Time for a Moratorium on the Use of “John Lewis Model”!

It is getting to the point that every time I hear a Tory or Liberal (or for that matter a New Labour) politician use the term “John Lewis Model” I want to scream! Never in the history of political discourse has a term been so misused by so many, so often!

Yet even I as a student and teacher of co-operation and co-operative business forms I have no idea what this all encompassing “John Lewis Model” as used by politicians’ is.

It is clearly from the way this phrase is used that the user is banking on the hearer having some vague well meaning niceness come to mind. A sort of warm organic Duchy Original waitrosian ambrosia from our one of our own farms.

Of course we are all familiar with the technique from our child hood readings of that political classic Alice Through the Looking Glass.
“When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”'
“The question is”' said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,”' said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that's all.”
Well this week its Nick Clegg’s turn to be master. He wants the “John Lewis Model” to “do something” about corporate governance in the UK and at the same time improve labour productivity.

How interesting. And how does he intend this to work. Apparently by allowing workers to ask for shares. Now that too sounds familiar but I am not sure that Nick has read the right book this time as this is more Oliver Twist than Alice Through the Looking Glass. “Please Sir, Can I have some more?”
You would be amazed at how many problems the “John Lewis Model” can solve. A Google search gave me 135,000 references in 25 seconds.
It is going to solve all our problems in funding the public sector, empower people, giving people control of community centre, libraries, swimming pools, schools, etc etc. Once the “John Lewis Model” takes hold it will be like the second coming. All the bosses will be kind and all the workers will be grateful.
All will be well in the world there will be no capitalists and the purpose of all economic organisation will be to make workers happy. Oh happy days!

But wait a moment have all these politicians really understood what dear old John Spedan Lewis actually did? He did not give workers a smattering of shares, or having sacked them offered them the chance to compete from a position on the pavement. Talk of the “John Lewis Model” in the NHS is particularly pernicious as if the NHS are going to give their staff a hospital and all the equipment that goes with it!

No John Spedan Lewis actually gave them the whole company - all of it - every shop, office and warehouse.

The whole business is owned in Trust for the workers and they have a complex but nonetheless a real form of democratic control over the business.

Is this really what Tory and Liberal politicians are advocating – interestingly New Labour types only began advocating “John Lewis models” and eulogising co-operation generally either just as they are about to leave or just after having left office like a form of radical chic.

Are they really advocating giving the entire NHS to the people who work in it under a form of workers control with the sole purpose of running it to make those self same workers happy?

And are they advocating buying all the shares in BP then giving them to the workers setting up an international workers BP parliament and encouraging the workers to run the oil giant solely to make them happy?

It is worth remembering that John Spedan Lewis set up the Partnership in 1929 not from a fit of philanthropy but from a fit of anti-communism. He gave the firm to the workers because ultimately he was frightened, as he saw it, of something far worse.
That fear of something worse is exactly what drives the Tories and Liberals today they throw sand in our eyes with talk of the blessed “John Lewis Model” because they have no interest in giving workers their due and they merely want to put workers off taking that which already belongs to them.

In the public sector they are trying to sell to workers what they already own and in the private offer a few crumbs from the top table. We saw with the sale of Northern Rock to Virgin Money that the government have no interest whatsoever in co-operatives, or mutual’s, worker or otherwise.

The fact is if we want workers control and more co-operative ownership we will have to do it for ourselves. Of course John Lewis and other workers co-ops are a good thing so are other co-operative forms and workers would be acting in their own interests by joining and forming co-ops, investing and shopping with them, for everything from food, to telecoms, to energy and anything else they feel they need and goodness me Britain needs a bigger co-operative sector. But there are no short cuts; this kind of philanthropic giveaway is the exception not the rule no one is going to give workers anything.

So the next time you hear a coalition politician going on about the “John Lewis model” remember in their hands this model has less life in it than one of the dummies in the windows of John Lewis’s Oxford Street store!