respectable’ working man. A co-operative society’s commitment during this period to sell unadulterated produce, together with its rejection of the system of credit, were said to both embody and express the values of a labour aristocracy.¹⁸ Accounts of the working class and institutions central to working-class community life have often incorporated discussions of the co-operative movement, but have had a tendency to be dismissive of its role as a social movement. Paul Johnson’s work on the working-class economy in Britain provides an example of this. An invaluable work on a broad range of working-class saving institutions, this book devotes a whole chapter to the co-operative movement. However, the movement is reduced to merely a saving and credit institution, and membership closely associated with dividend collection.¹⁹

There was a tendency, therefore, within labour history and working-class history to use the movement as an example to support broader debates rather than studying the movement in its own right. In a sense, this stemmed from the fact that the history of co-operation fell between different spheres of interest. The dominant trend within labour history was to focus on the political and industrial spheres at the expense of those relating to the consumer. Yet attempts to broaden the agenda of labour history beyond the political history of militants and militancy towards the social and economic history of the working class, also had a tendency to dismiss the principles and ideals of the co-operative movement.²⁰

The exception here is work by Sidney Pollard. In the Essays in Labour History collections edited by Asa Briggs and John Saville, Pollard contributed two essays exploring various aspects of the co-operative movement. In the first, he argued for a degree of continuity between the ‘community building’ ideals of the first half of the nineteenth century and the ‘shopkeeping’ mentality from 1850 onwards.²¹ The essay...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• General Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 The Co-operative Movement in Britain
• 2 Co-operative Retail Societies and the Community
• 3 The Ideology behind the Shop Front
• 4 The Social–Cultural Milieu of the Co-operative Movement
• 5 ‘We seek to provide food for the mind’: the Educational Work of Co-operative Societies
• 6 Protecting the Consumer
• 7 The Co-operative Movement and Political Action
• 8 Workers and Consumers in Partnership? The Co-operative Movement as an Employer of Labour
• 9 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index