Different Visions of English Co-operation in the Victorian Age: A Review

Abstract

While it is difficult to identify a point in time that co-operation was established in England, there is no doubt that the Victorian era constituted the greatest period of development, both in terms of the various philosophies of co-operation and its implementation. The development of the co-operative model of economic organisation in England predominantly during the Victorian era is often described in teleological terms — the movement commencing in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries as highly philosophical and utopian in nature and evolving into a very pragmatic economic movement epitomised in the very successful Co-operative Wholesale Society with its origins in the Rochedale Pioneers. However, in reality the co-operative movement became much stronger during the nineteenth-century by building on both philosophical and pragmatic ideas, though the utopian extremities of thinking were singularly unsuccessful. The philosophical ideas where important in building the necessary social support amongst leading classes while the pragmatic ideas where important in building economic capacity and wealth for members. In this paper I survey the various strands of this complex development and show that, for the entire period of the nineteenth-century, co-operative sects struggled to promote their ideas in the face of extremely successful pragmatic co-operation.