blog

Hustings address

Throughout the pandemic our Co-op has shown the way to lead.

It’s shown what a values-led business is all about: from standing up for the safety of shopworkers to supporting local COVID mutual aid groups.

We’re at our best when being bold and confident, and in knowing how to apply our values and principles.

As a National Members’ Council we’ve had our formative years – and it’s time to build on those foundations. It’s now time for us to be bold and confident.

It’s now time for the Council to be doing the things it was set up to do.

Seven years ago, when members agreed the new Rules that govern our co-operative society, it was after careful thought at a critical time in the history of our Co-op.

Balancing the rights and responsibilities of the board, millions of members and their elected representatives on the Council.

I was there in those negotiations as an elected member, negotiating hard to include in the new Rules key provisions to safeguard our values and principles. This included:

• Council’s ability to have two-way communications with members
• establishing local member structures
• a programme of member education and training, open and accessible to all members, to better enable them to stand for council or as an MND

But these and other key provisions have still not yet been activated. I detailed some of the reasons why in my 2019 report as Vice President on Council Effectiveness.

Take holding to account: there’s a lot of talk about ‘holding the Board to account’. But in practice it’s not always clear what it means – or it’s just seen as asking questions.

In fact, Council has never done real, meaningful holding to account. But it’s there in the Rules: Council’s role to provide advice, guidance and recommendations on courses of action to the Board – such as on applying our Values and Principles.

For example: last year when I tabled that successful Council motion that called on the Board to pause the funding cuts to the Co-op College and Co-op Press, when Board didn’t follow our recommendation, the proper course of action – rather than do nothing – would be for the Board to have reported in the 2021 Council Annual Statement why they have not followed Council’s advice on a key values and principles issues.

Members will look back at Co-op’s annual reports with zero submissions by the National Members’ Council – and what will they think? They’ll wonder what we’re here for, and what our purpose it.

So there’s lots still to do.

If elected to serve as Vice President again, I will work to focus attention and lead on the development of Council’s strategic approach to:

• Building the local member structures
• Improving Council’s communication with members, and use of social media
• developing a co-operative member education and training programme to ensure members are equipped to support our business and communities, stand for Council and as a Member Nominated Director

And like I did before, work with Senate and Secretariat to commission a Council National Research Programme into the issues that matter most to members and to Council.

This is about Council being a supportive critical friend. Being credible.

Building on our good relationships with the Board, and delivering on our obligations to members.

It’s about action. I’ve got the experience, skills, and a track record of success.

Please elect me VP to work with the new President and Council to get things done.

7^{th –} 8^th February 2020, Birmingham

Future Co-ops is a unique conference in the co-op movement’s calendar. I’d never been before, although over the years I’d heard very good things about it. Many co-operators spoke warmly about its friendliness, the interesting issues that it addressed, the unique networking opportunity it presented, and the valuable, open space for discussion and debate about all things co-op.

And it didn’t disappoint – with delegates from across the consumer, worker and community co-op sectors, a mixture of old and new friends and faces (including several current and former Council members, attending in a variety of capacities).

The theme of the conference was ‘20/20 Vision: The Co-operative Future in Focus’, with the strapline ‘20 years of co-op past and 20 years of co-op future’.

The conference organisers

The Conference is organised by Co-operative Futures, a business development consultancy that specialises in co-ops and which is celebrating its twentieth birthday. Incubated by and then spun out of the former OSG Co-op (Oxford, Swindon and Gloucester), now Midcounties Co-op, Co-operative Futures is a co-op itself, working across the region to support co-op development.

Friday evening: A review of 2000 to 2020

The Friday evening presented an opportunity to review events of the past 20 years, looking back at key events in the co-op movement and wider world. As a prompt, each year was displayed on a flipchart sheet featuring headlines and articles culled from Co-op News. Was the independent Co-operative Commission tasked to review the strategy and structures of the co-operative sector really set up twenty years ago? The 2012 UN International Year of Co-operatives also seems like a distant age.

Some of the key figures who were present at the time spoke about some of the key issues facing movement, such as Pauline Green, former President of the International Co-operative Alliance and Chief Executive of Co-ops UK, who talked about the importance of strengthening the movement’s collective strength in influencing the Government and at the EU level. Bob Burlton, former Midcounties Chief Executive and Co-op Group Chair talked about the success of the Co-op Enterprise Hub, the former co-op development support scheme supported by the Co-op Group that had been a real game-changer for the movement. Other attendees talked about new challenges, such as those involved in setting up a new co-operative Bank in Wales.

The evening was rounded off by a fantastic co-operative-themed quiz – something perhaps the National Members’ Council could try its hand at one evening?

Saturday: the next 20 years

The day involved exploring what the next 20 years would look like, and what we need to do as a movement to make it more co-operative. A series of expert presentations set the scene, covering issues such as:

• Demographic trends and their implications, including the preparedness of our systems to respond to shocks and the idea of ‘panarchy’, when different systems come together and create unintended outcomes
• Climate change and the sheer pace at how quickly things are moving: whilst the UK is “miles off track” there may be a rapidly approaching tipping point in social pressure to take fundamental action. Communities businesses are going to be key to this agenda.
• The ‘fourth industrial revolution’ of Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and its impact on trade, security and work.

Following this, through round tables discussions and breaking into groups we looked at what we thought the world would look like in 2040 some of the key issues and challenges we would face from a co-operative perspective. Some emerging thoughts included:

• How the co-op movement is better at social innovation than technological innovation
• How we should be starting in the here and now and just getting on with what we can do
• The importance of people coming together to tackle climate change locally

This got me thinking as to what the National Members’ Council could be doing to support local Co-op member activity in our communities, such as through local Co-op member groups and Member Pioneer activity. It might be worth Council exploring these issues in more detail, if we think the climate emergency is something we should be prioritising?

Breaking into themed groups, we then explored potential co-operative solutions to address a range of issues, including energy, employment and working life, housing and homelessness, care, community owned spaces, food, and technology.

• Energy: we explored the potential for community-owned recharging points for electric cars, moving on to challenging the tech giants through disruptive co-operative-owned models for pools of community-based driverless electric cars
• Community-owned spaces: we discussed the importance of promoting a DIY ethic, the need for education about co-operative solutions, and the role of funding through mechanisms such as the Co-op Foundation’s interest-free loan offer for community places and spaces.

Conclusion and recommendation

This is a wonderful conference, and a great opportunity for new and old co-operators alike to engage with ideas, co-operative solutions and like-minded people from a diverse range of backgrounds across the co-op movement.

I would recommend that next year the Council sends a bigger delegation of Council members, enabling more members to benefit from this opportunity. 

I spoke at the AGM of the National Federation of Progressive Co-operators (of which I am a member) in London on Saturday 15th June 2019.

In a wide-ranging discussion we covered topics such as the role of Council in the governance of the Society, the progress in building the local member structures and Co-op Local Forums, how to apply the co-operative principles in a modern, consumer co-operative, reaching new demographics and recruiting new members.

I’m convinced that there’s a significant demographic trend of younger, more ethically and socially-conscious consumers that we still aren’t getting through to – an idea supported by many members present at the meeting.

We need to do much more to communicate our unique co-op difference and why as a member-owned enterprise, led by our Values and Principles, we are a genuinely alternative way of doing business. That’s why a ‘Principle 5’ policy and programme of Co-operative Member Education, Training and Information is so important.

Report from a session at the 2019 Co-op Retail Conference

Speaker: Stephen McDow, Keystone Development Center (https://www.kdc.coop)

Keystone Development Center is dedicated to supporting groups to set-up and organise as co-ops in the mid-Atlantic region (PA, NJ, DE, MD and parts of NY)

Visiting from the USA, Stephen gave an interesting and insightful presentation into the co-operative landscape and trends in the USA, particularly in grocery retail.  He began by pointing out that a large segment of the US grocery market as represented by the ‘dollar stores’ was predatory, targeting poorer people, and that their commercial expansion (over 50,000 stores) was predicated on the growth of a permanent underclass.

In the USA seven grocery co-ops account for 13% of revenue ($28 billion) of the country’s top 100 co-ops. Grocery co-ops tend to only operate one or a handful of stores, unlike in the UK. Stephen had a particular focus on bringing together rural and urban co-ops, bridging the gaps in training and education to better support the agricultural supply chain and the grocery co-op landscape. Key overlapping rural and urban challenges were how we educate the next generation of workers to understand ‘farm to fork’ supply chains through as the co-operative difference and co-op principles.

The examples of two Philadelphia grocery co-ops highlighted this challenge:

• one with 9000 members, £7 million sales, 150 employees and 3 locations which had achieved 300% growth over 12 years, and which had developed a good relationship with local schools was prospering.
• the other was created as a result of the local community raising $2.4 million capital to set up a co-op following on from a successful community mobilisation. However, this co-op closed within two years.

The main reason given for the community co-op’s closure was the difficulty in changing buying habits, whilst for the successful co-op its close links with local education providers was seen as a major benefit. The key question therefore identified by Stephen was: how do you educate the marketplace and get people to understand the co-op advantage? For grocery co-ops in the USA one solution was presented as being educating up through the education system, particularly around the farm to fork supply chain. In the USA one way to achieve this is through the use of a supplementary educational curriculum that can be funded publicly or privately.

This is obviously a question of critical importance to all co-ops and co-operators. The development of a Principle 5 policy and programme in relation to co-operative member education and training is something the Co-op Group National Members’ Council is looking at closely.

As well as a longstanding learner at the Co-op College, I’ve also been a member since it recently incorporated as a CIO (Charitable Incorporated Organisation).  This was my first time though attending the College’s Education and Research conference, and AGM, held at Manchester Met University in early April – as a delegate from the Co-op Group.

The theme was ‘Learning for Co-operative Transformations’, with a focus on young people, community and societies. With a tremendous and eclectic range of presentations, workshops and panel discussions on offer over the two days there was plenty of choice for the members, delegates and visitors from across and beyond the UK co-op movement (including students from Mondragon University in the Basque country).

Keynote speakers included Lemn Sissay, poet and broadcaster, who gave a humorous and poignant account of his introduction to the co-op movement, his experience as a young child in care and the failures of the care system.
He observed that a lot of people enact the co-op ethos without knowing it, and  that you get a lot of payback when reaching out to, engaging with and meeting the needs of those who are not familiar with your organisation – and who after including them often become your biggest promoters.

Some of the most interesting and thought-provoking sessions I went to included:

The co-operative economy in Rojava and Bakur
Exploring how a co-operative economy is being built through a pluralist social movement (the Tev Dem) in the autonomous Kursdish regions in Syria (one of their three cantons is Kobane). This bottom-up process is called Democratic Confederalism, with devolved decision-making starting from the commune level (a village or 30-400 households) and moving through the Neighbourhood to the whole city level. Creating co-ops at the commune level are the building blocks of what seems like an extraordinary attempt to create a new society based on co-operative ideals amidst regional war and chaos.

How we capture, accredit and evidence ‘co-operative character’
The starting point of this session was that whilst it is relatively easy to credential skills, doing this with character is more difficult because it is a virtue. The solution posited here was trough ‘open badges’, with meta data that was hardcoded into each digital badge. In the session we discussed what this might look like in terms of earners, issuers, what someone would have to do for it and why someone would want it. One possible answer to this in the context of the Co-op could be as a way to demonstrate suitability when standing for election to the Members’ Council or applying to be a Member Pioneer. It would also serve as a new way to conduct Principle 5 activity: member education and training.

Revealing Values
People involved in co-ops often talk about our ‘Values and Principles’ – the ‘V&P’ – referring of course to the codification of the original tenets of the Rochdale Pioneers by the International Co-operative Alliance. There’s the six co-operative values: self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, solidarity, equity, equality and the four ethical values: honesty, openness, social responsibility, and caring for others. According to the theory, these are then put into practice through application of the seven co-operative principles. So that’s 17 distinct ‘things’ involved in explaining what the model is all about – before you even get into definitions (the difference between ‘equity’ and ‘equality’ for example?

Tangibility can certainly be an issue when it comes to expressing the values – and from what I took away from this session that’s not surprising. The implication from this workshop by Magma Effect was that we need to think harder about what co-op values actually mean and how we talk about them.  That’s because according to them values are an emotionally-laden abstract concept, located in the brain’s limbic system – which means they exist within us without words to describe them (they are uncoded, unconscious information). Values relate to how we feel about things, and as such are connected to our beliefs (which are defined as things we are highly certain about and which reflect our assumptions on the way the world works).

However, values are also contextual and responsive to our circumstances, shifting according to the pressures that we face. So what a human would value in one situation, eg living in a Western market economy with access to a welfare state would be different to someone in circumstances far less hospitable. Under the Minessence Values Framework used by Magma there are 128 human values. As co-operators we maybe need to think more about how we surface our values and are better able to make them resonate emotionally with people. This is important, as it is values aligned with beliefs that drives attitudes and behaviours. And if co-ops are all about changing the world – as well as meeting practical needs – then we need to be in the behaviour changing business as well.

Co-operative Schools and Co-operative Academies
These two sessions explored the role of co-op values and leadership in co-op schools (co-operative trust schools and co-op Academies) and the relentless Academisation process. The question posed about co-op schools was whether when you walk through the door whether it feels different. One of the key areas for leadership was in engaging stakeholders and building structures, with networks identified as representing the real power of the co-op movement. Although these networks were often hard to sustain, experimentation with successful networks is essential for the model of co-op schools to grows.

Despite current political debate around a return to grammar schools,  69% of secondary schools are now Academies, with more in the pipeline. Co-op Academies are a powerful alternative to Academy models based on philanthropists, do-gooders and private chains. A key question explored here however relates to the motivation behind becoming a co-operative Academy: is it a narrative of resistance or one of hope?

• changing to stay the same so it can carry on ‘doing the right thing’ as a co-op: ie a strategy of static self-preservation,
• seeking minimal change to the existing school ethos with ethical changes as a result of perceived marketization ameliorated through a co-op model
• embracing a dynamic model of transformational change: with adoption of the co-op model representing a positive, affirming and radical move

Of these three potential motivations it was suggested that the latter holds out the best prospect for fully realising the benefits of adopting the co-operative Academy model.

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My report from the conference covers the presentation on Brexit and Beyond – retail change in context, by James Walton of The Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD)

The research and training charity’s Chief Economist gave a tour-de-force presentation on Brexit and its implications. He started by pointing out that most grocery leaders – like 55% of UK citizens – had no experience of life outside the EU, and that the drivers of the vote for Brexit would still remain, eg hostility to elites, the erosion of prosperity for a significant bulk of the population and a resulting perception of unfairness. European nations faced ongoing challenges that the EU to date had been unable to provide solutions to, including: weak banking sector, low productivity, persistent low growth, geo-political issues such as Syria, sovereign debt and a limited will on behalf of the EU institutions to reform.

Indeed, he suggested that we were facing what he called a 6-D future, involving Debt, De-globalisation, Dogfighting, Disillusionment, Democracy and Disobedience, where the benefits of historical change were fading and the sources of 50 years of growth were drying up as they were ‘one-off’s (ie women’s participation in the labour market, joining the EU in the first place). The grocery business had 8 big issues it needed to address: deflation, food service/ food to go, operating costs, promotions, health, volume, large store traffic and behavioural shifts in terms of customer loyalty. Brexit is another complication in addition to these, with the UK grocery market of course reliant on global connections.

Among the population there is a general lack of trust in business and co-ops can’t assume that shoppers are onside. It was therefore vitally important to align business interests with community interests – which is very good news given our Co-op’s repurposing and our new membership proposition and strategy around community. Some key issues facing shoppers as a result of Brexit and being outside of the ‘EU bubble’ include will include a more competitive labour market, and incomes erosion of income if inflation takes off. This comes after three years of falling prices in food, a period of deflation that has not happened before.

A result of this has been the process of ‘commoditisation’, which is the general tendency for expensive goods to become cheaper. One possible response to this is for suppliers is to seek to de-commoditise the market, by creating products that justify a price premium. A good way of doing this is by driving emotion into purchasing decisions, ie providing a non-price reason to buy. The rise of ‘Food to Go’ is an inspiration here and an effective way of adding value to the basics, in a branding package that makes it aspirational and desirable. The discounters have done well in challenging the supermarkets for shoppers’ affections, bringing products to market cheaply alongside an emotional pitch based on quality, authenticity, service and convenience. Whilst they are gaining ground, there is still plenty of room left for growth in convenience.

Technology presents key opportunities and risks: eg how we access products and the sort of products we buy. A key question will be: how loyal are people to the Co-op?

Stratford-upon-Avon, 3-5th March 2017