Co-operatives and Mutuality

Roger Williams Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bailey]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) for bringing that issue to my attention. I was not familiar with that society but it is a very good example of the values and qualities that I have been describing as the foundation of the co-operative movement and of the subsequent development of our public policy.

In his pamphlet, Cliff Mills goes on to say that mutuality

“was the response of people with often desperate needs”—

as the hon. Gentleman has just demonstrated—

“to find a solution for themselves and others in their community. It was based on self interest (the need to provide for me and my family), not philanthropy or charity; but—”

and now Cliff Mills comes to the crucial point—

“the genius of mutuality was that it captured that self-interest, and by channelling it through collective self-help, was able to produce an economically sustainable business.”

As I say, that is the crucial thing about the co-operative movement and the variety of business models that it incorporates. As Cliff Mills says, the movement is “channelling” self-help, but doing so in a way that enables someone to advance themselves or to deliver the service or product that they want to deliver in a way that can compete with the wider and less idealistic commercial world that they have to exist in.

If we look at the formation of the traditional co-operative movement—via the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844, and the different mutual building societies and insurance companies—all the bodies within it were rooted in that idea of self-help and they all had to survive in a very difficult external commercial environment. Indeed, the co-operative movement, which I have more experience of than other movements, was formed in the 1840s because its members needed good-quality foodstuffs, which they could not get through local private traders, and at the sort of prices that they could afford, which again were often not available. In addition, they needed to be able to use any surpluses that came from trading to reinvest in their own communities and their businesses, both to strengthen those businesses and to provide education and other help for the communities that they lived in.

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. The setting up of the co-operative movements was perhaps not as utilitarian as he suggests. A key aspect of the miners’ welfare halls in my constituency was libraries and the ambition of self-advancement, and we might have to return to a similar system in the future.

[Mr Bailey]

Yes. My references were specifically to the Rochdale Pioneers. One characteristic of co-operative societies was the way in which they reinvested surpluses in community education, and libraries were, of course, part and parcel of that.