A political scrap has broken out over the counter of the Co-op. Best known as a high street shop providing reliable, cheap food and distinctive “divi” stamps — eventually replaced by a plastic dividend card — the co-operative movement was for many a chance to save by pooling resources in trade, credit and housing.

For still others it was a life-changing opportunity: the young Fred Perry, whose father was a senior official in the Co-operative Party, learnt to play tennis on an Edwardian co-operative housing estate and went on to win Wimbledon three times.

The Co-op is also a powerful and long-standing political idea — which Gordon Brown and David Cameron are competing to claim as their own.

The Co-op movement has long been associated with the Left: the Co-operative Party and the Labour Party have been in formal alliance since 1927. In one of his boldest attempts to colonise Labour territory, David Cameron has adopted the humble Co-op as a central plank of new Tory thinking.

This week the Conservative Co-operative Movement, inaugurated by Mr Cameron three months ago, recommended a range of tax breaks for local co-operative services and started a publication on how to set up a retail food co-operative.

“Co-ops are a British invention, and we believe they have the capacity to promote better standards in schools and hospitals,” Jesse Norman, chairman of the Conservative Co-operative Movement, said. “The ideas we are announcing spring naturally from compassionate Conservatism.”

That Tory claim provoked instant indignation from Labour and the Co-operative Party, one of the oldest alliances in British politics. Peter Hunt, the general secretary of the Co-operative Party, dismissed the move as “a cynical stunt designed to make an unpalatable Tory party appeal to the electorate”.

The co-operative movement dates back to the 19th century, when communities in Lancashire and Scotland pooled their labour, food and resources. The Co-operative Party formally came into being at the end of the First World War. Today the Co-operative Party is the fourth largest in Parliament, though often unnoticed as it works in solid if unobtrusive partnership with Labour.

Some 29 MPs, including Ed Balls, the Secretary for Children, Schools and Families, stood as candidates for the “Labour and Co-operative Parties” at the last election.

Gordon Brown, the first member of the Co-operative Party to become Prime Minister, has made much of his philosophical roots in the movement. In a foreword to a new history of it, Serving the People, by Greg Rosen,

Mr Brown writes: “The Co-operative Party stands for social responsibility, for global decency and people having a say in the running of the communities. These are the values that I share.”

These are the values that the Conservative Party now wants to share too, reinforcing its new emphasis on shifting of power from central government to local communities and families.

Mr Cameron announced the Consservative Co-operative Movement last November in Manchester, not far from where the “Rochdale pioneers” established what is widely seen as the first Co-op, in the 19th century. “The co-operative principle captures precisely the vision of social progress that we on the Centre Right believe in,” Mr Cameron said, describing a vision of individuals banding together to take over local services, most notably schools.

“The idea of social responsibility, that we’re all in this together, that there is such a thing as society – it’s just not the same thing as the State.”

The Tory leader did not try to disguise that this was a deliberate incursion into traditional Labour terrain. “The co-op movement has generally been associated with the political left,” Mr Cameron said. “I think that’s a shame.”

The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers was founded by 28 impoverished weavers and artisans in 1844, when they were forced back to work after a strike. Pooling their capital with £1 each, the pioneers opened a shop selling food items that otherwise they would not have been able to afford.

The “Rochdale principles” remain the broad basis of co-operative enterprises around the world, including democratic control, open membership, limited return on capital and the sale of unadulterated goods. Many Co-ops started as single shops in villages that rewarded members with a proportion of profits based on consumers’ spending, traditionally in the form of Co-op stamps.

Today the Co-op Group is still principally based on selling food but is involved in numerous other sectors, including travel, pharmacy and funeral arrangements. It has a turnover of more than £9 billion and a workforce of more than 87,000 people. The Co-op remains the fifth-largest food retailer in Britain.

At the same time that the Tories have discovered a new interest in co-operative thinking, the Labour Party has sought to re-establish its links with the movement. To mark the 90th anniversary of the Co-operative party last year, Labour paid formal tribute to its founders, including Sam Perry, the first national secretary of the Co-operative Party.

Perry’s son, Fred, would probably have become a cotton spinner in Stockport had his father not moved to London and the Brentham Garden Suburb, a pioneering co-operative estate at Ealing in West London, with sports facilities — including tennis courts.

“It was there that I first became interested in watching and playing sport,” Fred Perry later recalled.

Mr Brown, in his foreword to the new history of the movement, drapes himself in the newly chic mantle of the Co-op: “When I first joined the Co-operative Party I was aware of its proud history. I shared its conviction that social justice can best be achieved through co-operative action.”

The Co-operative Party is complaining loudly that the Tories are stealing political clothes that will never fit them. Mr Hunt said: “It is nice to see the Conservatives keeping green by recycling other people’s policies.”

But Mr Norman, writing in The Guardian this week, challenged “the assumption that co-ops are intrinsically left-wing” and announced that the new brand of Tory co-operative thinking would expand well beyond the setting up of local food co-operatives. “We are starting with food and communities, but will be looking at schools, housing, healthcare and public services.”

The Conservative Co-op has opened for business: it remains to be seen whether voters will buy into it.

Through the years

1844 Birth of Rochdale Pioneers Society
1862 Industrial and Provident Societies Acts gave co-operatives a corporate status for the first time
1863 Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS) established
1867 Co-operative Insurance Company becomes limited company
1870 Co-operative Union created
1871 First edition of Co-operative News
1872 Co-operative Bank established
1873 CWS enters manufacturing
1895 International Co-operative Alliance established
1917 Co-operative Party formed
1919 Co-operative College established
1942 First self-service shop
1945 National Co-operative Chemists (NCC) established
1965 Dividend Stamps introduced
1985 The CWS announces that no own-brand toiletries or products will be tested on animals
1992 Co-operative Bank becomes world’s first bank to introduce a customer-led Ethical Policy
1998 Fairtrade products in stores
2007 Co-operative Group and United Co-operatives merger

Source: co-operative.co.uk

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