Salter Lecture: Raise the sails

Ian Kirk-Smith reviews the Salter Lecture by Ed Mayo

by Ian Kirk-Smith 31st May 2013

This year the Salter Lecture, hosted annually by the Quaker Socialist Society, was given on Friday afternoon in the Large Meeting House by Ed Mayo, secretary general of Co-operatives UK.  He began by describing the present economic system as ‘failing, lamentably, to serve the needs of society’.  In an engaging, lucid and wide ranging lecture, entitled ‘Raise the sails as the wind is changing – how radical and alternative ideas have become our economic lifeline’, he presented a powerful case for the benefits of alternatives based on the cooperative model. He illustrated and supported his argument by drawing widely on examples from Britain in the past and the present.