The quest for a "middle way" : radical and Rochdale co-operation in New South Wales, 1859-c1986
Creators: name: Lewis, Gary
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 1989
Subjects: subject: Rochdale system
subject: Cooperation Australia New South Wales

description: Inspired by the messianic visions of the Welsh manufacturer and reformer, Robert Owen, experiments with co-operation as a weapon against economic hardship and an agent of radical social change began in New South Wales in the 1830s. These experiments were unsuccessful, but in 1859 a more durable form of co-operation reached the colony - retail co-operation based on the successful model of a store in Rochdale, Lancashire. In 1844 Rochdale co-operators combined to supply themselves with 'the necessaries of life' and distribute surpluses among themselves or reinvest them in other co-operatives. The commercial success of this store and the democratic 'self-help' principles it applied inspired an immense international Co-operative Movement. Influenced by Owenite ideas, Rochdale activists argued co-operation as a form of democratic endeavour possessing dual economic and social goals, a 'middle way', neither laissez faire nor state-centred, possessing the potential to create a 'Co-operative Commonwealth', a superior social system constructed upon co-operation not competition. After the 1860s, Rochdale co-operatives committed to such ideas began developing in New South Wales, particularly concentrated in mining communities in the Hunter Valley and in Sydney and the mining and rural centres of the south coast. By the early 1920s a distinct Rochdale co-operative movement had emerged, an important element of a greater co-operative sector including farmer co-operatives, building societies and later credit unions. Such co-operatives have contributed enormously to the economic and social fabric of New South Wales and Australia. Surprisingly, they have received little attention from historians. The present study seeks to remedy that deficiency in part by examining, specifically, urban radical and Rochdale co-operation in New South Wales for the 130-odd years to the mid 1980s, seeking to explain its achievements, problems and eventual failure and to evaluate its credentials as a 'middle way'. The thesis does so by examining the evolution and characteristics of key co-operative theories, structures and practices and in particular, the complex politics of the Rochdale movement in the twentieth century. Such an approach permits the systematic demonstration of critical internal co-operative conditions upon which external factors have impinged to mould radical and Rochdale co-operation and prevent it from achieving a greater potential. The central internal dilemma was the perpetual contest between the co-operative democracy principle and the need of co-operatives to capitalise themselves adequately. The tensions this generated produced a fatal divergence between idealists stressing co-operation's social mission and pragmatists preoccupied with its economic progress. External factors bearing upon these internal deficiencies have included the vexed relationship between co-operation and the Labour Movement, the irreconcilability of co-operative consumers and producers, the eschewing by other co-operative sectors of Rochdale because of its ’socialist' complexion, inadequate legislation, the ambivalent influence of the British Co-operative Movement, the scattered and parochial nature of co-operative centres and, ultimately, the superior competition of private businesses unencumbered by the democracy principle. The interplay of these internal and external factors generated enormous pressure in radical and Rochdale politics surfacing as interminable disputes between pragmatists emphasising the primacy of consumers organised in retail stores and bound in 'loyalty' to a giant co-operative wholesale and idealists emphasising co-operation's social mission and a broad range of co-operative activities, particularly production ('worker') co-operatives, co-ordinated through a Co-operative Union. While pragmatists and idealists remained together as part of one movement and pursued the same nominal co-operative goals, the result has been perennial disagreements debilitating the movement, squandering such advantages and opportunities as it possessed, in particular the human resource of its idealists, especially the women, leaving radical and Rochdale isolated, directionless, dependent upon British mentors, bankrupt in principle and bereft of any distinctive economic or social function. Finally, transformed from a form of decentralised democratic economic endeavour committed to a Co-operative Commonwealth into a centralised and autocratic managerialism relentlessly pursuing economic rationality just like any other business, radical and Rochdale co-operation in New South Wales lost its raison d'etre and fell into rapid decay. When a new wave of idealism sprang from the 'alternative', environmental and women's movements of the 1960s and 1970s, elements of which were favourable to co-operation, so comprehensive had the collapse of the old radical and Rochdale order been that there was little left to connect with. Radical and Rochdale co-operators had failed to learn that in a movement espousing dual economic and social goals, neither pragmatism nor idealism alone is a sufficient condition for success.