The United Kingdom’s corporate culture is based on the idea that companies should compete. It is also a cultural issue as they are unable to comprehend how businesses can collaborate for mutual benefit.
Cooperatives exist in all sectors of the economy around the world, and while they are commercial organisations, they operate within a broader set of values and principles, not only aiming to generate profit. They have historically emerged from the need to provide goods and services not accessible from the public sector and conventional businesses. As such needs expand and become increasingly complex, cooperatives find more space to meet these needs, providing services while advancing livelihood and creating jobs in the process. In the United Kingdom, the general view is that cooperatives are a phenomenon of small business operations. This view has been proved wrong by the massive operation of Mondragon Corporation [in Spain].
The cooperative model challenges us to think beyond the old paradigms of the market versus the state – beyond the divisions between owners and customers – and to think creatively about new ownership and management models.
This is exactly the kind of creative thinking a futuristic public service will need in the years ahead. The Co-operative Party and the British Labour Party have worked together in constituencies since 1917, and Co-operative MPs served in the Ramsay MacDonald Government. However, the cooperation was not formalised until the two parties signed the 1927 Cheltenham Agreement, so named after the place where it was signed near Bristol in South West England. It formally recognised the historical and political links between the labour movement and the cooperative movement. The national agreement recognised both parties as independent, and committed them to work together through jointly supported election candidates. It also enabled members of one party to join the other. However, member cannot join any other party even if they are sympathetic to the cooperative movement. The agreement has been revised and renewed regularly since 1927, and remains in force today.
The arrangement between TCP and BLP is unique. There is no similar arrangement anywhere in the world. After 1927, all Co-operative Party members stood for public office as Labour Co-operative candidates. Elections were contested under the banner of the leading party, BLP, and therefore the impetus and resources to go out and face the public under the Co-operative Party label was much lower.

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