The quest for a "middle way" : radical and Rochdale co-operation in New South Wales, 1859-c1986
Abstract
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.