This is not a shop

One of my fond memories of last year was meeting the chair of a shop that I'd been to the launch of. It was a great shop, much needed, and had been opened against all the odds. He spent several minutes pouring out all the had improved in the village thanks to their work. Then, suddenly and in mid-sentence, he stopped himself as he realised that he hadn't mentioned the shop once. He paused and said "It's not about running a shop, is it?" I replied, "It never was, we just didn't tell you at the time"

That magic moment when community organisers go beyond solving the immediate problem to seeing that this the way to see all your community needs and challenges as being in your own hands to solve happens so often. Sometimes it can take years to come. So I was delighted last Saturday when I visited Trefeglyws in Wales for their official opening. I congratulated them on the shop only to be told "this isn't a shop." They were right at two levels, alongside the shop were a petrol station, cafe, meeting space and more. But at a higher level, they were right too. It was a vision of what their community needed and a vehicle for constantly refreshing that vision in the future. The Cwm Trannon Community Co-operative was a great inspiration that it is possible to start with that level of vision rather than hoping it comes in the future.

Extending our impact

Congratulations to Kirdford Village Stores  in Sussex for winning the Daily Telegraph's 'Best Village Shop in Britain' award. It is always a pleasure to see community-owned shops beating all-comers to take such a title.

By coincidence, I had the pleasure of visiting there a week before. All I can say is that Sue and her team richly deserved the award. There was no doubt that they were doing a great job delivering a fantastic service to their community. But there was something else that struck me there, and in visiting the neighbouring stores. The passion that community-owned stores have for sourcing local food is now at a stage where it isn't just the store they save, but a whole variety of local businesses.

That was visible in Kirdford. It was also clear nearby in Lodsworth. I'd been there when the store opened, restoring a service to a village which had been without a village store for 23 years. This time, it was just the store that was thriving. THREE food businesses had opened up in the village and were supplying the store. In one case, the store was delivering the goods to other local stores. I saw the same thing in Strood Green and Hambledon; communities taking control not only of their store, but of their local food system.

We've been supporting local food in village stores through the Making Local Food Work programme for some time thanks to the BIG Lottery, but it was great to see a real sea change at a local level, not just for the store, but for the local economy.

Back to school to discover co-operation

One of the great joys of being part of the international co-operative movement is that one lifetime is far too short a time to know every form of co-operative action around the world. New experiences come along with a wonderful regularity.


I had a great example of that last week when I visited Sir Thomas Boughey High School & Co-operative Business College near Stoke-on-Trent. It is one of the pioneering Co-operative Trust schools developed thanks to the work of the Co-operative College. I expected to find its structure to be co-operative and exciting; it was. School membership was open to parents, learners, staff and the community. But even more exciting was the learning going on there.


Its view of co-operation was drawn from around the world. It captured the richness of co-operative action from all parts of the globe, not just a traditional UK perspective. It was rooted in co-operative values, which had been the focus at the schools even before the co-operative structure. Many decades ago I was part of the group of co-operators that would run co-operative projects in schools and dream of what could be if it became a whole school activity. At Sir Thomas Boughey I saw that dream becoming reality.


If one lifetime isn't long enough, but the early start that the learners at the school are taking will give them a head start on the rest of of us in understanding the wonderful diversity of co-operation around the world.

New Year wishes

The first day week is always a good time to think about what you hope to see in the coming year. Here are four wishes for the coming weeks and months.


1. That more rural communities start to believe in what they can achieve together
Our biggest single barrier remains of communities not seeing that they can be the solution to the problems they face. Whether inspired by the Big Society vision or driven by the age of austerity, there are real opportunities for more communities to take control this year.


2. That more communities who have saved their village shop will now go further
A number of communities are now on to their second generation of their shop. Inspired by their own achievement, they are taking co-operation as stage further by tackling the other issues their communities face to create multi-purpose enterprises that go far beyond the original shop. Let's see more taking that next step.


3. That even more diverse forms of rural social enterprise will emerge
We've see the shop success spawn the co-operative use of pubs, churches and many other enterprises. Let's see the imagination run riot on solving issues not tackled before.


4. That the Coalition Government recognises that communities shouldn't have to reinvent wheels
The passion for encouraging frontline action is laudable, but those on the frontline want to devote their energy to their community, not in solving problems that others have solved before. Recognising the role of specialist intermediary bodies to spread knowledge is a vital part of helping of making the Big Society a reality on the frontline.

Localism & Mutualisation: time to learn from the 19th century

The Coalition Government has the opportunity to learn from a 19th century co-operative mistake or to limit the opportunity that its Big Society presents. At present we have a Government committed to the mutualisation of public service and localism bringing more community control, with the two being developed separately.

In the late 19th century, the rapidly expanding Co-operative Movement went to war with itself over the role of worker co-operation. One side wanted to see the new factories as worker owned, the other saw consumer co-operation as the only true way forward. Sadly, both lost out in the conflict, leaving a movement divided and less diverse than many of its international counterparts. It is only in recent years that serious attempts have been made to find common ground between the two camps.

What the Government needs to learn quickly is that these are not two separate initiatives, just as the very early co-ops drew no distinction. Mutualisation will only succeed if there is genuine engagement with local communities including them having ownership where relevant. Localism needs to include enterprise and worker co-operation has a vital role to play here. The Big Society needs to see this connection or pay the price that the Co-operative Movement has done for its 19th century error.

A mutual solution for the Post Office?

Fear of crime in rural areas is high, yet actual crime is lower than most urban areas. By the same token, fear of losing the local Post Office is high even though the network closure programme is long over and Post Office Ltd has been working hard to build a modern network that can meet rural needs. Even so, the fear remains.

The Government's announcement on the future of the Post Office last week will have triggered that fear again. Yet its plans offer a real opportunity for rural communities. It has stated that the Post Office will either remain under state control or become a mutual. Plunkett's position on mutualisation is to judge each by how genuinely mutual it will be and to challenge if it isn't. In the case of the Post Office, it looks good so far. We see clear criteria to ensure a balance of interests and a real opportunity for community-owned shops to have a voice at the highest level.

We'll be urging all communities that want to protect their postal services to engage in the consultation to ensure that the final outcome is as mutual as the draft bill intends. Genuine ownership of the postal services, so vital to village life, could turn that fear into pride.

An end to an irrational fear of irrationality?

It was great to spend time on Saturday evening with Tom Webb from the Masters of Co-operative Management at St Mary's University in Canada. Tom has been one of my great inspirations for over a decade now. His work on Marketing Our Co-operative Advantage (MOCA) led to the creation of much of the work at Oxford, Swindon & Gloucester Co-op. Tom went on to create the Masters programme at St Mary's and its sister programme the Center for Excellence in Accounting and Reporting for Co-operatives. In all this work, Tom has been relentless in asking the question "I know how this works in mainstream enterprises, but how does it work at a co-op?". He has applied this to every area, from marketing to accounting.

To me, our conversation had the feel of light at the end of the tunnel. We have both spent our lives trying to convince managers that acting as a co-operative is the only rational approach to running a co-operative. This is approach has often been dismissed by managers who sought to slavishly follow big business ethics. Our way was seen as somehow wooly and less rigourous. Tom saw the credibility of a co-operative approach as being vindicated with co-operative economics now being given three nobel prizes in recent years. I saw the supposed irrationality of our approach being vindicated through our rapidly growing understanding of behavioural economics, in which so many of the levers of change were strengthened through co-operative action.

So we spent a pleasant evening, together with the Program's Director, Larry Haiven, exploring the bridge that was being built between the two. Ten years on and still inspiring me.