We need innovative forms of public ownership, not state-run corporations

When I am chatting to my constituents about being a Co-op Member of Parliament, many of them talk passionately about the Co-operative shops and institutions they remember growing up. Those of a certain age can quote proudly their mother’s co-op divvy number. There is a strong residual affection and affinity with the co-op, in Redcar and in most working-class towns and neighbourhoods. The co-op recalls a time when people shopped locally, spending wages earned locally, at local institutions in which they had a personal stake.

Local co-operatives were part of a wider pattern of ownership and membership. Working-class communities were enriched by membership and subscription-based organisations, from the working men’s clubs, the miners’ welfare clubs and the British Legion to the church, chapel, trade union and Christmas club. People belonged to things, learned the skills of organisation, engaged with their neighbours and communities. They felt a sense of ownership over at least some aspects of their lives.

Over the past 50 years, we have swapped the strong society for the virtual one. People are lonely and disconnected from one another. Social media can bring people together, but it can also drive them apart. Buying online is convenient and fun, but it removes all social interaction. People sign up to virtual communities, but the fabric of local communities is fraying, with many local groups struggling to retain members. The result is a feeling of powerlessness. People feel that decisions taken about them are taken without them.

In Redcar, we know that feeling. Where once firms like British Steel and ICI created local jobs, and the local authorities built houses and ran our schools, we are now buffeted by the decisions of distant corporations, shadowy offshore firms and people who could not point to Redcar on a map. Globalisation is the catch-all term for this but there is no question that the forces that shape our lives – the brands we wear, the origin of our food, the companies that run our steel works and then flee leaving the community high and dry – all come from far away shores. They are distant and unaccountable.

It is not a coincidence that the slogan that took hold in the referendum was ‘take back control’. While technology is giving us new forms of control and in the palm of our hand, too many people feel they have too little control or agency over the wider forces that shape their lives, from the hours they have to work and the transport they rely on to the care their elderly relative receives.

As the new chair of the Co-operative Party, it is obvious that I believe the answer lies in alternative forms of social, financial, industrial and retail organisation, based on co-operative principles. I am very proud of the impact of today’s co-ops. There are over 7,000 independent co-operatives operating across the UK – in every sector from food to farming to funerals. Almost 235,000 people make a living in the co-operative sector, which has a £36.1bn turnover and 13.1 million members. That’s the equivalent of a fifth of the UK’s population. But I am ambitious to go much further. We are currently celebrating the contribution this movement makes to our economy and society through ‘Co-operatives fortnight’ – a fantastic opportunity to highlight the diverse, vibrant work happening across the economy.

If you consider any of the problems that beset our country, it is hard to think of one to which a co-operative is not an important part of the answer. The lack of affordable housing can be fixed with more co-operative housing. The problems of spiralling personal debt and ‘legal loan sharks’ can be tackled with credit unions, run by and for their members. Schools and colleges can be co-operatively run, not to mention leisure centres, libraries, nurseries, cafes, pubs, clubs, social care, energy companies, micro-breweries, football clubs and local businesses. The greatest challenge of all – climate change – will only be tackled with co-operative approaches to economic production and distribution, not the rapacious capitalism which has destroyed our environment.

I welcome the Labour Party’s commitment to double the size of the co-operative sector of the economy, but I want us to be far more radical and revolutionary. In 2017 Labour presented a manifesto filled with pledges to end private companies’ involvement in our public services, from water to the National Grid. But what was missing was innovative forms of public ownership to replace them. It would be a huge mistake to replace private corporations for public ones – equally monolithic, distant and unaccountable, probably run by the same people sitting in the same offices. We know that only truly accountable and democratic public ownership with embedded co-operative values and principles will derive the maximum public benefit for the country and restore trust.

Take the railway. There is obviously an appetite to end private companies’ franchises in running railway services, but I’m not sure replacing train operating companies with civil servants at the Department of Transport will make the trains any better. No, we need to be more radical than a return to British Rail. We need locally-owned, accountable, ethical co-operative transport systems, integrating buses, trains and airports, run for the community and the customer, not for profit.

When I set up the Co-Operative Councils Network in 2011 with the Co-operative Party and some of the pioneering Labour and Co-operative councils around the country, we had a vision to challenge the way local government so often did things ‘to’ people, not with them. We knew the skills, expertise and that so many communities had to offer and saw a local government world that too often treated local people as a problem to be solved rather than the solution to those problems. What inspired me then was the range and ingenuity of local co-operatives, and the creativity and energy they unleash. Today, I look at a council like Preston, recently voted ‘most improved’, and see co-operative principles at work.

The next Labour government has the potential to change our society, but only if it has the confidence to truly give power to the people, not state-run corporations. People in Redcar want to take back control from London bureaucrats and overseas profiteers – and co-operative principles are the answer to that legitimate and urgent demand.