Thought for the Week: The cooperative vision
Nick Matthews reflects on the cooperative movement
A statue of Robert Owen, visionary mill-owner and father of cooperation, stands outside the Co-operative Bank in Manchester. His experiment at New Lanark, of providing housing for the workers and education for their children, had a huge impact. It inspired modern comprehensive education, the cooperative movement, trade unionism and even the garden cities movement. Interestingly, Owen credited Quaker John Bellers’ (1654-1725) work of 1695 ‘Colleges of Industry’ as one of his influences.
It was the turn of the twentieth century before the Cadburys created Bournville or the Rowntrees New Earswick. New Lanark is less well known. Threatened with collapse in 1812, it was rescued by Quaker investors, including the chemical manufacturer William Allen.
Owen, the atheist, had a troubled relationship with the Quakers. However, individual Friends stuck by him and, after he left in 1825, the Quaker Walker family took control of the business. While no democrat, Owen was enlightened for his time. He was a paternalist who rigidly controlled his workers. Many Quakers in business had similar attitudes to their work force. We see Quaker businesses, today, through rose coloured spectacles. Some had very poor industrial relations. Quakers Bryant and May formed the matchmaking business of the same name. It was the scene, in 1888, of one of the most infamous strikes in British history. The matchgirls struck for better conditions and security from the dreadful effects of white phosphorous. Louise Raw, in Striking a Light, describes William Bryant as a true Victorian villain: greedy, hypocritical, callous and deceitful.
The fact is, over time some Quaker businesses became the same as other businesses. Quaker enterprises had grown because in the early days of capitalism good ethics was good business. In James Walvin’s phrase: ‘their produce was sound, their prices fair, their services honest, their word good and their agreements honourable’. Business practices were underpinned as much by Quaker sociology as by good business sense. These businesses were undone by changes in that very sociology. Family businesses could not guarantee ethical behaviour across the generations. Of course, there was, and is, an alternative. Quaker Ernest Bader showed the way in 1951 when, as his biographer Susanna Hoe says, ‘he gave his company away’. Sixty-odd years later the Scott Bader Commonwealth still exists and is still owned by its workers.
The cooperative model is the business option that should appeal to democratic Friends today. Be they worker co-ops or consumer co-ops – if we have money to invest and business to transact we should, as far as possible, do it cooperatively. Cooperative values, the famous Rochdale principles, are as close to Quaker values as any modern business model. However, for cooperatives to work you need cooperators and participation. Friends should not only invest in and buy from cooperatives but become active members as well.
For a while, with attacks on cooperative and mutual businesses during the height of the boom, it looked like the co-op movement, too, would exist only in the history books. Despite demutualisation and other threats, the movement is growing again in exciting new areas like energy and telecoms. We should support it – not out of charity but out of solidarity. We should embrace the cooperative movement as our economic home.
Nick is the director of the Heart of England Co-operative Society and of Co-operatives UK
The International Day of Cooperatives is on 6 July 2013
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