The people's voice., 1943-07-16
SCOT C0-0PS
PLAN COOP
COLLEGE
Congress Held in Edinburgh
Launches Million Dollar
Coop College Drive; Estab-
fishes Mutual Aid Plan
Against Hazards of War.

| EDINBURGH, Scotland.-The great
Cooperative Congress held here dur
ing the week of Whitsuntide (June
| 13) and drawing together representa-
tives of the more than nine million
members of co-operatives associated
with the Cooperative Union of Great
Britain approved a system of mutual
aid to protect co-operatives against
the hazards of war, endorsed the Bev.
eridge plan of social security, en-
dorsed the launching of a Freedom
fund for post war relief and approved
a plan to raise f250,00O $4,000, ,O00)
to build and equip a Cooperative Col
lege.
The system of mutual aid endorsed
by the Cooperative Congress is a
system of insurance which will pro-
tect local co-operatives from the haz-
ards of war, whether they be actual
bombing or disturbance of trade
through evacuation or other eventu-
alities Any one society will be but
tressed by the financial strength of
the entire cooperative movement
This proposal, made shortly after the
outset of the war, has been held up
because of legal insurance and taxa
ton difficulties which aave just now
been overcome
The plan for a million dollar COOP
erative college designed "to make
people fit for the high destiny of CO.
operative citizenship" is to be fl
nanced by contributions from COOP
erative societies equivalent to one
penny per member spread over the
next seven years.
Speaking out on the controversial
Beveridge plan, the Cooperative I'm
ion congress declared: Congress is
pledged to use every available means
to secure that the Beveridge plan is
put into operation at the earliest pos
sible date" The 1914 Freedom fund.
launched by the Cooperative Union
earlier in the year and approved by
the congress, has already received
contributions of e160,0OO ($64O, ,OOO)
for use in relief and rehabilitation in
poSt war Europe.
The Rt. Hon. A. V. Alexander. MP,
First Lord of the Admiralty, spoke
briefly at the inaugural luncheon He
recalled that it was at the opening
of the Cooperative Congress in Scot
land in 1910 that he was called from
his job as parliamentary secretary of
the Cooperative Union to take charge
OF the Navy, at a time when the
spectre of defeat seemed imminent.
Mr.. T. Lawther, former school
teacher and president of the congress.
told the delegates that the British CO.
operatives constitute "the bulwark of
interests in a world which
has been taught, either to ignore con-
sumner interests, or to regard the ex-
ploitation of the consumer as sound
economics and part of the ethics of
modern business"
The British co-operatives. whose
annual business of well over a billion
dollars year, makes them the larg-
est merchants in Great Britain. "haye
imported into trade a moral basis
and have made it joint cooperative
effort to raise the standard of life in
all its phases instead of to carry on |
IN economic struggle" Mr.. Lawther
said.
1t is the people themselves-th |
common people if you care so to call
hem-who have in the main been left
% themselves to find devices hv
means of which their movement might
i've and grow" the Coop congress
PRESIDENT said. More often than not
he movement had to exist in an at
nosphere that was antagonistic
n fact, influences of all kinds were
into play in an attempt to
item its forward march. Yet, spon-
iored only by these common people,
t has grown at every stage and has
the difficulties and OBJ
tacles placed in its path"