Preliminary Programme

Wed 11 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 12 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.00 - 18.30

Fri 13 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 14 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

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Wednesday 11 April 2012 16.30 - 18.30
G-4 LAB02 Other Worlds of Labour: Non-Socialist Strands of Working Class Self-help & Popular Voluntary Association in C20th Europe: General Co-operation
Main Building: East Quad Lecture Theatre
Network: Labour Chair: Antony Webster
Organizers: Peter Ackers, Alastair J. Reid Discussant: Nicole Robertson
Patrick Doyle : The Co-operative Movement in County Kerry, 1889-1910
The Irish co-operative movement started in 1889 when the first co-operative creamery society was established. It emerged at the intersection of several developments in Ireland. Firstly, a radical reorganisation of the Irish countryside was taking place as ownership of the land shifted from the landlord class to ... (Show more)
The Irish co-operative movement started in 1889 when the first co-operative creamery society was established. It emerged at the intersection of several developments in Ireland. Firstly, a radical reorganisation of the Irish countryside was taking place as ownership of the land shifted from the landlord class to the tenant farmers. Secondly, Irish agricultural produce, (especially the dairying sector), had lost the preeminent position in the British marketplace to the Danish agricultural sector. Denmark’s competitive advantage derived from its swift adoption of modern dairying technology alongside a vast network of co-operative organisation.
Promoted by enthusiastic adherents, the co-operative movement made gradual progress into the Irish countryside. The Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS) acted as the co-ordinating body in the creation of an effective network of co-operative businesses. By the 1920s co-operative creameries and credit societies had become a common feature of rural communities. However, resistance towards the expansion of an Irish co-operative movement proved a difficult obstacle: traders, private creamery owners, politicians constantly appeared as vocal critics. However, more problematic for the IAOS was the challenge posed by the English Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS) who attempted to dominate the nascent Irish creamery industry. It aggressively competed with the IAOS for the affiliation of Irish farmers and highlighted the tension between producer and consumer forms of co-operation.
This paper will examine the development of the early co-operative movement in county Kerry (part of the Irish dairying heartland) between 1889 and 1910. It will show how co-operative organisers promoted their work and ideals amongst newly empowered farmers and confronted opponents and rivals. Finally the paper argues that co-operators became entangled in an esprit du temps as it employed with popular nationalist discourses despite the claims of the founders to have created a non-political organisation. (Show less)

Marcella Pellegrino Sutcliffe : Mazzini’s Transnational Legacy amongst English Co-operators
In 1949 the octogenarian William Henry Brown travelled to Rome to witness the inauguration on the Aventino of the monument of Giuseppe Mazzini, a personal pilgrimage, sealed by his gesture of kneeling in reverence in front of the Italian former exile’s vestige. W. Henry Brown, a second generation Mazzinian born ... (Show more)
In 1949 the octogenarian William Henry Brown travelled to Rome to witness the inauguration on the Aventino of the monument of Giuseppe Mazzini, a personal pilgrimage, sealed by his gesture of kneeling in reverence in front of the Italian former exile’s vestige. W. Henry Brown, a second generation Mazzinian born in East London in 1868 to an active co-operator, had studied at Toynbee Hall and had personally met veterans of the co-operative movement, such as Holyoake, and Christian Socialists, Edward Vansittart Neale and Thomas Hughes. Joining Oscar Spinelli, Vice-president of the Lega Nazionale delle Cooperative, for the ceremony in Rome, Brown was acutely aware of the impact that Mazzini’s thought had had on his fellow co-operators at home. While the support of British radicals for the Italian Risorgimento revolutionary is well-known, labour historians have reserved scant attention to the long legacy of Mazzini’s doctrine amongst English co-operators. Indeed, as Italy was unified, a second generation of Mazzinians was born in England, to include future trade union and Labour leaders.
This paper will trace some of the evidence of Mazzini’s long legacy in his country of exile, where his ideas on association were recognised by English co-operators as providing the basis for the harmonious working of society. While Mazzini’s followers struggled to affirm his principles in Italy, where Italian workers were increasingly drawn towards Bakunian and Marxist solutions, Mazzini’s writings were regularly consumed by English co-operators, some of whom are remembered as ‘the most enthusiastic of the British Mazzinians’. These included northern, self-improved colliers and miners - such as Chester Armstrong and Labour Leader John Wilson - and radical reformers, such as Henry Bolton King, who in the late 1880s founded a Mazzini Club within the adult educational institute of Toynbee Hall in the East End of London. The indissoluble link between morality and politics of Mazzini’s doctrine and the centrality of education in society greatly coloured Bolton King’s practical idealism when setting up a model village of agriculture co-operation in Warwickshire. Throughout England Mazzini’s readings were regularly supplied to co-operative reading rooms, providing workers with materials which inspired their faith in the harmonious co-operation of classes through association. Indeed, Mazzini’s lasting legacy within the English ‘Left’ was reflected by a survey amongst Labour Leaders published in William Stead’s Review of Reviews in 1906, which indicated the Italian exile as one of the authors who had most deeply influenced them. (Show less)

Martin Purvis : Revisiting Hard Times: Consumers’ Co-operation in Interwar Britain
For some contemporaries the difficulties experienced by many industrial communities during the 1920s and 1930s pointed to the continuing relevance of established forms of self-help. Indeed, committed co-operators claimed to see echoes of the early-Victorian hardship which had inspired the Rochdale Pioneers in the loss of income and employment occasioned ... (Show more)
For some contemporaries the difficulties experienced by many industrial communities during the 1920s and 1930s pointed to the continuing relevance of established forms of self-help. Indeed, committed co-operators claimed to see echoes of the early-Victorian hardship which had inspired the Rochdale Pioneers in the loss of income and employment occasioned by interwar depression. There was thus the hope that co-operation would emphatically demonstrate its worth both as a sane and stable alternative to a frail and failing capitalist system, and as a genuinely democratic force amidst growing totalitarianism in continental Europe. As has so often been the case, such predictions of decisive change proved wishful thinking, yet they serve as a prompt to more detailed exploration of co-operative fortunes during the interwar years.

The present paper focuses chiefly on co-operation’s local practice as it attempted to engage with its millions of members (and potential members) as a supplier and producer of a growing range of goods and services. Sharp contrasts in the commercial health of individual societies mirrored in important respects the underlying economic conditions in the local communities in which they were rooted. But whether sales were growing or shrinking, local societies (with the active support of the movement’s national organisations) often attempted to present co-operation as a means of bolstering confidence and restoring momentum to economic development at a local, national and even international scale. Co-operation prioritised efforts to maintain family incomes, strengthen domestic consumption and preserve the freedom of international trade; all policies argued to promote the well-being of the masses, rather than secure the profits of sectional producer interests. Co-operation thus frequently found itself pitted against the will of the political establishment; a battle which it rarely won at a national level. The situation was more complicated at a local level, however, as co-operation attempted to implement policies on pricing and production that would defend the real value of members’ incomes, to promote welfare initiatives bolstering both household living standards and retail demand, and to create incentives to spend at co-operative stores. Again these efforts sometimes fell foul of state policy – for example, on means testing – but co-operative initiatives were also compromised by retail competition and the movement’s own difficulties in translating ideals into decisive actions. (Show less)



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