BEHIND THE LABEL: THE ART AND CRAFT OF CO-OPERATIVE CULTURE

A depressing part of modern life is the selling of culture at Christmas. Celebrity biographies, compilations of the years hits, all at a discount, with a few days shelf life, before they end up, at best, in Oxfam shops.

Chumbawumba’s latest CD cover has a cultural manifesto on it, part of it says, “The boy bands have won, and all the copyists and the tribute bands and the TV talent show producers have won, if we allow our culture to be shaped by mimicry, whether from lack of ideas or from exaggerated respect. You should never try to freeze culture.”

When working class culture has been reduced to voting for the underdog on X-Factor (or celebrity Come Dancing) here is a serious cultural discussion on a CD cover! How can they do this?

Thanks to the label! Every aspect of the music’s production, from the writing, the collaborators, the recording, the cover design, is under the control of the artist because one of the important things about this classic Sgt Peppers of an album is the record label itself. Boy Bands is NMCD 28 on the No Masters Co-operative Limited.

No Masters contradicts the idea that there is nothing more utopian than an artists co-operative. With a dozen members the co-op shows that artistic creation can be a genuinely collective effort.

In 1990 having written a batch of songs, Jim Boyes, showed them to John Tams. Tams says you should record them and I’ll produce the album. Getting a record deal for radical folk songs proved a non starter so they set about building their own label and with the help of the Sheffield Co-operative Development Agency the No Masters label and its publishing arm Voice publishing was born. Since then they have, “sought out writers, performers and musicians who were, in their various ways, seeking to celebrate and extend those bits of the people's tradition invariably described as 'radical' or 'political'.”

NMCD 1 was Out the Blue by Jim Boyes, he was soon joined in the Co-op by Mike Waterson, Jo Freya, Lester Simpson, Barry Coope, Fi Fraser and Ray Hearne.

Ray (NMCD17, Broad Street Ballads) has been chair of the Co-op from the beginning and has a new album out in the spring. Sadly Lal Waterson who was part of the co-op and one of England’s finest song writers died in 1998 but her talent is celebrated on Lal NMCD27, with Jo Freya utilising all the skills of co-op members.

Stalwarts have been Coope, Boyes and Simpson, probably our best vocal harmony group. Their work covers classic folk to original compositions with interesting explorations of the song of the First World War and of Christmas. Their original material is based on sharp social observation NMCD20, Twenty-Four Seven is a particular favourite of mine freshly pertinent in the present global financial meltdown.

They have explored traditional Christmas music as you will find on NMCD25 a selection of Midwinter Songs and Carols or earlier collections NMCD13 A Garland of Carols, and NMCD21, Fire and Sleet and Candlelight a delight. The trio are joined by Fi Fraser, Georgina Boyes and Jo Freya to sing songs that you will not hear in a shopping mall but that are in some parts an organic part of the Christmas season. The Christmas albums are something special - even well-intentioned people find them difficult to understand if they don't know about the tradition of working-class writers of Christmas hymns and carols and popular performance that continue into the present day in the North Midlands, Yorkshire and the South West of England. It's very much a working class tradition - with very local live performances (where else do you get four-part harmony roared out in pubs today?) The men and women who wrote these hymns cum carols were radicals in their own way too - this was and is a do-it-yourself culture in the way that the Punks did it for themselves - they said what they thought.

Today the songs of World War One are an integral part of our culture. NMCD14, Christmas Truce, Kerstbestand, a partnership with Belgian choir, Wak Maar Proper, is a collection of songs that mark the 1914 Christmas Truce another collaboration is on Private Peaceful NMCD24 with Michael Morpurgo. The inspiration is Morpurgo’s fictional anti-hero representing soldiers executed for desertion or cowardice. "Private Peaceful" was originally written and then recorded as part of the campaign to get pardons for FirstWar soldiers shot at dawn and several of the other recordings were commissioned by Peace Concerts Passendale.

Their work with Morpurgo continues with On Angel Wings NMCD30, a re-telling of the Christmas story through the eyes of a young shepherd. Indeed they complete their heavy late autumn touring schedule with a performance at St Pauls Cathedral, no less, on December 21st, with readings by Joanna Lumley and James Naughtie.
Co-op members since 2006, Chumbawumba’s, first offering was NMCD23 ‘A Singsong and a Scrap’ which co-operatively includes vocals by Coope, Boyes and Simpson. Some think it possible to separate song and politics but we know all culture is political. The Chumba’s make great pop songs like On eBay about the trashing of the Baghdad Museum found on NMCD26, Get on With It. They say,”Becoming part of the No Masters collective has been an entirely logical step for us in Britain. It suits what we want and what we think, both about the music industry and about the world. We feel like we're amongst like-minded people.”
No Masters has a stream of new material, Jo Freya who was a member of the Old Swan Band, Blowzabella and Token Women. With the freedom of the label has produced what she calls her first genuinely solo album NMCD29 Female Smuggler which explores her huge musical vocabulary.
No Masters is a real co-operative all major decisions are taken collectively and all profits are recycled back into the business to produce more music. The production and creation of all aspects of the music from engineering the sound to designing the CD sleeves is all done by sharing the skills of the co-op members. No crude division of labour here this is a true combination of art and craft.

So for some truly co-operative culture that will last beyond Boxing Day the NO Masters CD’s are a must you can find them at: http://www.nomasters.co.uk/ where it says, “No Masters celebrates song writing that addresses issues: that is rooted in its time and its communities: that is engaged with the struggles confronting and reshaping those communities: that pays homage to its traditions by reworking them; and that is unafraid to take sides whilst eschewing propaganda. It is a unique force in folk music.”

Just the antidote to Christmas with Ant and Dec.

Our Mutual Friends in the North

Events have turned the world upside down in the provision of financial services. It is crystal clear that the demutualisation, the conversion of Building Societies into banks has been a total disaster. Building Societies have not been immune to the global banking crisis but their record compared to those that took the route of transition into banks is stark. There are the high profile collapses like Northern Rock, HBOS and Bradford and Bingley. But not one of the converted building societies has survived as a viable independent business.

Many of us argued this was a mistake from the start. Some time ago the All Party Parliamentary Group for Building Societies and Financial Mutual’s under took an enquiry into the true costs of demutualisation. In evidence the Building Societies Association said it would not be surprised if the full costs of all the demutualisation’s amounted to well over £1billion. Well we now know that was just the first billion!

That cost did not include the loss of over a quarter of their branch networks. There are technical arguments about the merits or demerits of mutuals over plcs but current events have more than demonstrated the merits of mutuality.

Greed and privatisation did not just take out those ex-building societies we also lost the Trustee Savings Bank and The National Giro Bank. Almost every City had a Trustee Savings bank; my own personal favourite was the Birmingham Municipal Bank which at its peak had three quarters of a million account holders. Following amalgamation in the 1970’s to form the national TSB it in turn disappeared into the private sector when it merged with Lloyds in 1995. The National Giro bank started out in 1968 as the “people’s bank” an innovative post office bank that was the first to pay interest on current accounts. It too succumbed to privatisation being swallowed by the Alliance and Leicester now part of Spanish banking giant Santander.

Now we have the chance to turn the tide against privatisation. The demand was made loud and clear at the Co-op Party conference that we must start a massive campaign for the remutualisation of Northern Rock.

Northern Rock will be slimmed down in public ownership but will still have all the flaws of a mortgage bank and will be no more sustainable in the private sector than it was before the government bail out. The Government will then look to sell the remnants off to a major bank and it will disappear as an independent institution.

When “greed was good” demutualisation was relatively simple – first bribe the management and then the members and get them to vote for a flotation. Remutualisation is more complex but not impossible.

Last year Britannia Building Society successfully remutualised 850,000 customers of the old Bristol and West Building Society which had been taken over by the Bank of Ireland. In buying the 65 strong Bristol & West branch network and £4.5bn savings book from the Bank of Ireland for £150m the customers became members once again.

Interestingly the Britannia is now in talks with Co-op Financial Services which includes The Co-op Bank, Smile and CIS about a possible merger. The Co-op Bank owned by the Co-op Group is not in itself a Co-op itself and this potential merger depends on changes to the Building Societies (Funding) & Mutual Societies (Transfers) Act, which is currently at the House of Commons committee stage. Legislation is expected to be in place by the end of the year.
So it will be possible for mutual’s to take on and remutualise failed mortgage banks - we have to begin to make this the preferred option for the Government. We have to turn the tide in favour of social ownership.

“Now is the time, in the wake of the collapse of Northern Rock and the wider economic downturn to reinvigorate the debate about social ownership in the 21st century”, says John McDonnell in the new Left Economics Advisory Panel pamphlet, Building the New Common Sense, Social Ownership for the 21st Century. He adds, “We need to be creative, imaginative and bold in our demands and our actions – and that means tackling the fundamental question of ownership.” I could not agree more and let us start by giving Northern Rock back to the people of the North East!

Co-operators go back to School

A big issue at the Co-op Party conference was the role the movement should play in education. Co-operators have always had a commitment to education, an original Rochdale principle, was to the education of “their members, officers and employees and of the general public in the principles and techniques of Co-operation, both economic and democratic.”

In April the first co-operative trust school, Reddish Vale Technology College in Stockport, opened, and the second Andrew Marvel College in Hull is set to open soon. Schools Minister, Ed Balls, speaking at Co-op conference said the Government will make £500,000 available to pilot up to a 100 Trusts with the co-operative governance model.

One of the architects of the model, Mervyn Wilson, Co-op College CEO, hopes for a national chain of co-op trust schools and believes that “using co-operative values to raise achievement”, will help meet the governments’ aim of increasing diversity in the education system. Co-op Group CEO, Peter Marks, is also enthusiastic about the potential for co-op structures to allow stakeholders greater participation in school management “and a sense of ownership and engagement”.

In the August issue of the Journal of Co-op studies Professor Johston Birchall makes an important contribution to the debate about mutuality in the public services. He argues that ideas about a ‘new mutualism’ in the public services have three potential weaknesses, firstly that genuine mutuality, which implies solidarity and collective provision, is in competition with ideas favouring a more individualistic approach – like the personalisation of services, secondly that it is seen as an attempt to restore some of the benefits of mutual forms of welfare lost when the welfare state was founded without explaining what those benefits are - after all the performance of the old friendly societies was patchy to say the least and thirdly the reforms to public services hailed as mutual are not really all that mutual.

If we define mutuals as membership based organisations then in the public services who are the members and how much power do they have? Foundation hospitals, for example, have three categories of member each with their own representatives, patients, the public and the employees and their control over the nature and provision of services is strictly limited. These are substantial criticisms that require serious answers if mutual solutions are to play any part in the public services.

There was considerable disquiet at Co-op Party conference about aspects of the governments’ education policies including faith schools and the drive for trust schools and academies. Indeed Co-op MP Ken Purchase has tabled a Commons motion attacking the expansion of city academies, expressing disappointment that "Ed Balls should have been taken in by this nonsense spouted about the improvements in academies when there is no real evidence to show they can do anything at all, unless they have huge tranches of money that should be available in the education system generally".

Co-operators will come together to discus and learn more about what the co-op role in education should be at a day conference hosted by the Midlands Co-op Society at the Birmingham and Midland Institute on November 8th.

Personally working in a University before we try to mutualise the state sector there is plenty of work to be done. There is little teaching of the values and operation of non-plc structures in our business schools with widespread ignorance of co-ops and mutuals, and also of trusts and partnerships. This is a gap that the movement needs to fill if mutual business solutions are to become more widespread.

Meanwhile this years Co-op Party conference was a great success, don’t take my word for it, that was the view of Socialist Campaign Group News, its worth quoting ‘Tel’s Tale’ in full.

“The recent Co-op Party annual conference was a refreshing change from the mind-numbing world of new Labour. Delegates debated a wide range of resolutions, adopted a swath of progressive policies, including withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, no war against Iran, an early solution to the illegal armed Israeli occupation of Palestine. UK Co-ops were encouraged to build links with Co-ops in Palestine. Conference called for the strengthening of the UN and advocated that Britain starts a drive for global nuclear disarmament under its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, together with withdrawal from NATO. Delegates agreed that the Co-op Party should celebrate the 50th anniversary and achievements of the Cuban revolution, and intensify the campaign against the US blockade. Local Party councils were encouraged to affiliate to the Cuba Solidarity Campaign. The conference called on the party’s parliamentary group to oppose the building of any more nuclear power stations.
Among other good policies, delegates supported Northern Rock being turned into a mutual, instructed the party’s NEC to conduct an enquiry into NHS foundation trusts, to see whether they are sufficiently democratic and cooperative, and calls for the phasing out of faith schools. The coop party has getting on for 10,000 members, and every SCGN reader should join up.”

Sound advice!

Cuba, Co-op's and Hurricanes

Each day I enjoy a co-operative and fair-trade breakfast of coffee, muesli and banana and raise a glass to Cuba. Not because new Labour has driven me to drink - my toast is not with rum but with Cuban orange juice.

In the 1980’s Cuba was the world’s largest citrus fruit exporter. The end of the USSR took away their main market and put them in direct competition with two of the big citrus fruit exporters the USA and Israel.

Today Cuba is the world’s laboratory for sustainable farming and food sovereignty – the World Bank has described it as “almost the anti-model”- pursuing an approach that links ecology with the decentralisation of the control of farms. Co-operatives are playing a key part in these developments.

The US blockade makes market access crucial. In 2000, Traidcraft, the Christian based fair trade organisation stepped in to help seven co-operatives in and around Ciego de Avila find new markets and help them to win Fair-trade status. Working alongside Gerber foods they are bringing first class Cuban fruit juices to European consumers and in developing the Fruit Passion brand aim to do for fruit juice what Café Direct has done for fair-trade coffee.

Modern consumers are increasingly concerned about the provenance of what they buy from the developing world and thanks to the Fairtrade Foundation there has been a huge increase in quality making the fair trade an easier choice to make. Fair-trade is not socialism but the Fair-trade mark does guarantee farmers a minimum price and an additional 'premium' payment. In Cuba the premium is used for projects that benefit the co-operatives - better machinery, vehicles, irrigation systems etc. or to finance other activities including cultural and recreational facilities.
The Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) representing the interests of co-operatives and individual farmers are also working to increase the involvement of women in the farms and their decision making processes.

Last year I visited the region of Cuba where these co-ops are based and the extra income fair trade brings can make a real difference. One of the dreadful things about capitalism is the way the abstraction of the market separates consumers from producers.

Now Traidcraft are running meet the people tours to Cuba in November, February or March visiting the CPA and CCS Jose Marti Co-operatives in Ciego de Avila that produce the juice that is so welcome on our breakfast tables.

Writing in Granma, Fidel Castro, points out that the recent hurricanes have done between $3 and $4 billion dollars worth of damage to Cuba. Farmers have not escaped unscathed and to help their recovery the least we can do is buy some of their output. So why wait? You can find Fruit Passion in Co-op shops as well as in Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, also the Co-op’s own brand fair-trade orange juice includes Cuban product in the blend.

Of course the concept of fair trade is not new. Back in 1906 the first Labour MP’s cited John Ruskin as the author who had most shaped their thinking. Ruskin makes a plea for fair trade in ‘Unto This Last’ published in 1862.

“In all buying, consider first, what condition of existence you cause in the production of what you buy; secondly whether the sum you have paid is just to the producer and in due proportion, lodged in his hands.”

Given the present shenanigans in the PLP it would seem that today the minds of some Labour MP’s seem to be shaped by an older writer than Ruskin – evidenced from their detachment of political expediency from morality – one Niccoli Machiavelli.

For details of Traidcraft trips to Cuba see: Meet the People Tours at www.Traidcraft.co.uk

The Search For Utopia - 150 Years of Robert Owen

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

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.

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?