MUTUAL AID 150 YEARS OF CO-OPERATION IN LINCOLNSHIRE

Book Review

150 Years of Lincolnshire Co-operative by Alan Middleton, Published by Lincolnshire Co-operative Ltd 2011. ISBN No: 978-0-904327-11-3



I love histories of Co-operative Societies although they are of variable quality so I was delighted by my first impression of this book as it is a stunningly produced illustrated history of one hundred and fifty years of retail co-operation in Lincolnshire. Having read it however I see it also contains a very important extended essay, using Lincolnshire as a case study, of the ingredients for successful retail co-operation. Author Alan Middleton and Editor in Chief Ursula Lidbetter deserve credit in producing a book which not only marks a significant milestone but is also an important contribution to the thinking about the future of retail co-operation.



The story, whilst told in relatively few words, sets the formation and development of the society in its social and economic context yet does not avoid the challenges along the way. It is one of continuous development but there is no sense of inevitability about it. It is clear that at key moments the Society could have taken a different road and there are important lessons for the way in which decisions where taken and how those vital relationships between managers and members where fostered and how together they overcome difficulties in maintaining growth and development.



A recurring issue that would not have concerned the pioneers but has been vital to the society’s success – is the importance of good corporate governance. Alan Middleton who served the Society as a director for 40 years, a good part of the society’s history, is a champion of good governance for co-operative societies and through this history he explores its importance as a driver of success.



There is insufficient space in a short review to describe all the twists and turns in this history but what we can see is that from its inception it is a Society that is both fiercely independent and yet deeply embedded in the community it serves. From when the Lincoln Equitable Industrial Co-operative Society was founded in 1861 by Thomas Parker a joiner from Gainsborough and began trading from 1, Napoleon Place Lincoln, when goods where sold only for ready money and after the first quarter they had 74 members and where able to pay out a dividend of nine old pence, the society’s mission was the “domestic, social and intellectual advancement of its members.”



In 1863 the society asked its members, “to have faith in the lovely principle of co-operation and cast your mountain of woe unto the sea.” By 1876 they had established an education committee and having raised £18 from concerts and readings opened a reading room twenty years before Lincoln’s first public library. By 1898 when Peter Kropotkins, Fields, Factories and Workshops was published the society was mentioned in passing for its work in horticulture and in rural areas an issue which commands a couple of chapters in the book and marks its expansion from the City of Lincoln to the wider county.



Today the Society is still deeply committed to its locality not just by sourcing local produce but by also using its property portfolio to drive countywide economic development. In modern times the Society has thanks to that good corporate governance been blessed by outstanding leadership in the form of Keith Darwin, another Gainsborough boy, and Lincoln born Ursula Lidbetter. Between them since 1992 in just 20 years they have thoroughly modernised the Society taking the turnover from £130million to over £270million, tripling the profit to over £20million and enabling a fourfold increase in dividend to £4million.



Mere statistics however undervalue the importance of the Society to the life of the county. In a spirit of Kroptkin’s Mutual Aid the Society established and continues to support Lincolnshire Co-operative Development Agency and the Society has ensured his other work the Conquest of Bread with its own bakery which supplies bread to others as well as its own stores.



So to what do we attribute the society’s success? Alan Middleton offers the following, “The Board of any co-operative society is key to its success or failure. With the introduction of professional management in the 1940’s it became necessary to establish the correct balance between them and the board. It would take many years to get this to the very best level. However, more than anything it is the willingness of the Lincolnshire board to do its job and only its job, and to do it well, that sets it apart from so many boards of societies long gone.” A lesson for consumer co-operators everywhere.



In Fields, Farms and Factories Kropotkin wanted to reunite the brain worker and the manual worker which he felt had been separated by the division of labour. Lincoln shows how workers by hand and brain can be successfully united and I warmly recommend this book not only as a beautiful embellishment to any co-operative coffee table but as an important education tool for how to run a modern retail co-operative society.