This year marks a century and half since the death of Robert Owen in 1858. The 2008 Society for Co-op Studies Conference is to be held appropriately at the New Lanark Mill Hotel, part of the New Lanark World Heritage Site, from 11-14th September and is titled, New Views of Society: Robert Owen for the 21st Century.
It is hard to do justice to Owen, in 1880 Frederick Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, “Every social movement, every real advance in England on behalf of the workers links itself on to the name of Robert Owen. He forced through in 1819, after five years’ fighting, the first law limiting the hours of labour of women and children in factories. He was president of the first Congress at which all the Trade Unions of England united in a single great trade association. He introduced as transition measures to the complete communistic organisation of society on the one hand, co-operative societies for retail trade and production.”
Owens ideas took a radical turn from his experience of managing what was the largest cotton spinning factory in Europe. New Lanark is a world of its own, set deep in the spectacular Clyde valley, almost cut off from the outside world, the Clyde falls providing the power to drive the mills. A lack of enthusiasm for his ideas amongst his business partners was resolved when he formed a partnership with a group of mainly Quaker backers to buy the New Lanark Mills giving him a free hand.
He set about improving the factory workers lives with better housing, healthy food, education and better working conditions. He formed a sick fund and a savings bank as well as a company store that ploughed its profits back into the community. His rigid monitoring and control of the workforce together with the application of new technologies paid off with a substantial increase in productivity and profitability.
His big idea was that a person’s environment had an impact on the formation of their character. Education was the core of Owenite philosophy – the idea that through the education of future generations a better world could be created is essentially the underpinning idea of all modern education. The turning point in Owens thinking seems to have stemmed from his meeting anarchist political philosopher William Godwin. His thinking about how to apply the lessons from New Lanark to wider society developed with meetings with Godwin and radical Francis Place and political economist James Mill. It was Pace and Mill who edited his essay “A New View of Society” giving it a depth and clarity that is absent from his later writings.
To celebrate Owen’s 80th birthday in 1851, a public meeting was held in London. Owen urged his audience to continue their efforts to “well educate, well employ, well place and cordially unite the human race.” The thousand strong crowd included Karl Marx who wrote to Engels that, “in spite of fixed ideas the old man was loveable and ironical.”
Today whilst New Lanark Mill Hotel, in a converted mill, is one of the great places to stay, Owens combination of social control and paternalism seems rather autocratic. He was from a different time - a reformer but no democrat. Many of his ideas however, like labour exchanges, gave us a vision of a possible alternative future. Engels said he gave us the, “practical proof that the merchant and the manufacturer are socially quite unnecessary.”
Owen was a utopian thinker there are many flaws in his “new view of society” but we will always need those who have the vision to see that another world is possible. Unless we can imagine a different future we can not even begin to make it happen.
As Oscar Wilde pointed out, “A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when it lands there, it looks out and seeing a better country, sets sail, Progress is the realization of Utopias.”
The Society for Co-operative Studies can be found at: www.co-opstudies.org
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
The End of Neo-Liberalism
How quickly the TUC and party conference season comes around. This year rather than a knee jerk response to the threat of recession we need some deep reflection on economic policy. Be in no doubt the world has changed the neo-liberal boom is over.
Our Olympic performance shows that talent is essential for success but only long term investment can guarantee it. Economically we can only sustain our standard of living with high levels of investment. Now made difficult by the credit crunch and how we used that wave of cheap investment.
Recent economic prosperity was underpinned by historically low global prices for the key economic inputs of capital, energy and labour and deregulation and liberalisation enabled us to easily import them.
Western banks recycled surpluses generated from East Asia’s export of manufactures and from the oil and gas exporting countries. For a while they had more capital than they knew what to do with. The Bank of England reports, mangers invested in such complex financial instruments they still do not know what they have done with it! Sadly here this inflow of cheap capital was not invested in crucial infrastructure and productive capacity but was squandered on private equity and PFI schemes that added little to our capital stock or was used to subsidise current consumption.
UK fiscal policy drove a large proportion of this capital into new retail capacity to take advantage of cheap imports and into housing. Not to produce more houses, despite record prices we have had record low levels of construction, but driving house price inflation. Despite conventional wisdom high house prices do not equal wealth. Houses are not businesses, they do not innovate, generate new products, undertake R&D or train people, whilst they may once have been a store of value they do not create it.
This capital was cheap but not free - now it is payback time - the price is record trade deficits, massive public and private debt levels and a weakening pound. Now we need to generate domestic capital a tough task from a generation with no savings culture.
The energy story is a similar. When it was cheap we privatised our energy infrastructure, now it is more expensive we seem surprised that private firms pursue profits rather than the national interest. Our laiseez faire energy policy puts us at the mercy of global energy markets.
We must increase the output of domestic energy requiring capital but global firms take a global view why should they invest when they are making plenty selling us the imported stuff? We now have an underdeveloped energy infrastructure which needs investment across the piece, from renewables, new nuclear stations, new gas storage systems and replacement generating capacity.
Government intervention is vital, but a one off windfall tax is not enough, given the current structure of the industry it will only be paid by yet lower investment. Now sustained investment can only come from the public sector.
The third factor has been our inability to increase the productivity of the UK workforce. Our GDP has grown not by increasing the output per person, requiring higher investment in technology and skills; but by getting a higher proportion of people into work and by getting them to work longer.
This has been further sustained by the flow of low cost, highly motivated and well educated labour from Eastern Europe and from more women working. Now the pressure for higher labour market participation rates is looking desperate with attacks on lone parents and those on disability benefits.
With recession looming, the Poles are going home and the ones that stay are demanding decent pay and conditions. We will have to re-examine our education and training systems as we are forced to depend on home grown skilled Labour - meaning an end to long hours without training or companies having a free ride on skills.
It must be clear now that we can no longer postpone the development of a high investment, high technology, high skills economy. Currently we are not productive enough to import all our inputs. Now our financial services sector has shown the world that it is no better managed than our domestic car industry was.
The NICE decade is over we need the policies to get us saving, to get us developing our own energy supplies, and for us to have a high skills, high productivity economy.
That is the program we need to hear this conference season otherwise the sacrifices currently being made in living standards by Britain’s, workers will be for nothing. We will be letting David Cameron’s Tories off the hook we know they do not have the answers to these problems but does Labour?
Our Olympic performance shows that talent is essential for success but only long term investment can guarantee it. Economically we can only sustain our standard of living with high levels of investment. Now made difficult by the credit crunch and how we used that wave of cheap investment.
Recent economic prosperity was underpinned by historically low global prices for the key economic inputs of capital, energy and labour and deregulation and liberalisation enabled us to easily import them.
Western banks recycled surpluses generated from East Asia’s export of manufactures and from the oil and gas exporting countries. For a while they had more capital than they knew what to do with. The Bank of England reports, mangers invested in such complex financial instruments they still do not know what they have done with it! Sadly here this inflow of cheap capital was not invested in crucial infrastructure and productive capacity but was squandered on private equity and PFI schemes that added little to our capital stock or was used to subsidise current consumption.
UK fiscal policy drove a large proportion of this capital into new retail capacity to take advantage of cheap imports and into housing. Not to produce more houses, despite record prices we have had record low levels of construction, but driving house price inflation. Despite conventional wisdom high house prices do not equal wealth. Houses are not businesses, they do not innovate, generate new products, undertake R&D or train people, whilst they may once have been a store of value they do not create it.
This capital was cheap but not free - now it is payback time - the price is record trade deficits, massive public and private debt levels and a weakening pound. Now we need to generate domestic capital a tough task from a generation with no savings culture.
The energy story is a similar. When it was cheap we privatised our energy infrastructure, now it is more expensive we seem surprised that private firms pursue profits rather than the national interest. Our laiseez faire energy policy puts us at the mercy of global energy markets.
We must increase the output of domestic energy requiring capital but global firms take a global view why should they invest when they are making plenty selling us the imported stuff? We now have an underdeveloped energy infrastructure which needs investment across the piece, from renewables, new nuclear stations, new gas storage systems and replacement generating capacity.
Government intervention is vital, but a one off windfall tax is not enough, given the current structure of the industry it will only be paid by yet lower investment. Now sustained investment can only come from the public sector.
The third factor has been our inability to increase the productivity of the UK workforce. Our GDP has grown not by increasing the output per person, requiring higher investment in technology and skills; but by getting a higher proportion of people into work and by getting them to work longer.
This has been further sustained by the flow of low cost, highly motivated and well educated labour from Eastern Europe and from more women working. Now the pressure for higher labour market participation rates is looking desperate with attacks on lone parents and those on disability benefits.
With recession looming, the Poles are going home and the ones that stay are demanding decent pay and conditions. We will have to re-examine our education and training systems as we are forced to depend on home grown skilled Labour - meaning an end to long hours without training or companies having a free ride on skills.
It must be clear now that we can no longer postpone the development of a high investment, high technology, high skills economy. Currently we are not productive enough to import all our inputs. Now our financial services sector has shown the world that it is no better managed than our domestic car industry was.
The NICE decade is over we need the policies to get us saving, to get us developing our own energy supplies, and for us to have a high skills, high productivity economy.
That is the program we need to hear this conference season otherwise the sacrifices currently being made in living standards by Britain’s, workers will be for nothing. We will be letting David Cameron’s Tories off the hook we know they do not have the answers to these problems but does Labour?
Friday, 22 August 2008
Can David Milliband Save the Labour Party ?
I cannot help but feel that the metropolitan commentariat do not understand how bad it has become for Labour out here in the country. The reason we need a new leader quickly is not so that we can stave off defeat in general election. Labour is in free fall. The Crewe by-election and the local and London result are not just a sign of a resurgent Conservative Party but that we are faced with the terrible fact that the electorate will vote in each place for whoever they think will beat Labour. They do not care what the policies of the Tories or Liberals are but will now vote for anyone but Labour.
This is simply not enough time to turn things around before a general election but the coming defeat can be mitigated by a swift change in leadership. The current leadership is not only politically bankrupt, can anyone remember any of the 18 Bills in the draft Queens speech, the Party as Tribune has consistently reported is also financially bankrupt.
Changing the leader won’t make things miraculously better but it will stop things getting worse. The test for a new leader is not is he or she Prime Ministerial but can they lead the Labour party in Opposition. Can they harry the Tories and set the agenda without the civil service behind them and with a rather small band of brothers.
I understand that David Milliband is the coming man, remember this is not about winning a general election frankly that is beyond any mortal at this stage, it is about rebuilding the Labour Party and stopping its destruction as any kind of force in British politics.
With this in mind I have some speech notes for David as he triggers the leadership campaign.
1) I have decided to stand for the leadership of the Labour Party. There can be no greater honour for me than to lead the Labour Party (note not New Labour). The Party has been my home and my family for all of my adult life, a family that includes, the trades unions and the co-operative movement (note to self they are saving us from bankruptcy) and it would be true to say that like all families we have had our differences some of them profound but I have never wanted to be in any other.
2) We are not conservatives, neo-conservatives or liberals we are democratic socialists and we must never forget it. I have the honour of representing a working class constituency and we have to ensure that we build outwards from the base. (Must stop the rot with working class voters)
3) Many of you will now that I had severe doubts about the war in Iraq . My loyalty to the party and its leader meant that I kept my council at that time. Today I cannot stand by when it is clear we need a fresh start to win back the trust of the people. (Message:Ant-war but loyal).
4) I have youth and experience. I understand how events in far away places can impact on life here in Britain and how we have to be internationalist in our outlook. (Cameron just has youth)
5) The greatest threat we face today is not Islamic terrorism but climate change. We have to have a major push for renewable energy we are not as a nation short of wind or waves, not only saving the planet but also saving imports of oil and gas. (I have a track record on this)
6) Britain can look forward to a bright future but we have to rectify some of the over zealous elements of the market that have damaged our country, like the housing bubble, it will take some time but we can do it. (Subtext: I will regulate where Gordon failed to tread).
How will he see the last two Labour leaders?
On Gordon Brown, he has been a great servant of the party and the country but new times and new challenges need new ideas and new remedies and that is what I can offer.
On Tony Blair, being close to the leadership I can see how it is possible just because of sheer pressure on time to get isolated from the everyday concerns of people when one is deeply involved in global politics and that is what we have to guard against.
And how can he take on the Tories:
On David Cameron, I like him, he has done a good job in reshaping the Conservative party, he accuses us of stealing his clothes but I think he has stolen ours and they look a little too big for him.
A change of leader now will not stave off defeat but it will breathe new life into the Party and give us a base to build from. There is no point waiting, that base will only get smaller, we have already lost half our members and half of our councillors all that delay can do is delay the process of renewal and rebuilding. This is the test of the new generation have they like those in Gordon Browns book the courage to make the change.
This is simply not enough time to turn things around before a general election but the coming defeat can be mitigated by a swift change in leadership. The current leadership is not only politically bankrupt, can anyone remember any of the 18 Bills in the draft Queens speech, the Party as Tribune has consistently reported is also financially bankrupt.
Changing the leader won’t make things miraculously better but it will stop things getting worse. The test for a new leader is not is he or she Prime Ministerial but can they lead the Labour party in Opposition. Can they harry the Tories and set the agenda without the civil service behind them and with a rather small band of brothers.
I understand that David Milliband is the coming man, remember this is not about winning a general election frankly that is beyond any mortal at this stage, it is about rebuilding the Labour Party and stopping its destruction as any kind of force in British politics.
With this in mind I have some speech notes for David as he triggers the leadership campaign.
1) I have decided to stand for the leadership of the Labour Party. There can be no greater honour for me than to lead the Labour Party (note not New Labour). The Party has been my home and my family for all of my adult life, a family that includes, the trades unions and the co-operative movement (note to self they are saving us from bankruptcy) and it would be true to say that like all families we have had our differences some of them profound but I have never wanted to be in any other.
2) We are not conservatives, neo-conservatives or liberals we are democratic socialists and we must never forget it. I have the honour of representing a working class constituency and we have to ensure that we build outwards from the base. (Must stop the rot with working class voters)
3) Many of you will now that I had severe doubts about the war in Iraq . My loyalty to the party and its leader meant that I kept my council at that time. Today I cannot stand by when it is clear we need a fresh start to win back the trust of the people. (Message:Ant-war but loyal).
4) I have youth and experience. I understand how events in far away places can impact on life here in Britain and how we have to be internationalist in our outlook. (Cameron just has youth)
5) The greatest threat we face today is not Islamic terrorism but climate change. We have to have a major push for renewable energy we are not as a nation short of wind or waves, not only saving the planet but also saving imports of oil and gas. (I have a track record on this)
6) Britain can look forward to a bright future but we have to rectify some of the over zealous elements of the market that have damaged our country, like the housing bubble, it will take some time but we can do it. (Subtext: I will regulate where Gordon failed to tread).
How will he see the last two Labour leaders?
On Gordon Brown, he has been a great servant of the party and the country but new times and new challenges need new ideas and new remedies and that is what I can offer.
On Tony Blair, being close to the leadership I can see how it is possible just because of sheer pressure on time to get isolated from the everyday concerns of people when one is deeply involved in global politics and that is what we have to guard against.
And how can he take on the Tories:
On David Cameron, I like him, he has done a good job in reshaping the Conservative party, he accuses us of stealing his clothes but I think he has stolen ours and they look a little too big for him.
A change of leader now will not stave off defeat but it will breathe new life into the Party and give us a base to build from. There is no point waiting, that base will only get smaller, we have already lost half our members and half of our councillors all that delay can do is delay the process of renewal and rebuilding. This is the test of the new generation have they like those in Gordon Browns book the courage to make the change.
Is the Co-op Commonwealth Still Alive?
Is the dream of the Co-operative Commonwealth still alive?
Joining the Co-op Party I had to “assert my belief in the co-operative commonwealth”. I never had a problem with this. In my sitting room there is a framed Walter Crane print of ‘liberty’ one hand holding aloft the light of ‘socialism’ shining as the ‘co-operative commonwealth’ whilst the other hand fought the serpent of ‘capitalist constriction’. This came to mind as next month sees the Co-op Party conference at Methodist Central Hall (Methodism and Co-operation – seems appropriate) begin drafting its general election manifesto.
Like the Trade Unions the Co-op movement came into politics for defensive reasons. The sector was badly treated in World War One price controls and rationing schemes where biased to private traders and the Military gave little consideration to Co-op Societies; one was faced with 102 out of 104 male employees being conscripted.
The last straw was Asquith’s clumsy attempt to tackle profiteering, an excess profits tax, which has been described as the co-operators Taff Vale. The 1917 Co-op Congress passed a resolution to “seek direct representation in parliament”. Later that year a National Emergency Conference set up a Central Co-operative Parliamentary Representation Committee and agreed a platform of ‘industrial, social and economic reform’, expressing the movement’s views on profiteering, agriculture, taxation, banking, housing, education foreign policy, and demobilisation, the ‘democratising of state services’, as well as safeguarding the interests of voluntary co-operation and resistance to any legislation that would hamper Co-op progress.
Those issues of profiteering and demobilisation seem somehow topical again. Ten years after its formation in 1927 the Co-op formed an electoral alliance with Labour that has lasted for eighty years. It maybe a relationship that is a throwback to the Labour Party’s federal past but on today’s membership cards its role to ‘promote co-operative values and principles inside and outside the Labour movement, representing all types of co-operative organisation’ could not be more important.
In the Blair years the Party was not immune to ‘modernisation’ General Secretary Peter Hunt attempted to flesh out the concept of the ‘Third Way’ with ideas of new mutualism which where developed with the aid of a new “think tank” Mutuo. Certainly the Party needed better developed co-operative and mutual public policy prescriptions. Unfortunately the ‘Third Way’ for Tony Blair was nothing more than a rhetorical device to cover his rightward drift. Hunt also worked hard on the youngsters around Brown at the Treasury as the best hope for the legislation the Co-op movement needed to make it fit for the 21st century.
For last years 90th birthday Greg Rosen wrote a new short Co-op Part history published as co-operator Gordon Brown was making his ascent to No 10. The Party was full of optimism, writing in the New Statesman; Martin Bright said that “It could be argued that the Co-operative Party is one of the most influential groups of MP’s within Labour. Its chair the international development minister, Gareth Thomas, is a respected figure. Ten cabinet ministers are members as were four of the deputy leadership candidates. All the most influential younger Brown-era ministers are also members (Ed Balls, the Milliband Brothers, Andy Burnham, James Purnell). Could it be”, he asks, “that those searching for a Brownite politics will find it here”?
Somehow I can’t imagine that lot looking for the Co-operative Commonwealth, nonetheless, new Co-op Party General Secretary, Michael Stevenson, has a record Parliamentary Group of thirty members, who maybe a broad church but with the Government looking increasingly bereft of ideas this years Co-op conference could not be timelier. The Party has the enthusiasm and talent of co-operators, from agriculture to housing, financial services to telecommunications, who now run some of Britain’s most successful businesses to call upon.
Many co-operators feel that there has been too much emphasis on selling Labour to the Co-op or putting a cosmetic co-op gloss on health and education reforms rather than ‘promoting’ genuine co-operative solutions to Labour. The true test will be real Co-op measures finding their way into a real Labour manifesto. That is the way to ensure the Co-op Party reaching its centenary.
Joining the Co-op Party I had to “assert my belief in the co-operative commonwealth”. I never had a problem with this. In my sitting room there is a framed Walter Crane print of ‘liberty’ one hand holding aloft the light of ‘socialism’ shining as the ‘co-operative commonwealth’ whilst the other hand fought the serpent of ‘capitalist constriction’. This came to mind as next month sees the Co-op Party conference at Methodist Central Hall (Methodism and Co-operation – seems appropriate) begin drafting its general election manifesto.
Like the Trade Unions the Co-op movement came into politics for defensive reasons. The sector was badly treated in World War One price controls and rationing schemes where biased to private traders and the Military gave little consideration to Co-op Societies; one was faced with 102 out of 104 male employees being conscripted.
The last straw was Asquith’s clumsy attempt to tackle profiteering, an excess profits tax, which has been described as the co-operators Taff Vale. The 1917 Co-op Congress passed a resolution to “seek direct representation in parliament”. Later that year a National Emergency Conference set up a Central Co-operative Parliamentary Representation Committee and agreed a platform of ‘industrial, social and economic reform’, expressing the movement’s views on profiteering, agriculture, taxation, banking, housing, education foreign policy, and demobilisation, the ‘democratising of state services’, as well as safeguarding the interests of voluntary co-operation and resistance to any legislation that would hamper Co-op progress.
Those issues of profiteering and demobilisation seem somehow topical again. Ten years after its formation in 1927 the Co-op formed an electoral alliance with Labour that has lasted for eighty years. It maybe a relationship that is a throwback to the Labour Party’s federal past but on today’s membership cards its role to ‘promote co-operative values and principles inside and outside the Labour movement, representing all types of co-operative organisation’ could not be more important.
In the Blair years the Party was not immune to ‘modernisation’ General Secretary Peter Hunt attempted to flesh out the concept of the ‘Third Way’ with ideas of new mutualism which where developed with the aid of a new “think tank” Mutuo. Certainly the Party needed better developed co-operative and mutual public policy prescriptions. Unfortunately the ‘Third Way’ for Tony Blair was nothing more than a rhetorical device to cover his rightward drift. Hunt also worked hard on the youngsters around Brown at the Treasury as the best hope for the legislation the Co-op movement needed to make it fit for the 21st century.
For last years 90th birthday Greg Rosen wrote a new short Co-op Part history published as co-operator Gordon Brown was making his ascent to No 10. The Party was full of optimism, writing in the New Statesman; Martin Bright said that “It could be argued that the Co-operative Party is one of the most influential groups of MP’s within Labour. Its chair the international development minister, Gareth Thomas, is a respected figure. Ten cabinet ministers are members as were four of the deputy leadership candidates. All the most influential younger Brown-era ministers are also members (Ed Balls, the Milliband Brothers, Andy Burnham, James Purnell). Could it be”, he asks, “that those searching for a Brownite politics will find it here”?
Somehow I can’t imagine that lot looking for the Co-operative Commonwealth, nonetheless, new Co-op Party General Secretary, Michael Stevenson, has a record Parliamentary Group of thirty members, who maybe a broad church but with the Government looking increasingly bereft of ideas this years Co-op conference could not be timelier. The Party has the enthusiasm and talent of co-operators, from agriculture to housing, financial services to telecommunications, who now run some of Britain’s most successful businesses to call upon.
Many co-operators feel that there has been too much emphasis on selling Labour to the Co-op or putting a cosmetic co-op gloss on health and education reforms rather than ‘promoting’ genuine co-operative solutions to Labour. The true test will be real Co-op measures finding their way into a real Labour manifesto. That is the way to ensure the Co-op Party reaching its centenary.
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
The Co-operative Dividend Finally Pays Off
A global financial crisis has woken us up to the benefits of mutual and co-operative business ownership. Converted building societies have found their plc status no protection against poor management and the drying up of international credit. Those remaining mutual, partly shielded by their structure, maybe dull and safe but with global banking in meltdown a dull and safe place is the best place to keep your money.
For some the Co-op was as an anachronism. Politicians paid tribute to its past, to Robert Owen, the Rochdale Pioneers or in Scotland the Fenwick Weavers, implying it had no future. Patronising the sector with warm words when asking for support (or an extension to the overdraft) but privately thinking there was no place in the modern world of shareholder capitalism for a business owned by its customers.
For them the news of the Co-operative Group take over of Somerfield, putting it back amongst the big boys in the retail sector, must seem like seeing Lazarus. Observers of the co-op scene know better, they may not be widely known but the Co-op has in the recent past benefited from some excellent leadership and their efforts are now paying off.
The renaissance began when the Co-op Bank was re-branded as the ethical bank. Its success surprised everyone, including many in the co-op movement, giving confidence, that after years of decline, there was nothing intrinsically uncompetitive about the co-op model.
Society mergers, mostly from weakness, looked to outsiders like the co-op was closing down and in some places it was. Quietly however from dozens of small societies the co-op was forming a new leaner and more effective organisation.
Then last year came the merger that turned the tide. The marriage of the Co-op Group and United Co-operatives, a union from strength rather than weakness meant that at last the Co-op had the critical mass to grow.
Despite the huge challenges of this merger the process of improving the customer experience went on, creating better products, with an emphasis on ethical and fair-trade products, and better stores. Behind the scenes too new IT and logistics systems helped increase sales.
Those new IT systems have enabled the Co-op to bring back the “Divi” in a meaningful way – paying out over £38 million to members this year.
Mergers are no panacea – like some trade union mergers - on paper the new organisation should be as big as the two organisations added together but somehow they end up smaller. This merger was different; the new Group has in the words of CEO Peter Marks the “best opportunity for 50 years to move forward”.
The increased buying power the Somerfield merger will bring will make the whole co-op retail sector more competitive and put an end to some of those Co-op deserts. It will not be easy to create a democratic structure for the new organisation as the new merged Group is only just coming together. But managing growth is far better than managing decline.
At this years Co-op Congress, Kitty Usher Economic Secretary to the Treasury, promised, at long last, a new legal framework to help this modernisation continue. The FSA who have responsibility for regulating the Co-op and mutual sector (you may think that currently they have more pressing responsibilities) have said “it will enable the movement to enjoy the legislative framework it deserves; one fit for this century, rather than the nineteenth.”
With immense patience former Labour MEP Pauline Green and her colleagues at Co-operatives UK have done a good job in cajoling and educating the FSA to take, a sector of some 5000 businesses employing a quarter of a million people, seriously. But a healthy co-op sector is important not just to the one in five of us that have a share in a Co-op.
The new General Secretary of the Co-op Party, Michael Stevenson, has a good story to tell - how by rediscovering its ethical values and democratic principles the co-operative sector has been able to rebuild its business. Could this be a lesson for the Labour Party and the Government?
For some the Co-op was as an anachronism. Politicians paid tribute to its past, to Robert Owen, the Rochdale Pioneers or in Scotland the Fenwick Weavers, implying it had no future. Patronising the sector with warm words when asking for support (or an extension to the overdraft) but privately thinking there was no place in the modern world of shareholder capitalism for a business owned by its customers.
For them the news of the Co-operative Group take over of Somerfield, putting it back amongst the big boys in the retail sector, must seem like seeing Lazarus. Observers of the co-op scene know better, they may not be widely known but the Co-op has in the recent past benefited from some excellent leadership and their efforts are now paying off.
The renaissance began when the Co-op Bank was re-branded as the ethical bank. Its success surprised everyone, including many in the co-op movement, giving confidence, that after years of decline, there was nothing intrinsically uncompetitive about the co-op model.
Society mergers, mostly from weakness, looked to outsiders like the co-op was closing down and in some places it was. Quietly however from dozens of small societies the co-op was forming a new leaner and more effective organisation.
Then last year came the merger that turned the tide. The marriage of the Co-op Group and United Co-operatives, a union from strength rather than weakness meant that at last the Co-op had the critical mass to grow.
Despite the huge challenges of this merger the process of improving the customer experience went on, creating better products, with an emphasis on ethical and fair-trade products, and better stores. Behind the scenes too new IT and logistics systems helped increase sales.
Those new IT systems have enabled the Co-op to bring back the “Divi” in a meaningful way – paying out over £38 million to members this year.
Mergers are no panacea – like some trade union mergers - on paper the new organisation should be as big as the two organisations added together but somehow they end up smaller. This merger was different; the new Group has in the words of CEO Peter Marks the “best opportunity for 50 years to move forward”.
The increased buying power the Somerfield merger will bring will make the whole co-op retail sector more competitive and put an end to some of those Co-op deserts. It will not be easy to create a democratic structure for the new organisation as the new merged Group is only just coming together. But managing growth is far better than managing decline.
At this years Co-op Congress, Kitty Usher Economic Secretary to the Treasury, promised, at long last, a new legal framework to help this modernisation continue. The FSA who have responsibility for regulating the Co-op and mutual sector (you may think that currently they have more pressing responsibilities) have said “it will enable the movement to enjoy the legislative framework it deserves; one fit for this century, rather than the nineteenth.”
With immense patience former Labour MEP Pauline Green and her colleagues at Co-operatives UK have done a good job in cajoling and educating the FSA to take, a sector of some 5000 businesses employing a quarter of a million people, seriously. But a healthy co-op sector is important not just to the one in five of us that have a share in a Co-op.
The new General Secretary of the Co-op Party, Michael Stevenson, has a good story to tell - how by rediscovering its ethical values and democratic principles the co-operative sector has been able to rebuild its business. Could this be a lesson for the Labour Party and the Government?
Thursday, 12 June 2008
The Rise and Fall of Cheap Oil
“Above the fields of Leicestershire
On arches we were borne
And the thunder of the railway drowned
The thunder of the Quorn:
And silver shone the steeples out
Above the barren boughs;
Colts in a paddock ran from us
But not the solid cows:
And quite where Rugby Central is
Does only Rugby know.”
A journey on the old Great Central Railway described by John Betjeman. Many Rugbians today could not find Rugby Central, all that remains is a bump on a bridleway in a disused railway cutting, a long green finger running through the heart of the town, a pleasant place to walk the dog away from the noise of the traffic.
Poems like this helped create that idea that the great days of rail are behind us, killed off by Dr Beeching. Now we know the real killer was cheap oil. Beeching took the flack for closing one third of the rail network and some 2000 stations but he was appointed to head British Rail by, Conservative Transport Minister, Ernest Marples.
Marples made his fortune from the firm he help found, Marples, Ridgway and Partners, road builders (contractors indeed on the M1) he divested himself of his shares on becoming Transport Minister to avoid any conflict of interests – to his wife.
His success was based upon the same cheap oil that did for the railways. At that time most of us would, given the lower costs, greater flexibility and the new found reliability of road transport, built the M1, all those other ‘M’s and closed miles of railways.
Today we are living with the consequences of almost a century’s worth of location decisions based on cheap oil. From the ‘ribbon development’ in the 30’s, encouraged perhaps by that wonderful Shell advertising to the 60’s when the car became accessible to the masses as a symbol of personal freedom. The newly built motorways and trunk roads enabled those in search of the mock-Tudor idyll to leap frog the green belt and for businesses and shops to escape the confines of the cities.
This great dispersal shrank the cities, new towns grew in once green fields, but the new suburbs and towns completely dependent on road transport generated the flip side of dispersal - congestion.
The problem is low population density makes public transport systems uneconomic. Despite the fact that around one third of the population have no access to a car to bring together sufficient people for a football match, a retail centre or even most workplaces requires them to drive. They have little choice - even to the point that this congestion is killing the economy. This new geography locks us into in a high movement high cost society.
To get some idea of the costs involved last year the Seven West Midlands Metropolitan Councils and Centro (the passenger transport authority) sent the Government their wish list for transport improvements it had a £4.6 billion price tag.
This bill, coming in at about half the cost of the complete modernisation of the West Coast Mainline, was far from ambitious, the minimum to keep the metropolitan heart of the region moving they said. The fact the whole region gets around £90 million a year for major transport projects makes it clear that this type of development is unaffordable. This is one conurbation. Imagine the price tag for the whole country.
These numbers made me a convert to road pricing. However having thought longer about it I now realise that of itself road pricing is not enough. The fact is we have fanciful ideas based on that cheap oil about the degree of mobility we can sustain.
It seems those oil futures speculators are not fools – they know we are hopelessly addicted to oil.
When the prices shot up what did the PM, Gordon Brown say? Sell your 4x4, stop flying, or walk to the shops? No he blamed OPEC and demanded more oil from the North Sea.
Now it is not just North Sea oil that is running out. It seems the Greens are right we do not take energy conservation seriously.
Despite the recent huge hike in oil prices the cost of transport is still too low - we have to move to a low movement low cost society and we may only have twenty years to do it.
I am not an extreme Green I believe we have to do this for economic not environmental reasons. We have sold off all our once state owned energy assets making us totally dependent on international markets for our energy. We are a small country with low productivity and a weakening economy we will not be able to afford these ever shrinking resources. The US is already complaining to China and India about there subsidising of their domestic fuel prices.
The economic forces that have enabled long distance travel and long supply chains will soon go into reverse. Many current business models are unsustainable as oil prices grow. No wonder food prices are up. The ludicrously expensive, in transport terms, cost of trucking and shipping, clothes and foodstuffs over vast distances is already becoming uneconomic. Some food production and manufacturing will have to be repatriated.
Planning processes that built the motorways and new towns will now have to plan to recentralise the population and relocalise economic activity. People will simply have to live a great deal closer to schools, shops and work places. (And HM Government please note, GP sugeries and post offices).
As costs escalate some will want to give up their cars and some will be forced too - we have to make it easy for them. There is some truth that with the IT revolution we will be travelling less. But IT also generates new traffic and helps sustain complex long distance supply chains. Despite the constantly threatened immanent arrival of the electric or hydrogen powered car don’t hold your breath there is no technological fix on the horizon.
To return out of town shopping centres and housing to farmland will not be easy and there will be considerable expense in creating a transport infrastructure independent of oil. Completing the electrification of our railways and filling in those Beeching gaps with light rail and trams will not come cheap. The win is of a network that is greener and that will do wonders for our balance of payments.
So how are we to pay for this transport revolution?
So called green taxes have so far not noticeably change behaviour and any revenue has not been spent on alternative sustainable solutions. The problem has always been the Treasury. Its need for the ‘fix’ of the revenue they generate means it never sets tax at levels that really change behaviour.
These taxes have to be a lot higher. Today the price mechanism is beginning to change behaviour but current taxes still have only a very marginal impact on consumers after all since 2005 taxes on road transport have actually fallen.
So where is the money to come from?
The fact that the recent improvements to our rail network are to be paid for by passengers is a clear sign. The user is going to have to pay. We must look again at road pricing. We need a hypothecated tax on road usage for infrastructure improvements. This can be done - we have the technology we should just get on with it.
The challenge is to visibly improve and make cheaper public transport, especially trains and trams, whilst choking off the demand for movement.
It would be unfair to many people who cannot afford to live near where they work to further punish them by increasing what they see as their already excessive transport costs without giving them a real choice.
Unplanned oil price increases have done massive damage before. They cause all kinds of social and economic problems. But this is not a short term problem we can get over but a permanent change.
Effective road pricing can generate a revenue stream to help fund the changes we have to make. Those affluent enough to continue to drive can subsidise those who use public transport. And surely we can come up with varying the charges for essential deliveries or essential workers.
There is less time than we think. We must plan out the need for movement by road. Choosing to carry on as if nothing is happening is foolish in the extreme.
Transport costs are an important component of economic development one of Betjemans other great railway images was that of Metroland an entire landscape enabled by the low cost of cheap suburban trains. With the right planning rules we can do it again.
As socialists we should be pleased that the Thatcherite privatised dream of atomised individuals living in private spaces and travelling alone is coming to an end. Both housing and transport will need collective well planned solutions. Personally I look forward to the reopening of the Great Central as an electric railway and the grassing over of the M1!
On arches we were borne
And the thunder of the railway drowned
The thunder of the Quorn:
And silver shone the steeples out
Above the barren boughs;
Colts in a paddock ran from us
But not the solid cows:
And quite where Rugby Central is
Does only Rugby know.”
A journey on the old Great Central Railway described by John Betjeman. Many Rugbians today could not find Rugby Central, all that remains is a bump on a bridleway in a disused railway cutting, a long green finger running through the heart of the town, a pleasant place to walk the dog away from the noise of the traffic.
Poems like this helped create that idea that the great days of rail are behind us, killed off by Dr Beeching. Now we know the real killer was cheap oil. Beeching took the flack for closing one third of the rail network and some 2000 stations but he was appointed to head British Rail by, Conservative Transport Minister, Ernest Marples.
Marples made his fortune from the firm he help found, Marples, Ridgway and Partners, road builders (contractors indeed on the M1) he divested himself of his shares on becoming Transport Minister to avoid any conflict of interests – to his wife.
His success was based upon the same cheap oil that did for the railways. At that time most of us would, given the lower costs, greater flexibility and the new found reliability of road transport, built the M1, all those other ‘M’s and closed miles of railways.
Today we are living with the consequences of almost a century’s worth of location decisions based on cheap oil. From the ‘ribbon development’ in the 30’s, encouraged perhaps by that wonderful Shell advertising to the 60’s when the car became accessible to the masses as a symbol of personal freedom. The newly built motorways and trunk roads enabled those in search of the mock-Tudor idyll to leap frog the green belt and for businesses and shops to escape the confines of the cities.
This great dispersal shrank the cities, new towns grew in once green fields, but the new suburbs and towns completely dependent on road transport generated the flip side of dispersal - congestion.
The problem is low population density makes public transport systems uneconomic. Despite the fact that around one third of the population have no access to a car to bring together sufficient people for a football match, a retail centre or even most workplaces requires them to drive. They have little choice - even to the point that this congestion is killing the economy. This new geography locks us into in a high movement high cost society.
To get some idea of the costs involved last year the Seven West Midlands Metropolitan Councils and Centro (the passenger transport authority) sent the Government their wish list for transport improvements it had a £4.6 billion price tag.
This bill, coming in at about half the cost of the complete modernisation of the West Coast Mainline, was far from ambitious, the minimum to keep the metropolitan heart of the region moving they said. The fact the whole region gets around £90 million a year for major transport projects makes it clear that this type of development is unaffordable. This is one conurbation. Imagine the price tag for the whole country.
These numbers made me a convert to road pricing. However having thought longer about it I now realise that of itself road pricing is not enough. The fact is we have fanciful ideas based on that cheap oil about the degree of mobility we can sustain.
It seems those oil futures speculators are not fools – they know we are hopelessly addicted to oil.
When the prices shot up what did the PM, Gordon Brown say? Sell your 4x4, stop flying, or walk to the shops? No he blamed OPEC and demanded more oil from the North Sea.
Now it is not just North Sea oil that is running out. It seems the Greens are right we do not take energy conservation seriously.
Despite the recent huge hike in oil prices the cost of transport is still too low - we have to move to a low movement low cost society and we may only have twenty years to do it.
I am not an extreme Green I believe we have to do this for economic not environmental reasons. We have sold off all our once state owned energy assets making us totally dependent on international markets for our energy. We are a small country with low productivity and a weakening economy we will not be able to afford these ever shrinking resources. The US is already complaining to China and India about there subsidising of their domestic fuel prices.
The economic forces that have enabled long distance travel and long supply chains will soon go into reverse. Many current business models are unsustainable as oil prices grow. No wonder food prices are up. The ludicrously expensive, in transport terms, cost of trucking and shipping, clothes and foodstuffs over vast distances is already becoming uneconomic. Some food production and manufacturing will have to be repatriated.
Planning processes that built the motorways and new towns will now have to plan to recentralise the population and relocalise economic activity. People will simply have to live a great deal closer to schools, shops and work places. (And HM Government please note, GP sugeries and post offices).
As costs escalate some will want to give up their cars and some will be forced too - we have to make it easy for them. There is some truth that with the IT revolution we will be travelling less. But IT also generates new traffic and helps sustain complex long distance supply chains. Despite the constantly threatened immanent arrival of the electric or hydrogen powered car don’t hold your breath there is no technological fix on the horizon.
To return out of town shopping centres and housing to farmland will not be easy and there will be considerable expense in creating a transport infrastructure independent of oil. Completing the electrification of our railways and filling in those Beeching gaps with light rail and trams will not come cheap. The win is of a network that is greener and that will do wonders for our balance of payments.
So how are we to pay for this transport revolution?
So called green taxes have so far not noticeably change behaviour and any revenue has not been spent on alternative sustainable solutions. The problem has always been the Treasury. Its need for the ‘fix’ of the revenue they generate means it never sets tax at levels that really change behaviour.
These taxes have to be a lot higher. Today the price mechanism is beginning to change behaviour but current taxes still have only a very marginal impact on consumers after all since 2005 taxes on road transport have actually fallen.
So where is the money to come from?
The fact that the recent improvements to our rail network are to be paid for by passengers is a clear sign. The user is going to have to pay. We must look again at road pricing. We need a hypothecated tax on road usage for infrastructure improvements. This can be done - we have the technology we should just get on with it.
The challenge is to visibly improve and make cheaper public transport, especially trains and trams, whilst choking off the demand for movement.
It would be unfair to many people who cannot afford to live near where they work to further punish them by increasing what they see as their already excessive transport costs without giving them a real choice.
Unplanned oil price increases have done massive damage before. They cause all kinds of social and economic problems. But this is not a short term problem we can get over but a permanent change.
Effective road pricing can generate a revenue stream to help fund the changes we have to make. Those affluent enough to continue to drive can subsidise those who use public transport. And surely we can come up with varying the charges for essential deliveries or essential workers.
There is less time than we think. We must plan out the need for movement by road. Choosing to carry on as if nothing is happening is foolish in the extreme.
Transport costs are an important component of economic development one of Betjemans other great railway images was that of Metroland an entire landscape enabled by the low cost of cheap suburban trains. With the right planning rules we can do it again.
As socialists we should be pleased that the Thatcherite privatised dream of atomised individuals living in private spaces and travelling alone is coming to an end. Both housing and transport will need collective well planned solutions. Personally I look forward to the reopening of the Great Central as an electric railway and the grassing over of the M1!
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
Real legacies of Blair, Brown and Smith
Back in the Guardian after the terrible local and London elections.
My old workmates from the 1997 election (Letters, May 17) seem to have fallen into the first trap of politics - don't believe your own propaganda. The best stuff we implemented after the 1997 victory was nothing to do with Blair or Brown; it was the legacy of John Smith - minimum wage, trade union recognition, social chapter, national devolution, regional development agencies etc. The Brownite stuff (independence for the Bank of England and lax regulation of the financial sector) and the Blairite stuff (permanent revolution in schools and hospitals, tougher on crime than its causes) all looks far less attractive in retrospect. Then there is the elephant in the room of foreign policy. Seven wars in seven years - and what happened to being at the centre of Europe!
More important than the policy failings of Brown - on pensions, post offices, tax relief for the dead while increasing tax on the poorest workers - and something even I didn't realise until last year's floods is just how hopeless he is as a politician. We live in a democracy; you have to go out and meet people and understand them (even the Chinese leader has understood this).
Wake up - the "nice decade" is over. Labour will lose the general election whenever it comes. We are facing the same squeeze that the Tories faced in 1997. Who would have thought that the Conservatives would be the first post-Thatcherite party? The changes we need to make have to be done quickly. We must have a new leader very soon so that defeat can be mitigated, giving us a small chance of regrouping; the alternative is we go into oblivion with Brown.
Nick Matthews
(Labour's policy officer for trade and industry and employment in 1997), Rugby
My old workmates from the 1997 election (Letters, May 17) seem to have fallen into the first trap of politics - don't believe your own propaganda. The best stuff we implemented after the 1997 victory was nothing to do with Blair or Brown; it was the legacy of John Smith - minimum wage, trade union recognition, social chapter, national devolution, regional development agencies etc. The Brownite stuff (independence for the Bank of England and lax regulation of the financial sector) and the Blairite stuff (permanent revolution in schools and hospitals, tougher on crime than its causes) all looks far less attractive in retrospect. Then there is the elephant in the room of foreign policy. Seven wars in seven years - and what happened to being at the centre of Europe!
More important than the policy failings of Brown - on pensions, post offices, tax relief for the dead while increasing tax on the poorest workers - and something even I didn't realise until last year's floods is just how hopeless he is as a politician. We live in a democracy; you have to go out and meet people and understand them (even the Chinese leader has understood this).
Wake up - the "nice decade" is over. Labour will lose the general election whenever it comes. We are facing the same squeeze that the Tories faced in 1997. Who would have thought that the Conservatives would be the first post-Thatcherite party? The changes we need to make have to be done quickly. We must have a new leader very soon so that defeat can be mitigated, giving us a small chance of regrouping; the alternative is we go into oblivion with Brown.
Nick Matthews
(Labour's policy officer for trade and industry and employment in 1997), Rugby
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
