The Co-operative Party: An Alternative Vision of Social Ownership

Abstract

This essay analyses the relationship between the cooperative movement, the Co-operative Party and the Labour Party. The formation of the Co-operative Party in 1917 ended the movement’s political neutrality, but tensions between the Co-operative and Labour Parties continued even after their formal alliance in 1927. The Co-operative Party maintained a separate identity from Labour, but struggled to develop a strong voice of its own. And within the Labour Party cooperative aims remained on the periphery, even after the Co-operative Party strengthened its policy agenda around social ownership in the 1930s and 1940s. Nonetheless, the authors argue, the Co-operative Party articulated an alternative to nationalisation that was never entirely submerged by the Labour Party’s increasingly statist thinking in the twentieth century.