Co-op News March 2023

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Photography: Co-operative Futures Throughout the event, delegates also looked at the challenges in different sectors, extrapolating practical next steps – mapping available support, raising awareness of co-operative answers, finding ambassadors, building capacity and raising new forms of capital. There was also the acknowledgement of the crossover of solutions: digital skills hubs could be linked with community hubs and places providing warm spaces; gatekeeping behaviours need to be challenged; and there was a call to support the movements and federations already active – including Energy For All, Workers.coop, Solid Fund and the Union-Co-ops movement. There were specifics, too. In housing, there was a call for centralised solutions to encourage existing owners of property or land to sell to the co-op movement – potentially through a renting model. The worker co-op movement called for an international worker co-op meet-up and a rapid response unit to find opportunities within businesses being sold or in trouble. “Burnout is real, though,” said Nick Greenhill, director of Co-op Web. “People who work in coops want to give as much as they can. Sometimes that ends up being too much.” But as Kat Dixon added, co-ops also have the capacity to “bring joy to a difficult struggle”. From Below Ahead of the main conference, Future Coops hosted a public screening of From Below, a documentary showcasing mutual aid and grassroots community action during the pandemic. In a Q&A that followed, Dr Oli Mould, a geographer at Royal Holloway, University of London and producer and lead researcher on the project, said the term mutual aid was popularised by anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin, who argued that co-operation, not competition, was the driving mechanism behind evolution. “Pre-pandemic, mutual aid was seen as anti-capitalist, with a distinct role of over-throwing systems,” said Mould. “But during Covid, there was a softening of that political edge.” In the USA, the term retains a radical anti-racist, anti-capitalist edge, he added. But in the UK, it now has three distinct narratives: mutual aid as charitable, contributory (such as Alcoholics Anonymous) or radical. Also speaking was Nigel Carter from Oxford Communuity Action (OCA), a black multi-ethnic mutual aid organisation formed in 2019 on the back of community participatory research into men’s health. This research, by Healthwatch Oxfordshire, found that the disparity of life expectancy for men in north Oxford and the south and east areas of the city was 15 years. “The report anticipated some of the issues that came out of the pandemic, including how it disproportionately impacted the BME communities, many of whom were frontline workers,” he said. “There is a link to stigma here too,” he added, “and links to dignity and the right to food.” The OCA is “less food redistribution centre, more cultural hub,” he said, adding that the organisation has maintained a genuine sense of mutual aid “by focusing on people acting in solidarity to meet specific local needs”. “Without this focus, there is a danger that activity can be co-opted by bigger organisations, diverted to a different direction or the values can be diluted,” he warned. “You also need to be cognisant of what tradition you’re from and the traditions you’re in.” He gave the example of the Black Lives Matter movement, and reminded delegates that this is the 75th anniversary of Windrush. “They brought solidarity economics and the values of mutual aid from the Caribbean,” he said. “They brought Susu, or partner systems [type of informal savings club arrangement between a small group of people] and local credit unions.” He added: What is important from grassroots organising is to come back to the values of people and collective, but you also need a steady flow of people with ideas and passion.” 28 | MARCH 2023
UKSCS conference Consumer co-ops as actors for change by Miles Hadfield q Lincolnshire Co-op’s Corhill Quarter development With the world facing urgent crises around issues such as the environment, food and new tech, the co-op movement is among those jockeying for position to offer a way forward – notably in terms the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs). But where do consumer co-ops – often mistaken by casual shoppers as conventional supermarket businesses – fit into this? This question was at the forefront of discussions at last weekend’s conference of the UK Society for Co-operative Studies (UKSCS) in LIncoln, which presented academic research alongside presentations from prominent co-ops. The event was held on the home turf of Lincolnshire Co-op, which sponsored the event and showed off its substantial efforts to regenerate the local economy. It hosted site visits to two major Lincoln developments it has spearheaded – the state-of-the-art Science and Innovation Park and the Cornhill Quarter, which has refurbished a historic part of the town with properties owned by the co-op retned out to retail and hospitality businesses. Lincolnshire was among the retail co-ops making presentations to the first day of the conference. Head of membership Laura Dunne and CFO/acting CEO Steve Galjaard said retail co-ops are joining a societal move from consumerism to citizenship. “Co-operation in our world is about bringing together partners to make life better for communities,” said Dunne. “This is especially important for a regional co-op like us.” Lincolnshire’s twin flagship developments are not the only brick-and-mortar evidence of how this can play out: the society has worked with communities and members to improve local infrastructure – rowing back on plans to redevelop a pub in its estate portfolio after locals protested; instead it helped them buy the site as a community pub. Other projects include an upgrade to a GP surgery and the creation of a coworking space. u MARCH 2023 | 29
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Page 6 and 7: EQUALITY Bright Future Co-op reappo
Page 8 and 9: CREDIT UNIONS Credit union lending
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Page 22 and 23: MEET John Brodie CEO of Scotmid Co-
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Page 26 and 27: From Crisis to Co-op: Future Co-ops
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Page 32 and 33: Fairtrade Fortnight 2023 highlights
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Page 48 and 49: INTERVIEW Learning from the legacy
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Co-op News March 2023

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