A tale of co-operation and nausea

We spent too much of the morning doing our weekly shopping at the local Tesco store. Back home, putting away the purchases my mind turned to simpler times and to this commemorative plate, which hangs in our kitchen and which echoes the history of the co-operative movement.

Cooperation dates back as far as human beings have been organizing for mutual benefit but the modern co-operative movement dates to the 18th century. For example, in 1761, the Fenwick Weavers' Society was formed in Fenwick, East Ayrshire, Scotland with the purpose of buying oatmeal in bulk and selling it cheaply to the members.

The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, founded in 1844, is usually considered the first truly successful cooperative enterprise. A group of 28 weavers and other artisans in Rochdale, England set up the society to open their own store selling food items they could not otherwise afford. Within ten years there were over 1,000 cooperative societies in the United Kingdom based on the Rochdale model. One of them was the Honley Industrial and Equitable Society, established in 1861, in Honley, the village of my birth in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The plate commemorates the 50th Jubilee of the Society in 1911. By that time the Society had 5 shops including bakery, greengrocer, butcher, clothing and a general store, all operating in what was then only a small village. All profits went back to the members in the form of an annual dividend, or the divi as it was usually known.

The building at the top left of the plate was the bakery and behind it was a large hall where in the late 1940s we primary school children went for our midday meal, dinner as we called it. I suffered what was, without doubt, the worst meal of my life in that hall when, one day, we were given, for our pudding, tapioca laced with cod-liver oil. No doubt they thought it would do us good in those years of austerity but I still feel nauseous every time I look at the upper left quadrant of that plate!