Cooperating is a value, not a brand

Have you ever been to Beamish – the Living Museum of the North? If you haven’t, you should. It is a marvellous way of bringing our history and traditions to life. Connecting the old and the new, our past with our future.

Central to Beamish is the town – the row of terraced houses, the pub, the mason hall. And at the heart of all that is the Cooperative Store. This is not the same as any other store. It was run by a particular ethos, a particular set of values that made a real difference to communities.

Those values have rung true through the years and mean just as much now as they did 100 years ago. Co-ops are part of a better future where business works for those who work for them, power is evenly shared and people are the bottom line.

It is very fashionable these days to try to take politics out of public discourse. The outcry – for example – over the idea that Ed Miliband was going to “weaponise the NHS” was one where politics didn’t belong in a discussion of our key public services. It is profoundly wrong and profoundly undemocratic.

The Cooperative Movement have long recognised this. Which is why, almost 100 years ago,  they set up the Cooperative Party to be the voice of the movement in Parliament. They understood then what we still understand today. That to be able to redistribute power, you need to go to it’s source. That to change the way things work, you need to work in the legislature.. That cooperating on an individual scale is not enough. The values of the movement should be championed far beyond the movement itself.

The list of achievements of the Party is impressive, as is their list of candidates. These are people who will be dedicated to spreading these values at the highest echelons of our government. As someone who has sat on the National Policy Forum of the Labour Party, I have seen first hand how much influence our sister party has had over our policy process. And if you don’t believe me, then perhaps the words of Jon Cruddas – head of Labour’s Policy Review will convince you when he says:

“One Nation Labour under Ed Miliband is building a consensus around the devolution of power to people. It is about strengthening solidarity and subsidiarity. These are values that have always been at the root of the co-operative tradition. We need the Co-operative party driving forward this agenda.”

So given the advances the the Party has made on behalf of the movement, and the level of influence it is currently enjoying, it seems baffling to me that this is currently under threat. Every year, the AGM of the Cooperative Group votes on whether to stay affiliated to the Cooperative Party. Every year until now, the board have recommended they do so. For all the good reasons listed above. This year however, they are choosing to change their stance. They will offer “no recommendation”. Now that sound innocuous enough, but in fact is such a dramatic shift in position that the message of it is far from neutral. It is clear that some at the Cooperative Group wish to end this century old relationship. Though equally, as there are several new board members who have not yet been elected, it is unclear who this is precisely.

Now admittedly, the Cooperative Group have gone through a torrid old time of it lately. When that’s the case, I can understand emotionally the desire to retrench. But that is not the values of the Cooperative. This movement has never been about short term retrenchment, but always about looking to the horizon. This short-termist move will have such a damaging long term effect on the movement’s ability to create change that it simply makes no sense when help up against the values of the movement.

If the Cooperative Group takes itself out of championing wider cooperative values, it will become nothing more than a brand. As we wake up more and more to our power as consumers, to the need for different types of business models and the increasing interdependence of traditional and movement politics, this is a surprising and genuinely weird retrograde step. We should all make sure we don’t let them.

Find out more about the Keep It Coop campaign here.