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Co-Operators and Politics – a Rejoinder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Tony Adams
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Central to Professor Pollard's “Reflections on a Re-consideration” is the contention that in 1917 Britain's co-operators decided to enter electoral politics as a result of the acceleration of long-run economic and social change. This decision, it is argued, emerged naturally from the steady prewar growth in class-consciousness established by secular shifts in the fabric of Britain's economy and society. We can agree that there is some evidence of a slow growth of class-consciousness before 1914, but not that this should have as its “natural” outcome the establishment of a political party by the British co-operative movement. It remains my contention that this departure was principally the result of the post-1914 experience of British co-operators.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , August 1987 , pp. 174 - 179
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1987

References

1 Pollard, S., “The Co-operative Party”, above, p. 171.Google Scholar

2 Ibid.

3 Rhodes, G. W., Co-operative-Labour Relations 1900–1962 (1962), p. 13.Google Scholar

4 Co-operative Congress Report, 1919, pp. 520–21.

5 Pollard, , “The Co-operative Party”, pp. 171–72.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., p. 172.

7 Co-operative Congress Report, 1900, p. 153.

8 Co-operative News, 1906, p. 657; Co-operative Congress Report, 1908, pp. 378–85.

9 Rhodes, , Co-operative-Labour Relations, op. cit., pp. 12–13.Google Scholar

10 Pollard, , “The Co-operative Party”, p. 172.Google Scholar

11 Ibid.

12 Co-operative Congress Report, 1913, pp. 488–503.

13 Pollard, , “The Co-operative Party”, p. 168.Google Scholar

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid., pp. 168–69, 173.

16 Waites, B. A., “The Government of the Home Front and the ‘Moral Economy’ of the Working Class”, in: Home Fires and Foreign Fields, ed. by Liddle, P. H. (1985), pp. 182,185–86.Google Scholar

17 Co-operative Congress Report, 1917, pp. 561–62.

18 Pollard, , “The Co-operative Partly”, pp. 169–70.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., pp. 167–68. Other parties fielding candidates for the first time in 1918 were the National Democratic and Labour Party, the National Party, the National Socialist Party, the Women's Party and, of course, the Co-operative Party. See Craig, F. W. S., Minor Parties at British Parliamentary Elections, 1885–1974 (1975), pp. 32, 53, 57, 67, 71, 111.Google Scholar