[sheffield-coops] FW: Appeal to Co-operators

[Steve Thompson]

To all on the sheffield.coop e.mail list.

 

The Yorkshire Co-operative Party Council have drafted this appeal to
co-operators.

I hope that you find it worth your consideration.

With all good wishes,

Steve Thompson

Sheffield Branch Co-operative Party membership secretary

 

 

 

 

 

YORKSHIRE CO-OPERATIVE PARTY COUNCIL

 

APPEAL TO CO-OPERATORS

 

 

Whether you work in worker co-operative producing energy, food or any other
good for sale, or work in co-operative retail distribution, or are a member
of such organisations as an investor or consumer, you are a co-operator. 

 

You may not think of yourself as a co-operator because your organization has
no affiliation to Co-operatives UK or Co-operatives Yorkshire and Humber.
Moreover, your organization, because of its structure of governance, may be
best described as a social enterprise, rather than a co-operative. Even so,
if it is constituted under Industrial and Provident Society legislation,
which was originally devised to provide a legal framework for forms of
co-operative activity, you qualify for membership of Co-operatives UK and
Co-operatives Yorkshire and Humber

 

This brings us to our first appeal. If your organization is eligible and not
already affiliated to Co-operatives UK and Co-operatives Yorkshire and
Humber, please consider doing so. We urge affiliation because we think it
important to demonstrate the amount and scale of economic activity based on
an alternative model to that of private equity capitalism.

 

But we wish to go further and issue a second appeal. We share the feelings
of all co-operators who are disillusioned by politics, political parties and
politicians. We too are disgusted by much of what we see at Westminster and
in the City and would not exclude from criticism those with whom we are
affiliated. We see great virtue in trying to change society through
grass-roots action and we view co-operation as social movement which,
through its greater ethical commitment, can produce a major transformation
of society.

 

But if that is your view, we appeal to you to join the general movement by
affiliating to bodies beyond your own organization so that our voice can be
magnified and the message trumpeted to the many who are only too inclined to
wallow in self-interest!

 

Being an active co-operator is one part of being an active citizen, but it
is a part rather than the whole. Unfortunately, despite our feeling of
disconnection with much in current politics and society, we find politics
inescapable. We may often wish to say, as once did Anthony Newley, "stop the
world I want to get off", but ...

 

The Co-operative Party was founded in 1917 and affiliated to the Labour
Party in 1927. Why? Economic conditions for the domestic population were
very difficult at the height of the Great War in 1917 and co-operators saw
the need to politically represent the interests of consumers and
co-operators against those of war profiteers.  The affiliation to the Labour
Party followed  the defeat of the miners and the wider trade union movement
in the General Strike of 1926 and to combine against the subsequent attack
on working-class interests by a triumphant Conservative government.
Political action was required to defend co-operatives from adverse
legislation in Parliament.

 

What we need now is less defensive than offensive action! The crises now
facing humanity call for more pressing of co-operative ethical values and
principles on Labour's policy-making and, through political mechanisms, on
domestic and international society. JOIN US NOW.

 

 

 

 

 

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