The laborers, who organized the Rochdale
Pioneers, 150 years ago, were people suffering from the social dislocations of the industrial revolution.
They struggled to survive periodic unemployment, low pay, unhealthy
cities, and dangerous workplaces. They
had no social benefits—no insurance or health care
or pensions from their employers or from the state. They were dependent on
merchants who were sometimes unscrupulous, who exploited the helplessness of
the poor by selling at high prices, by adulterating goods, or by trapping them
with offers of credit. And the Rochdale laborers faced these challenges in a
time and place when they had no vote, no democratically elected government to
represent them, no
interventionist state to protect them. Their answer to daunting
social problems was a special
kind
of self-help: mutual self-help, in which they would help themselves by helping
each other. It was a small start to a large international movement.
The founders
of Rochdale were
of course poor
compared to their
social superiors. They lacked
real economic or
political power, or
high social status.
And the poverty
and misery surrounding them in
Rochdale were undoubtedly a large part of their motivation for creating a
co-operative. It is, therefore, reasonable to say that the forces of poverty
and need inspired the formation of the Rochdale co-operative. But they did so
somewhat indirectly, mediated by the agency of idealism and critical social
thought. The Rochdale Pioneers did not rise spontaneously from need, but were
organized consciously by thinkers, activists, and leaders who functioned within
a network of ideas and institutions. The same can probably be said of all successful
co-operatives in all times
and places: they
arise from need—when some activists, institutions, or agencies consciously promote and organize
them. Also, while co-operatives have frequently been tools for the
relatively poor or
marginalized, there is
evidence that (just
as in Rochdale)
they are rarely led by the very
poorest.
The founders in 1844 were looking for a
mutual self-help organization that would advance their cause and serve their
social objectives through concrete economic action. They called their new
association the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, a name that rang with
overtones of Owenism. “Equitable” had
been one of
Robert Owen’s favourite
words—as in his plan
for Equitable Labour Exchanges that would allow workers to exchange
goods and services directly with each other,
bypassing employers and
middlemen. To Owenites,
“Equitable” signified a society that would eliminate capitalist-style
exploitation, and that would exchange goods and reward labour fairly according
to Owen’s ideas. The word “Pioneers” might have been inspired by the newspaper
The Pioneer, which had been the organ first of the Operative Builders’ Union,
an early trade
union, and later
of Owen’s Grand
National Consolidated Trades
Union. To choose a name like
“Equitable Pioneers” in 1844 was a social and even political statement, and
implied that the Pioneers were consciously taking a place in the movement for
social reform and the advancement of the working class and its interests.
The Rochdale
Principles are a set of ideals for the operation of cooperatives. They were
first set out by the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in Rochdale, United
Kingdom, in 1844, and have formed the basis for the principles on which
co-operatives around the world operate to this day. The implications of the
Rochdale Principles are a focus of study in co-operative economics. The
original Rochdale Principles were officially adopted by the International
Co-operative Alliance (ICA) in 1937 as the Rochdale Principles of Co-operation.
Updated versions of the principles were adopted by the ICA in 1966 as the
Co-operative Principles and in 1995 as part of the Statement on the
Co-operative Identity.
Take Note; The Pioneers' original store on
Toad Lane was sold in 1867 and but it was later re-purchased by the movement,
and opened as a museum in 1931. The museum resurrected the legal name Rochdale
Equitable Pioneers Society in 1989, the name having been abandoned by the
original co-operative in 1976 on merger with the Oldham Co-operative.
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