The Co-op Bank Disaster who is to Blame?

The Co-op Bank Disaster who is to Blame!

Clearly something has gone seriously wrong at the Co-operative Bank but the latest twist in this saga has created far more heat than light. The public pillorying of Paul Flowers, for the Tabloids love it is the perfect story, a Vicar, sex, class A-drugs and rent boys. And that is before the banking connection. Clearly the Tories have enjoyed this big time. The Co-op movement’s historic connection to the Labour Party has made this a great opportunity to attack both the democratic nature of the Co-op and its role as the banker to Labour.

Firstly the Co-op Bank has never been a co-operative. It began life as the Loan and Deposit Department of the Co-operative Wholesale Society back in 1872 and ninety-nine years later it became a plc and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Co-operative Group.

Furthermore the Directors of the Bank have never been elected. They have always been appointed by the main board of the Co-op Group and to overcome any skills gaps they have included a significant number of  what are independent non-executive directors drawn from the financial services and banking industry.

In short Paul Flowers may have been chair of the Bank Board but he was not running the show. Indeed the board had a minority of elected members. To quote the annual report for 2012, “Of the 11 Non-Executive Directors four are elected members of the Co-operative Group Board, two are Co-operative Group Executives and five are independent and recruited for their specific financial services experience and expertise.”

All the key roles on the operational sub-committees of the board where taken by banking professionals of some standing. 

In the 2012 annual report you will see that the Chair of the Risk Committee which had responsibility for “the management and control of all significant risks, including technical, operational, business model and external risks”, was Merlyn Lowther.  Her name maybe familiar indeed you may have her signature in your wallet. As chief cashier of the Bank of England her signature was on our bank notes for four years. She joined the Bank of England Economics Division in 1975 and had worked her way up to chief cashier by 1993.

Then there is the Exposures Committee, responsible for sanctioning “large counter party transactions, manage large exposure positions and consider risk management of exposures”. This was chaired by Peter Harvey who had been the chief executive of UK Business Banking at Barclays PLC as part of long career at Barclays.

There is also William Hewitt former Group Finance Director of the RAC who was chair of the Audit Committee.  Then there are the external auditors KPMG. The Bank was given a clean audit including a review of their corporate governance statements by Andrew Walker an Audit and Transactions Services partner in KPMG’s Financial Services practice.  He specialises in the retail financial services sector, in particular building societies, credit cards and consumer finance.

Andrew has worked extensively on IFRS (For those who don’t know these are International Financial Reporting Standards) for most of his audit clients and has detailed experience and insight of application of standards in complex, subjective areas such as impairment, fair value and hedging.  He has acted as the expert on a major claim in connection with credit card and internet systems.  He has also led reviews in connection with OFT investigations in the banking and consumer finance sectors.

Oh and don’t forget the advisers who facilitated the merger with Britannia said to be Tim Webb of J.P. Morgan Cazenove. According to their website Tim is an exceptional banker. He represents “the stability of our management team and the depth of talent that allows us to maintain consistent service to clients year after year”.

It must be clear to everyone now that that deal was the mutual equivalent of Lloyds and HBOS.  The Co-op Bank was a prudently run fairly boring bank indeed there had been a time when the board consisted was solely of elected members who were completely risk averse.

Britannia it now appears believed there would never be a recession and the housing market and the commercial property market would ever stall and was loaded with all sorts of toxic debts. Now we all know the consequences of that lethal cocktail.

The other board members included Neville Richardson the former CEO of that Building Society. Then there was Peter Marks the Co-op Group CEO determined to grow the business by acquisition at apparently any price the stage is set for a total disaster.

Far be it from me to try and defend Paul Flowers. His performance at the select committee was not brilliant but he was not the worst performer by any measure. However hs apparently dissolute private life style has provided the tabloids with a great story and Cameron and Osborne a stick to beat the Labour Party with. But the collapse of the Co-op Bank is not the fault of the elected members of the Group Board or of the four elected members on the Bank Board.

It was the professional bankers and financial advisers that that cooked up the deals that bought the bank low. The Co-op Bank is in the brown sticky stuff because it was a Bank not because it was a Co-operative.

 

2013 Not a Bad Year for the Co-op Movement

At the tail end on 2013 the Co-op Movement had some very good news and no it was not about yet another inquiry into the Co-op bank. Or perhaps that should be the Bank formerly known as the Co-operative as last week it finally passed all of the regulatory and business hurdles required to complete its demutualisation.

The process has been agreed by all necessary classes of creditor and shareholder and approved by the Courts. So effective majority control of the Bank has now passed to investors with the issuing of the new ordinary shares and the termination of the Co-operative Groups existing shares.

Personally I am not rushing to leave the bank I suppose in my heart I hope to win it back for co-operation but in my head I am fully aware of what happened to all the other Building Societies that became small banks on demutualization and what subsequently happened to them. So the omens are not good.

No the good news was astonishingly in the Houses of Parliament. The first reading of the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act due to become law on 1^st August. It took a while of patient and careful lobbying of government and civil service but this is the most tangible benefit from the UN International Year of Co-operatives in 2012. One of the objectives of the Year was to get governments around the world to update their legislation when it comes to Co-ops. And on a wave of Big Society rhetoric David Cameron found it hard to resist.

This new Act is however a consolidation act and can therefore only ‘consolidate’ existing legislation and that means that, the 1965, 1967, 1975, 1978 and 2002 Industrial and Provident Societies Acts; the Friendly and Industrial and Provident Societies Act 1968; the Co-operatives and Community Benefit Societies Act 2003; and the Co‑operative and Community Benefit Societies and Credit Unions Act 2010, will be repealed and replaced with the new Act.

Having all this Co-op law in one place will be a great boon when it comes to starting and running co-operative enterprises making life simpler for everyone who works for and with co-ops.

Co-ops UK has however got a long list of new things it would like to include as new Co-op law and has been encouraging the Law Commission to take some of these ideas into account in the process of consolidation. There has been some success including increasing the limits on withdrawable share capital from £20,000 to £100,000, modernising the processes on insolvency – something that will particularly help with fan owned football clubs, improving the investigatory powers of the regulators, and allowing the electronic submission of registration documents.

Co-ops UK will be pushing for more amendments as the legislation progresses but despite all the movements set backs this is the most significant change in the legal basis of co-operation for a generation. 

If you read the mainstream press you would think the whole co-op movement had gone bust but for all the troubles that have hit the Co-operative Bank after all it is not as if all the other Bank’s have be free of trouble. This new law is good news for the over six thousand co-operative businesses across the UK, and in turn for their 15.4 million owners.
Despite what you may have read elsewhere 2013 was a good year for Co-ops with a new one starting everyday! What is more their survival rate is far higher than for business at large. One in three conventional businesses goes out of business within three years of starting. For co-ops, that is only one in twenty.
For five successive years the co-operative sector has outperformed the UK economy, growing by 20% since 2008. Across the nations of the UK, turnover is now £36.7 billion. Worldwide, the co-operative sector has a turnover 54 times the global turnover of Coca-Cola.
Meanwhile in the UK the sector is strong and growing Examples of this commercial success story are:

• In farming, 65% of all farmers in Scotland, an expanding sector, are now members of an agricultural co-operative.

• Co-operative schools have doubled their number every sixteen months, with now over 500 co-operative schools in England.

• There are now one million members of credit unions in Britain. These are financial co-operatives, lauded most recently by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who asks all churches to work with their local credit union.

• Co-operative Energy is challenging the big six retail energy giants. The percentage of UK consumers who would recommend their energy supplier is 30% overall but an amazing 97% for Co-operative Energy.

So in a nutshell the problems with the Co-op Bank are just that a problem with the bank all that is wrong with the rest of the sector is that it is still too small. There is also a very important thing you learn when things go wrong - the corporate media are no friends of co-ops. But why should they be, the sector maybe small but the co-op model is a clear threat!

Aviding Amazon at Christmas (Or anytime)!

I am sure you have seen and read of the huge boom in internet shopping this Christmas. Clearly a trend that will continue as that tax dodging, union busting megalith Amazon has destroyed large numbers of the independent book and music shops that would have fulfilled many Christmas present orders.

As a lefty when Amazon first appeared it seemed like a great thing. I could get some of the more obscure left field books and music that I had been looking for a lot more easily, cheaper and swifter than ordering through my local book or record store. However it is now clear that Amazon is in the vanguard of the neo-liberal onslaught.

Without tax there is nothing to fund our schools, hospitals and public services, but Amazon is the colossus of tax avoiders. Amazon's UK subsidiary (which also includes brands Lovefilm.com, Kindle, Audible.com) paid £3.2m in corporate taxes in 2012 on sales of £4.3bn - a rate of less than 0.1%. How can a high street store paying council tax, rent and all the costs that go with having such a presence compete?
And it is not just tax the working conditions for Amazon staff are diabolical. Now the magazine that has been leading the campaign against Amazon is twenty years old this year. Ethical Consumer has been advising us how to spend our money as wisely as possible so that our consumption matches our values. I think at a time when we are under such concentrated attack we should think very carefully about who gets every hard earned penny we have to spend.  

Margaret Hodge, who frankly seems reborn as Chair of the public accounts committee has been a leading figure in the campaign for shoppers to boycott Amazon. Now she has been joined by MPs Natascha Engel, Meg Hillier, Margaret Hodge, John McDonnell, Michael Meacher, Austin Mitchell, Grahame Morris and Dennis Skinner.

The important thing about the Ethical Consumer campaign however is that do not just say stop buying from Amazon they also answer the ‘so where do we shop instead’ question? Which is just where Ethical Consumer magazine comes in like ‘Which’ with ethics factored in it helps you decide who to give your custom to for a huge range of products and services that we all buy.

It is an independent, not-for-profit, multi-stakeholder co-operative with open membership, founded in 1989 and based in Manchester. Their income comes entirely from, reader subscriptions (50%), consultancy work for campaign groups and ethical organisations (30%), and adverts from ethically vetted companies, grants and other income (20%).
Nowadays it seems everyone has their own set of ethics and beliefs, so they've developed the world's most sophisticated yet simple personal ethical rating system to give you the information you need, based on detailed research of over 40,000 companies, brands and products. What is more you can personalise their  ethical product guides to reflect the issues that you find most important - be that animal testing, climate change, sweatshop labour, GM crops, nuclear power or whatever.
Subscribers can also access detailed product & company information, plus hundreds of downloads. As a subscriber you get the UK's leading alternative consumer magazine, published 6 times a year which can be available as a paper copy delivered to your door, or as a flip-book or as a digital download. 
Consumer product labels now appear on an increasing number of ethical products and services; the Ethical Consumer Best Buy Label helps shoppers choose genuinely ethical products and services. It's a unique label that looks in detail at the ethical record of the company behind the product and the environmental and ethical record of the product itself.
I must admit my own ratings do not always coincide exactly with theirs but I always find out something interesting and it helps me to avoid making the enemy any stronger!!
Ethical Consumer is the brand name of the Ethical Consumer Research Association so that all their work is backed up by some excellent research into companies and their products. This is supported by the fact that they are a co-op. In October 2008 ECRA converted into a multi-stakeholder co-operative with worker members, and investor members.
Both classes of member are involved in decision-making and the election of Directors onto the Board.  The conversion was designed to give ECRA better access to external capital and skills – whilst retaining the not-for-profit and co-operative principles at its core. Because of the principle of open membership, any consumer able to make the minimum investment (currently £200) and who supports the objects of ECRA, can now become a member of the co-operative.

So maybe before you buy anything else your first Christmas gift to yourself should be a sub for ethical consumer so go to: http://www.ethicalconsumer.org . You may also like to include the essential Christmas present for all your anti-capitalist and radical co-operator friends the new book from Ethical Consumer and New Internationalist - 'People over Capital'. Edited by Ethical Consumer editor Rob Harrison and well reviewed in these pages.

Only after you have of course been to http://shop.morningstaronline.co.uk for all your stocking fillers!

 

We' are all in it together!

I have a confession to make I was a guest speaker at the Co-op Party Summer school held at the NASUWT conference centre at Rednal near Birmingham and I received £18 travel expenses. Not quite the 50K that went to Ed Balls Office and probably money better spent but I defend the right of the Co-op to spend its money how it sees fit. It is not as if private companies do not contribute money to political parties but they do out of sight with no democratic accountability.

The Co-op Union had a Parliamentary Committee as far back as 1881; the Co-op Party was formed in 1917 and has had an electoral arrangement with the Labour Party, the famous Cheltenham Agreement, since 1927.

It seems to have taken sixty six years for this totally open activity to be finally “uncovered” by the right-wing press. The Co-op Party is difficult to explain and many co-operators have been calling for reform. With the rise of New Labour some felt it was too much about selling Labour to the Co-op and not enough about building an effective Co-op voice in Parliament.

Current events have remade the case for an effective Co-op political voice. It is worth remembering, as we approach the centenary of the First World War, why the Co-op Party was formed in the first place.

When the First World War began the Co-operative movement did what is saw as its duty with the CWS selling its stocks of flour to the army at pre-war prices, as well as selling Danish butter lower than the market price and granulated sugar and tea as well as canned goods at less than government prices.

Individual Societies in fairness to their members introduced fair distribution schemes before the Government introduced rationing.

When rationing was finally introduced it was run in the interests of private traders with Co-op Societies not getting a fair allocation of controlled goods. The CWS had built a powerful production and distribution chain was far superior to any in private hands yet was reduced to delivering the same poor quality products and inefficient distribution of its competitors.

This bias can be seen by Lloyd George’s (he became Prime Minister in 1916) decision to appoint Lord Davenport (formerly Sir Hudson Kearley a man who had made his fortune in the grocery wholesaling business of Kearley and Tonge) as the Government Food Controller.  

When conscription was introduced the movement found it self in the hands of its enemies with Military Service Tribunals often dominated by private traders. One Society had 102 out of 104 men conscripted. Across the country Tribunals conscripted the Co-op Branch manager to give a better living for the private grocer.

The final straw was the Excess Profits Duty a tax on Co-op Society surpluses however these where not the profits of a private company but the mutual savings of the members. As far as the movement was concerned this was a fundamental attack on the whole idea co-operation. This tax would destroy the dividends of the members. In 1916/17 the CWS alone paid over £1million in excess profits duty.

Within the movement the argument raged about ‘political neutrality’ one of the Rochdale principles but as Arnold Bonner put it in his History of British Co-operation, “political neutrality in these circumstances might bring the same fate as the pacifism of sheep amongst wolves.”

At the 1917 Co-operative Congress in Swansea a resolution was passed which declared, “In view of the persistent attacks and misrepresentations made by the opponents of the Co-operative movement in Parliament and on local administrative bodies, this Congress is of the opinion that the time has arrived when co-operators should seek direct representation in Parliament.”

Today the Co-operative Party has a structure a bit like its sister the Labour Party. It has individual members in branches and it has affiliated societies. The biggest of which is the Co-operative Group.

The irony of the present Tory attack on the Co-op Labour link is that prior to this it was Ed Milibands proposals for the Trade Unions affiliated to labour that raised the biggest threat to the relationship between the Co-op Party and it’s affiliated Co-operative Societies.

The Affiliated Co-operative societies as institutions keep the party grounded in the real world of co-operative business. And just as Professor Keith Ewing has so eloquently argued about the role of trade unions in the Labour Party individualisation would break the institutional link between The Party and the Societies.  The present situation when that link is being attacked by the Tories and their mates in the media is hard to defend when Labour appears to have attacked it first.

It may not be as he meant it but what must be clear to everyone in the Co-operative Movement, the Trade Unions and the Labour Party is that ultimately David Cameron is right, “we are all in this together”.  And as working class institutions we have the right to determine our politics for ourselves.  

A century of experience tells us that you simply cannot trust the Tories or the Liberals to act fairly.  Just like in 1917 when “in view of the persistent attacks and misrepresentations made by the opponents of the Co-operative Movement”, we need political action to be able to defend ourselves.

Ed Milliband And Energy : Solidarity Begins at Home!

We British are so generous a huge chunk of the energy supply industry is now owned by foreign firms so we have the joy of knowing we are increasing the GDP of Germany, France or Spain every time we put the kettle on. And those who have stayed loyal to dear old British Gas or Centrica as it is now known will be cheered to be able to make a contribution to the £16,439,000 that was shared by their top five executives’ in 2012. The poor old Chief Executive Sam Laidlaw had to struggle by on just £4,959,000.

I bet the pensioner described by John Major has having to choose between eating and heating will be heartened to know they are making a contribution so poor old Sam can manage on such a paltry sum. Old-Etonian Sam’s dad was a former chair of BP so we have to keep Sam in the style to which he has doubtless become accustomed.

The reality is of course that this is a monopoly. A complex one but a monopoly just the same. This is not a real market most people have only one electricity connection to their house and if they are lucky one gas connection. What we have is a pretend market. The energy companies have different marketing, billing, accounting and head office functions that add costs to our energy bills then they pretend to compete.

Ofgem may claim that, “protecting existing and future customers is its first priority.” But in the second sentence of their objectives they give the game away, “we do this by promoting competition, wherever appropriate, and regulating the monopoly companies which run the gas and electricity networks.”

In trying to regulate these monopolies they have the power to fine them for abuse of market position which they do in 2010-11 to the National Grid was fined £15 million. Other fines include £8 million and a £4.3million from National Grid Gas, £4.5 million from EDF, £5 million from British Gas Trading, £2million from RWE N-Power. More recently Scottish Power has agreed to £8million compensation for its customers following miss-selling.

We clearly we have a crazy world when firms are being constantly fined huge sums for not pretending hard enough.

If the market is a joke so is government energy policy. When researchers at Cambridge University did a review of energy policy for the Consumer Association they came up with a grim conclusion.

“The UK faces an ‘impossible trinity’ of energy policy objectives: decarbonisation, energy security and affordability”, they said.

It is time we came clean and admitted the simple truth. There is no market solution. The privatization and dismembering of the industry has made things worse not better. The interests of the owners and as we can see often the managers are totally incompatible with the needs of both the environment and of the customers.

These policy objectives cannot be met in the current ownership structure. If Ed Miliband wants an energy price freeze as a prelude to bringing the industry back into social ownership then three cheers! However if he things we need more competition then that can only means more fragmentation more marketing and billing systems on top of the same monopoly infrastructure and can only increase costs further!

It seems to be taking a long time for him to get it. Maybe his personal energy choice gives us a clue. Apparently he has switched from E On to First Utility.

When  Ian McCraig CEO of First Utility heard Ed’s new policy he said that a freeze was impractical and could put him under. This is the firm that increased its duel fuel tariff by 18.6% in June.

In terms of its green credentials they are not brilliant either with over half their electricity coming from coal and just 8% from renewables. It prides itself on accurate billing because it installs real time meters in people’s homes this does not equate to higher customer satisfaction ratings mind as it is 11 out of 14 in Which’s customer satisfaction tables.

So Ed what is wrong with Co-op Energy? As a consumer/owner it works in your interests, over half its electricity is from renewables and it has a better customer satisfaction rating. It been a bit tough at the Co-op lately and Co-op Energy is one of our star performers.

What is more Co-operative Energy became the ONLY energy firm to support his policy. Ramsay Dunning, general manager said: “We welcome the pledge Ed Miliband has made, to freeze energy prices if the party is elected in 2015. A tough approach, like this, is required to tackle the spiraling profits the Big Six continue to enjoy and, most importantly, to create a fairer deal for customers who are struggling or in some cases, unable to pay their energy bills.”

So come on Ed solidarity begins at home!

 

The End of Co-operative Banking?

I don’t know if you have seen the Danny Boyle film 127 hours. Even if you haven’t I am sure you will be familiar with the story. It is the story of the terrible accident that befell Aron Ralston who when climbing in south-eastern Utah fell and trapped his arm. Stuck for five and a half days under a dislodged boulder he was forced to amputate his own right forearm with a sort of blunt Swiss army knife.

This may sound melodramatic but this is the way I feel about what has happened to the Co-operative Bank. I feel like someone has cut off one of my arms.

May 9^th 2013 will stay long in the memory for many co-operators. It was the day of reckoning for the Co-operative Bank. It was the day the great unravelling began, the day ratings agency Moody downgraded the Bank's debt rating to "junk" status. It said that that the bank was vulnerable to potential losses and warned that the bank may need "external support" if it could not strengthen its balance sheet.

In a massive piece of understatement the Bank said it was "disappointed" by Moody's decision.

The news preceded the resignation of chief executive, Barry Tootell, and the collapse of the bid to buy 631 branches from Lloyds Banking Group.

This unraveling has now ended with the enemy inside the gates. US Hedge Funds sometimes described as “vulture funds”, Silver Point Capital and Aurelius Capital Management now have significant stakes in the Bank. Presumably intending to do to us what they usually do with the distressed assets of developing economies.

Now Moody’s ever helpful in these matters say that the Bank will be forced to “take the axe” to costs. It is worth pointing out that the issues the Bank faces are not dissimilar to those faced by the rest of the banking sector and that had the collapse of 2008 not happened we would not know be talking about it. Or if the ludicrously low interest rate regime had not been in place ever since that has destroyed the margins in conventional retail banking.

Some Banks have had to be nationalised all have had to be recapitalised. So the environment for banking has certainly worsened dramatically. We also know that some of that crisis in the banking sector has been caused by bankers themselves.  By their ridiculous growth strategies and reckless lending of their taking on of risks and of products that they themselves did not understand in a mad greed driven feeding frenzy.

We had prided ourselves that we where different that the mutual sector or at least what was left of it had weathered the storm better than the joint stock banks. We encouraged people who had an ounce of ethics to “switch their money”.

Now we find according to no less than the ex CEO of the Co-operative Group and even the current chair that there is a crisis of governance at the Group.

I think we need to unpack these comments because governance has several elements to it. Clearly there is the structure of the organisation, is there something inherent in large scale co-operatives that makes them difficult to govern? Was there a healthy culture at the Group ie was there an open and respectful relationship between those who represented the interests of the members and the professional management? And what where the qualities of the key personnel, the senior executives of the Group and the Bank and the lay chair of the Bank and the Co-op Group?

Before we can answer these questions there is a review underway by Sir Christopher Kelly, Chair of the Kings Fund and former chair of the Committee for Standards in Public Life. His job is in looking at the trail of poor decisions that lead us to this situation “to look at the management structure and culture in which those decisions were taken; lines of accountability which governed those decisions; and the processes which led to them” and “To identify lessons which can be learnt to strengthen The Co-operative Bank and the wider Co‑operative Group, and the co-operative business model generally.”

Clearly we should wait until the results of that report which will be available at the Group AGM next May. In the meantime I am full of praise for the way; despite the dreadful hand his has been dealt, Euan Sutherland the current CEO of the Group has handled this situation.  There are nonetheless a few things I think that are now obvious.

Firstly that we should have no confidence in the advice from Group Chair Len Wardle or ex-CEO Peter Marks about what to do next. We should have stopped listening to them a long time ago. And it is inconceivable to me that Len could contemplate staying in the Chair until May he should have already gone.

Secondly a “Co-operative Bank” with a minority member’s stake maybe “ethical” in intent but it is evidently not, in my personal view, a Co-operative. And if it persists in using the name it should be asked to desist just as the brand Co-operative Travel which the Group sold to Thomas Cook has to disappear after a certain period.

Lastly of course I hope this amputation stops the bleeding and it protects the body of the Co-operative Group from any further liabilities.  It is sobering to remember that none of the demutualised building societies have survived the transition.

      

 

Wild Welcome for Co-op Students!

Co-op activists and thinkers will be hanging out together next weekend for the UK society of Co-operative Studies Conference at the beautiful Gilsland Spa Hotel near the village of Gilsland, half way between Carlisle and Hexham, very close to Hadrian’s Wall in Cumbria. At 700ft above sea level, the hotel commands spectacular views over the Cumbrian countryside. To the east of the Hotel are the heights of South Tynedale with the Pennines to the south. To the south west are the mountains of Cumbria and the Lake District and to the north are the rugged moors.

A pretty isolated place to find a Co-operative Hotel and Conference centre you may think. The Hotel itself been on the grand tour for many years famous visitors included Robbie Burns and Walter Scott when it was the Shaw Hotel and later the Gilsland Spa and Hydro but it came into the co-operative family when the Co-operative Wholesale Society (as the major shareholder) and a number of retail Co-operatives took over in 1902 and ran it as a convalescent home. Members of those co-operatives used the hotel for convalescence until during the First World War the hotel was taken over by the Military Authorities as a provisional hospital. Many soldiers were able to take advantage of the peace and quiet of Gilsland Spa to recuperate before being sent back to the carnage on the front line then during the Second World War it was used as maternity hospital.

This chequered career was revitalised in 1972, when the property was established as the Gilsland Spa Hotel and has been progressively developed as a family holiday centre. The ongoing investment programme has made all the bedrooms en-suite, with central heating throughout the hotel. The bars provide the ideal ambience for that relaxing drink or bar meal and the latest addition, the Orangery, allows it to offer superb wedding, conference and banqueting facilities. The Conference is supported by The Northern Region of the Co-operative Group who have a very close relationship with Gilsland.

Despite the bucolic scenery there is much going on in the co-op economy for conference delegates to chew over. There are keynotes from Chris Herries the very first woman Chair of Co-operatives UK, Eric Calderwood of Stirling University and Bob Yuill Deputy Chief Executive of the highly successful Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society. Topics for the weekend include important sessions on the future of co-op retail, developing growth strategies for co-op enterprises with case studies from the agricultural sector, lessons from a new business history marking 150 years of the CWS, as well as a roundup of the current state of the co-op sector. You can tell that the conference is starting to come of age because people want to add their own things to the agenda developing its own fringe.

These include the recently formed Students for Co-operation. In many parts of the world many of the services that students need as well as their accommodation is held co-operatively even in the USA the Harvard Co-op had a turnover last year of $45 million the 33,000 paid-up members received $856,000 amounting to a dividend of 8% on purchases its Harvard Square bookshop was voted the best bookshop in Boston. This is not unusual and yet here in the UK students are having a double whammy of higher fees and the squeeze of the private rented sector.  There is huge scope for co-operative solutions to the challenges students face and students in many parts of the country have made a start.

Another session that I am sure will be of interest to Morning Star readers is a session on Co-operators in the Spanish Civil War. Chaired by Ian Hewitt grandson of Nottingham volunteer James Feney and with contributions from historian Richardson and author David Ebsworth (the pen name of former T&G Regional Secretary Dave McCall) whose Agatha Christie style novel the Assassins Mark set in the Spanish Civil War ahs as its lead character s reporter from the great co-op newspaper the Reynolds News. 

There are also session covering life in a small one shop Co-op Society at Grosmont in North Yorkshire and the history of Co-ops in Cumbria, as well as more technical sessions covering Industrial and Provident Society law. Anyone who has even the vaguest interest in co-ops and lives between Carlisle and Newcastle will be welcome to drop in and will be sure to something to enjoy and find a great co-operative place to do it in!