Cameron's Conservative Co-operative Movement

[michael harriott]

Many members of the left vote tactically to keep the conservatives out. If you have a look at the Lib Dems policy on Co-operatives or the Nationalists in Wales and Scotland, or even the Greens, it is hard to wonder why any member of the Co-operative Party would ever vote labour, given that the labour Government has not passed any Co-operative Laws in Government time.

The fundamental point is that the Co-operative Party discriminates against members of tje Co-operative Movement and betrays one of our Principles of Open and Voluntary membership. I am not sure what other organisation calls its self a Co-operative and then discriminates against so many members.

[Phil Gaskin]

Are you saying that worker co-ops, membership of which is open only to those who are employees, are betraying our co-operative principles??

The co-operative party link is voted on by society members when approving the respective society's budgets/annual reports etc - which include membership, community dividend, co-op party etc etc.

I'm not personally a member of the co-op group Joe - but I'm happy to direct you towards your own society federal structure which may help clarify some of the points you seem a little unclear of, particularly in respect of your comments relating to 4.5 million members.

And yes - as a former co-op society employee (for the best part of 10 years), working as a membership officer, I have seen and heard of the ICA Principles.

I suggest you ask your local co-op society what membership training programmes are available in your area, or get in touch with the co-operative college, who provide excellent understanding values and principles opportunities. Knowing the ICA Statement of Values and Principles (and quoting it like you've swallowed a co-op dictionary) is 1 thing - actually putting those V&P into practice is another.

Phil.

[MJR]

Are you saying that worker co-ops, membership of which is open only to those who are employees, are betraying our co-operative principles??

Grrr. Membership of worker cooperatives is open to workers not only employees. Please don't screw that up.

Other than that, the point was fine: if retail cooperative members don't want their cooperative to engage with the party, propose it stops. I doubt that will get far in most of them yet, but maybe its appearance as a proposal will inspire some action from the party.

Anyway, no-one wants to riff on the former Cooperatives-UK/Cooperative Party link? Cool.

[joeturner]

Are you saying that worker co-ops, membership of which is open only to those who are employees, are betraying our co-operative principles??

No, if you read carefully, I was saying that the situation whereby Co-op A's policies are determined by Co-op B's members (when Co-op B's members are not members of Co-op A) is betraying co-op principles.

The co-operative party link is voted on by society members when approving the respective society's budgets/annual reports etc - which include membership, community dividend, co-op party etc etc I'm not personally a member of the co-op group Joe - but I'm happy to direct you towards your own society federal structure which may help clarify some of the points you seem a little unclear of, particularly in respect of your comments relating to 4.5 million members.

First I think you are mistaking the Co-op Group and/or consumer co-operatives for the 'co-operative movement'. Second I suggest you read the press release from the co-op group:

On Sunday 29 July 2007, The Co-operative Group and United Co-operatives amalgamated. The new Society is the world’s largest consumer co-operative with a turnover of £9.4bn, 4.5 million members and 87,500 employees.

There are 4000+ co-ops in the UK affiliated to Co-operatives UK. The consumer co-ops comprise less than 20. I do not need to be a member of the Group or a regional consumer co-operative to have an understanding and affinity to the co-operative moment.

And yes - as a former co-op society employee (for the best part of 10 years), working as a membership officer, I have seen and heard of the ICA Principles.

I suggest you ask your local co-op society what membership training programmes are available in your area, or get in touch with the co-operative college, who provide excellent understanding values and principles opportunities. Knowing the ICA Statement of Values and Principles (and quoting it like you've swallowed a co-op dictionary) is 1 thing - actually putting those V&P into practice is another.

Phil.

I've no need to ask my local co-op society about membership training. What are you talking about?

3980ish co-operatives include members which vote Tory, Labour, Green, Raving Loony, and for all I know BNP and Mr Beenie. We have already heard that even members of the Co-op Party do not vote Labour This is hardly surprising as most people do not join a co-operative to put forward a political opinion. As far as I know, political affiliation is only an issue for a single co-op: the Co-op Party.

You have still to show how I have gone 'on such an hysterical and uninformed rant'. Everything you have stated has only served to prove my point.

MJR - I can't find your original post, but if there is a link between Co-operatives UK and the Co-op Party, I will gladly propose a motion at Congress to sever it.

[joeturner]

MJR wrote an age ago

I agree about Labour exclusivity being a bad thing - the (now-removed?) link to the Co-op Party was one of the things that deterred me from undertaking the Cooperatives UK membership application marathon until recently.

According to the Co-operatives UK annual statement 2006 section 16 subsection d)

(d) Co-operative Party
Co-operatives UK maintained a fund on behalf of the Party up to 31 December 2005 which amounted to
£156,240. The Party, as from 1st January 2006, registered as a separately registered I&P society and as a
result all funds were paid over to them during 2006.

I think this means no further payments are made by Co-operatives UK to the Co-op Party.

[MJR]

I suggest you ask your local co-op society what membership training programmes are available in your area, or get in touch with the co-operative college, who provide excellent understanding values and principles opportunities. Knowing the ICA Statement of Values and Principles (and quoting it like you've swallowed a co-op dictionary) is 1 thing - actually putting those V&P into practice is another.

I've no need to ask my local co-op society about membership training. What are you talking about?

I think Phil is suggesting taking one of the retail cooperatives training courses. At least tCG seems to offer some in-person membership training. I've been on one of the Cooperative Group South-West regional training days and I knew some of it (I've been a member of Anglia Regional CS and now tCG for a few years and been to a few meetings), but I still learnt some new things.

However, I've not been impressed with what I've seen from the cooperative college: I think they produced the online training materials on tCG's membership website which appear to require Adobe products to view (thereby breaking the "See It Right" promise of tCG's membership website yet again). I've visited the college's own website and never found what I was looking for. I've not dealt with them in person, so maybe they're all wonderful educators who are merely clueless about the web. Maybe someone would like to describe the opportunities they offer and how to access them?

Putting the V&P into practice is probably the scariest thing about being a member of a small cooperative. We try, but are we doing it right? There's always a worry about whether we are making it clear enough, but not letting it dominate our communications. No-one pays us directly for V+P checking, so it's easy to let it slide. Also, some principles are very easy to question, so there's a need to avoid defending oneself too aggressively when questioned.

As to the CUK/Party link, I understand that it was severed, as described above. Does anyone want to bring it back?

[joeturner]

I think Phil is suggesting taking one of the retail cooperatives training courses. At least tCG seems to offer some in-person membership training. I've been on one of the Cooperative Group South-West regional training days and I knew some of it (I've been a member of Anglia Regional CS and now tCG for a few years and been to a few meetings), but I still learnt some new things.

However, I've not been impressed with what I've seen from the cooperative college: I think they produced the online training materials on tCG's membership website which appear to require Adobe products to view (thereby breaking the "See It Right" promise of tCG's membership website yet again). I've visited the college's own website and never found what I was looking for. I've not dealt with them in person, so maybe they're all wonderful educators who are merely clueless about the web. Maybe someone would like to describe the opportunities they offer and how to access them?

I'm sure you are correct, and I am sure there is value in attending courses put on by tCG. However I fail to understand why my criticism of the Co-op Party is remedied by attending a course.

I have met Co-op College staff (isn't Congress a wonderful thing?) who all seem to be bright, knowledgeable and helpful. It strikes me that their main (if not only) purpose is to provide training to staff and people elected to positions in consumer co-operatives. I don't think they have a lot to offer small co-ops, though I could be quite wrong.

Putting the V&P into practice is probably the scariest thing about being a member of a small cooperative. We try, but are we doing it right? There's always a worry about whether we are making it clear enough, but not letting it dominate our communications. No-one pays us directly for V+P checking, so it's easy to let it slide. Also, some principles are very easy to question, so there's a need to avoid defending oneself too aggressively when questioned.

As to the CUK/Party link, I understand that it was severed, as described above. Does anyone want to bring it back?

I completely agree. On the other hand, being the self declared political voice of the co-operative movement, the Co-op Party has a special responsibility to practice what it preaches.

But ultimately, it is really of very little consequence as others have stated above.

[Phil Gaskin]

Joe,

The Co-operative Party has been extremely successful at promoting co-operative values and principles both across the co-operative movement (I do not confuse the consumer co-ops as the movement by the way) and also within government.

I'm afraid it's just a shame that there are elements within the co-op movement which seem never to be satisfied with anything.

There are a wide variety of discussion threads on co-opnet which demonstrate that the co-op party is either dismissed as a do nothing sell out to New Labour - or that what it campaigns on is not "true co-operation".

These discussion threads actually say more about those making such claims than they do about the co-op party. There is an incredibly unhealthy tendency within some elements of the co-operative movement to either seek "co-operative absolutism" or to just criticise the efforts of others. This is reflected, not just in comments about the co-op party. If you look through previous discussions you'll see that the co-op bank, social enterprises, the government, the Labour Party, consumer co-op societies, frequently come in for a bashing - and it's often the "usual suspects" who do the bashing.

However - the truth is, a I say - that the co-op party has been extremely successful in promoting co-operative values and principles, right to the heart of government.

Could it do more - yes of course - should it be given more credit and stronger support from within the co-op movement - absolutely.

Not sure you'll agree with me - but there we go.

My comments about V&P training at the co-op college were intended to be constructive.

Phil.

[MJR]

There is an incredibly unhealthy tendency within some elements of the co-operative movement to either seek "co-operative absolutism" or to just criticise the efforts of others. This is reflected, not just in comments about the co-op party. If you look through previous discussions you'll see that the co-op bank, social enterprises, the government, the Labour Party, consumer co-op societies, frequently come in for a bashing - and it's often the "usual suspects" who do the bashing. [...]
Could it do more - yes of course - should it be given more credit and stronger support from within the co-op movement - absolutely.

I'll give the Party credit for what it has achieved and I'll support it in some ways, but I'm not comfortable with supporting it with membership at the moment. I think certain other cooperators should respect that decision a bit more instead of suggesting that cooperators should join the Party just because it is the cooperative party. I'm not trying to tell its members that they should leave the Party, after all. Anyway: make the argument based on what it does, not merely what it is.

I think the comments about "just criticise" are partly unfair. Sometimes that's all we're allowed to do for the first N years, as some of the decision-making processes in the older cooperatives are not very open and transparent to new members who are more familiar with direct democracy. What can we do to stop the Cooperative Group exhibiting its universality complex and referring to itself as *the* co-op, for example? We raise it at meetings and so on, but there are often more immediate important issues to deal with and there are many elected reps who aren't members of any other cooperative and/or unwilling to cede the universality - probably understandable, as it does work in the group's favour in many ways, even if it makes life harder for others.

I suspect the "social enterprise" concept (but not many individual SEs) is fair game for bashing - it often behaves like a private enterprise wolf in cooperative sheep's clothing to me. Why don't we talk plainly about cooperatives?

[MJR]

Cooperatives-UK have finally commented on CCM. http://www.cooperatives-uk.coop/News/conservativeCo-ops

[Richard Bickle]

Just to respond to the questions about the relationship between Co-operatives UK (previously the Co-operative Union) and the Co-operative Party, as I understand it, the history and present position are as follows.

During the nineteenth century there were huge debates within the movement about the politics of co-operation - was 'Co-operation' part of a bigger socialist project, was it an over-arching ideology of its own, was it just and a-political tool for meeting its members needs? etc.

Having seen earlier generations of co-ops torn apart by ideological in-fighting, or dissolved in order to share out the collective assets amongst the members, the Rochdale Pioneers adopted 2 very important rules which were a large part of why their organisation was so successul and widely replicated - political and religious neutrality, and distribution of surplus in proportion to trade.

Some factional co-ops were created - according to Birchall (1993) including a Rochdale Conservative Co-operative Society which went bust a few years later. There were also rival Protestant and Catholic societies in some mining villages in County Durham until the 1960s, but these were very much the exceptions rather than the rule.

By the early 20th century, working class support for the Liberal Party (whose members by the way set up co-ops in places like Stowmarket in Suffolk) was turning roundly to 'Labour' candidates and the Labour Representation Committee was set up by the trades unions to organise this process (bcoming the Labour Party shortly afterwards). Again the call went up from some co-ops to become an integral part of this process as equal partners with the unions. However, a majority of societies were so wedded to the principle of neutrality that no such agreement could be reached and a handful (such as Royal Arsenal in South East London) affiliated to the Labour Party directly.

The turning point of attitudes came during the first world war when the movement's capitalist competitors used their political influence to ensure that conscription of staff and assets for the war effort was arranged to disadvantage the co-op movement as much as possible. As a result the 1917 Co-operative Congress passed a resolution calling on the Co-operative Union to set up a sub-committee of its Central Executive which became the Co-operative Party to get co-operators elected to Parliament. Even then, many societies dissented from this move and the proposal was only passed on condition that the party was funded by an additional voluntary subscription from member societies and that its funds were ring-fenced from the rest of the Co-operative Union's funds. Therefore, elections for what became the Party NEC were restricted to subscribing societies only.

While candidates were run in a handful of elections over the ensuing year (and a Co-operative MP elected for Kettering), it was clear that splitting the popular working class vote with Labour was not only counter-productive for both parties but was unlikely to lead to election success for the Co-op Party which was smaller, newer and less well resourced. Therefore, an election agreement was reached in 1918 whereby candidates selected by the Co-op Party could be nominated for selection as Labour candidates too and, if successful, would run as 'Labour and Co-operative'.

Until the 1980s, membership of the Co-op Party was open to all co-operators. The restriction whereby members must not belong to another party unless it is the Labour Party were only introduced to counter fears of infiltration by entryist organisations such as Militant.

By the end of the 20th century questions about standards in public life were being raised widely and political parties were required to be registered, and for their funding to become more transparent. There was a very real possiblity that the Co-operative Union/Co-operatives UK might have to register itself as a party in order to comply. This was potentially detrimental to its activities both as a trade association (which requires it to work with all parties and the civil service), and as a representative body of co-ops which did not wish to have any party link themsleves.

It was also noted that there was a bizarre characteristic of the governance of the 2 organisations whereby the Party's National Eecutive Committee was technically a sub-committee of Co-ops UK, but was elected directly by the Party's affiliated societies and individual members so was not subject to its putative parent body's control! While Co-ops UK had 1 respresentative and the CUK Chief Executive and General Secretary attended ex-officio, this was clearly potentially problematic. For example, Party staff were actually appointed by the Party NEC, but theoretically line-managed into Co-ops UK, and CUK was legally responsible for the Party's liabilities but had no control over their management.

Therefore, the Party was floated off a couple of years ago as an independent IPS. C UK still has the same representation on its NEC as before (1 rep and 1 ex-officio member) and retains a 'golden share' right of veto over constitutional changes, but otherwise the 2 organisations are completely separate.

Hope that helps,

Richard.

[MJR]

Thanks for that very informative reply!

In other news, cooperative futures still haven't corrected those PDFs about LLPs.

[dan]

MJR, you do seem to be on a downer on Co-operative Futures!

I have had a look at the PDF's in question. They do need a bit of updating. One of the forms states that that Partnerships are unincorporated, and then says in brackets that you can have a limited liability partnership. It would be good for the this form to be made clearer, and the other one updated to llp's in the comparison of legal forms.

However, I am sure if you go to most websites you can find something that is out of date. It does not mean the organisation is flawed. (They did put on a very good conference for CDB's!) I think I bit more of the co-operative spirit could be applied here instead of the negativity.

[MJR]

MJR, you do seem to be on a downer on Co-operative Futures! [...] I think I bit more of the co-operative spirit could be applied here instead of the negativity.

Well, I probably don't like CF just now, but only just. Here's why:-

I start by believing good of others and especially cooperatives. So +2 points for CF.

Their conference reduced the natural benefit of its location to their neighbour cooperatives by sponsoring only accommodation (using funding partly from two of my consumer cooperatives IIRC) and not offering a day rate - disappointing, but not a big or unusual problem, so subtract only a fraction of a point for that.

CF are giving confusing advice to cooperative start-ups, which means my worker cooperative is less likely to get LLP colleagues that would help to fix the various problems with LLP coop support and have all sorts of other benefits, so I really dislike this: -1 point.

In a spirit of cooperation, I let them know (by two different routes before I got a reply IIRC) and it's now over three months to fix it since one of their workers said they'll look into it. How long does it take to minimally fix two PDFs or include a note on their download page? Either they're struggling, their worker misled me (perhaps only by omission of when they'll look into it), they disagree about the suitability of LLPs or something else, but I can't really think of a nice explanation. (For comparison, I've four tasks at work which have taken that long, they're all complicated and all the people involved are aware of the schedule to completion.) I don't know whether the organisation is generally flawed or not, but I like it less now. Also, they don't cooperate with me either: I'm not allowed to issue corrected versions of their publications or add notes to their web site. -1 point altogether.

How should I apply a spirit of cooperation now? I can't see a good way to cooperate with CF in this situation - it's just spending my time with no benefit to anyone.

But, in a spirit of cooperation, I want to make others aware this situation remains and hopefully potential startups will contact good CDBs, such as Somerset Cooperative Services, instead.

[ChrisCook]

I think that the failure to use the LLP as a framework (as opposed to an "organisation") for cooperation and collaboration - whether or not a particular enterprise chooses to take the form - is probably the biggest missed opportunity the Cooperative movement has at the moment.

In Scotland - where I am now based - they are breaking out all over the place, even in the public sector, where City Of Glasgow is involved as a member in no less than three.

When LLP's are used in relation to property - particularly land and intellectual property - care needs to be taken, and more prescriptive legal agreements used, but for pure "people businesses" such as worker coops the agreements necessary are dead simple, can usually be drafted in bullet form by the members (which I think you said you did, MJR), and then drawn up or "debugged" by a lawyer if the members think it necessary.

Law is Code: it's just that the programmers are paid many times too much

I think the LLP has simply been put in the "too difficult" box in the hope that it will go away, and in the meantime loads of LLP's are springing up all over the place which while not TECHNICALLY coops are in fact INHERENTLY Cooperative.

Best Regards

Chris Cook