Learning from history

What can Co-operative Development learn from history? As the Welsh Government considers a proposed ‘Co-operative Commission’ to help pave the way for innovative co-operative development in Wales, what lessons can history teach us?

With all the attention being given to the merits of the John Lewis employee model of co-operation, is it not time that we focus upon different co-operative models and the role that service user members of co-operatives can play?

Robert Owen (1771–1858) is considered the father of the co-operative movement and was indeed a great social reformer. However, Owen was a patrician who sought to organise self-help action for people.

If Owen inspired the co-operative movement, others – such as Dr William King (1786–1865) – took his ideas and made them more practical and workable. King believed in starting small, and realised that people would need to organise co-operatives for and by themselves.

King founded ‘The Co-operator’ a monthly periodical, giving a mixture of co-operative philosophy and practical advice about running a shop using co-operative principles. Even without the Internet the message traveled widely and quickly, especially where Chartists had tilled the ground.

Members running a shop, purchasing wholesale, and sharing what they called a surplus, distributed as a ‘divi’ according to purchases worked a treat, with some of the surplus used for co-operative education. With unadulterated food why would members want to shop anywhere else? No wonder such shops spread like wild fire, whilst Owen was in USA.

Thus we have the beginnings of the world wide consumer co-operative movement. This is quite distinct from worker or producer co-operatives where only the workers have a stake in the business.

In guiding our future thinking about the development of the co-operative movement in all areas, the patrician, versus the self-help model of voluntary association, is particularly helpful, especially with care co-operatives.

All co-operatives are defined by the fact that they grant ‘control rights’ to stakeholders and members. They are distinct from conventional non-profit distributing voluntary organisations, which are essentially defined by the constraint on profit distribution.

In the co-operative structure, it is the element of member control and the member ownership of the co-operative that defines both their culture and operation. They are ‘in addition’ rather than ‘instead of’ public services. Neither a quick fix, nor an opt out for the government’s responsibilities.

As leading Canadian co-operative elder care expert John Restakis reminds us, where service users are also members, the operation of ‘control rights’ has the capacity to transform the user from being merely a passive recipient of care, to the potential for active engagement in the design, delivery and improvement of the service*.

The advantage of multi stakeholder co-operatives involving service users and workers is that social care becomes a shared outcome between caregiver and care receiver. This element is fundamental to the reform of social care systems.

To support this model of social care Wales Progressive Co-operators and Cartrefi Cymru have arranged for Jean-Pierre Girard, a leading practitioner from Quebec, to visit Cardiff on 7^th and 8^th February 2012 to amplify the importance of reciprocity, accessibility and accountability^.

This will celebrate UN Year of Co-operatives 2012 by The Co-operative Cymru/Wales, Public Health Alliance Cymru and the Welsh Food Alliance who are funding his visit.

It will also support an ‘Inquiry process’ and contribute to the long-term success of the proposed ‘Co-operative Commission’.

*Humanising the Economy’ New Society Publishers ISBN 978-0-86571-651-3

Details can be found at http://bit.ly/WalesQuebec.  With large demand, an overspill meeting with Jean-Pierre has been arranged for Wednesday 8th February in Cardiff at Cartrefi Cymru offices.