Co-op News September 2021

46 | SEPTEMBER 2021
150 years of Co-op News
Rebecca Harvey
q The first edition of
Co-operative News
On 2 September 1871, the first issue of The Cooperative
News was published, as “A Record
of Industrial, Political, Humanitarian, and
Educational Progress”.
“What is Co-operation?” its opening lines
asked. “The question which heads this article is
to appear ance so simple that many persons will
be almost inclined to call it foolish, and yet a
very little thought will show that it is much more
easy to put the question than to find a proper
reply to it…”
The publication was a long time coming and
was preceded by journals such as The Co-operator
(founded by the Manchester and Salford Society
in 1860. This was taken over by journalist Henry
Pitman who shouldered the paper’s full financial
burden and indulged his passionate opposition
to Dr Edward Jenner’s anti-smallpox vaccination
programme, to the
extent of renaming
the publication ‘The
Co-operator and Anti-
Vaccinationist’ and a
growing clamour for
the co-op movement
to produce its own
weekly newspaper.
A
‘special
conference’ discussed
the establishment
of a paper for the
movement on 5
November 1864, and
further conferences were held in 1865, 1867 and
1868 – with vocal debates disputes around such
a new publication’s name, audience, and who
should control it. But on 10 June, 1871, a meeting
of society representatives and individual
co-operators resolved that a Co-operative
Newspaper Society be set up and a board of
directors appointed.
About £400 in capital was promised, mostly
by individuals, with a quarter coming from
the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS).
Circulation increased from 7,000 to 15,000
within 18 months – a citation which, according
to Co-op Union Librarian and ex-News journalist
Roy Garratt, “became a worry to some in the
‘Co-operative Establishment’ who felt the News
should be controlled by the Congress Central
Board (later the Co-op Union Central Board, later
Co-operatives UK) or CWS”.
But the society’s chair, Thomas Hayes, laid the
ground rules for the paper’s future development
when he told the 1873 Congress in no uncertain
terms that “the board of the News believes that
its perfect independence should be preserved
and that it should be above the suspicion of
being controlled by an organisation other than
its own.”
Printing of the publication was initially
carried out by the North of England Printing
Society — established in 1869 at Balloon Street,
Manchester, to serve the growing number of
retail societies and CWS. By 1919, the Balloon
Street registered office of the society had added