{"id":820349,"date":"2026-03-12T07:58:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T07:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/820349\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T07:58:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T07:58:19","slug":"where-does-the-working-class-fit-into-the-modern-uk-co-op-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/820349\/","title":{"rendered":"Where does the working class fit into the modern UK co-op movement?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The origins of the UK\u2019s co-operative movement are firmly rooted in working class history. But today, co-ops explicitly using the language of class politics appear to be the exception rather than the rule, and co-operativism in general is often viewed as an ethical shopping option or political hobby for those with the money and time to spend on it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With equity and solidarity core co-operative values, how does the issue of class factor into the country\u2019s co-op landscape today?\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Revolting Class<\/a> (Arc) supports co-ops and other social change groups looking to better understand this topic, through its Exploring Class workshops.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at a point now where we get so many housing co-ops across the UK reaching out to us,\u201d says Arc\u2019s Elle Glenny. \u201cWe get plenty of people showing up that are involved in the worker co-op movement as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Slide from online workshop led by A Revolting Class<\/p>\n

The level of interest Arc receives from co-operatives points to a widespread issue of the movement being \u201cculturally, economically and socially dominated by the intermediary and middle classes\u201d, says Glenny.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think undeniably, the culture in the majority of worker co-ops, housing co-ops, co-operative spaces, overwhelmingly, is this quite liberal, middle-class way of being \u2026 There is a certain way of dealing with conflict, and bureaucracy is used to silence and minimise people. If you show up in a dysregulated way, in a traumatised way \u2013 all of these things that we see in working class communities \u2013 that is not welcome in those spaces. They might say it\u2019s welcome, but I think if we really interrogate co-operative culture, it\u2019s not the done thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

This understanding of class, which encompasses more than just economics, is one Arc is keen to develop in social change spaces.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Related: How a housing co-op is working to foster unity and cohesion in Leicester<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s hard about this conversation is that when we\u2019re talking about class people are always coming at the topic having their own different class analysis. The orthodox Marxist one tends to piss me off a bit. I find it reductive when we\u2019re talking about co-operatives and worker power.\u201d<\/p>\n

This orthodox Marxist view, says Arc, minimises class difference into a \u201899% vs the billionaires\u2019 dichotomy \u201cwhich allows those who sit between the working and owning classes to ignore the role they play in perpetuating a violent class system, not just in wider society but within our social justice spaces too\u201d.<\/p>\n

While class struggle exists in workplaces, it also takes place in communities, in the household and on an interpersonal level, and needs to be acknowledged and negotiated in all of these spaces, says Glenny.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Elle Glenny delivering Exploring Class workshop.
Main photo: Joe Hamiliton and Elle Glenny delivering Exploring Class workshop<\/p>\n

Arc\u2019s Exploring Class workshops take 20-25 participants through an experiential learning process where they are able to reflect on their class identity in relation to others in the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn an ideal outcome, the working class people in that space leave feeling hopeful, angry and like they\u2019ve had a practice of doing cross-class conversations in a way that is empowering to them and is on their terms and is aware of the lives in which they have lived, which is always amazing to see happen.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Glenny\u2019s own experience in the co-op movement is of being \u201cone of the very few working class people in those spaces\u201d, and these were spaces she didn\u2019t even know about until reaching university.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c[Growing up in Liverpool] I didn\u2019t know what co-ops were. It just wasn\u2019t something that was spoken about. Whereas when I chat to my middle class pals, they\u2019re like, \u2018yeah, of course we knew what co-ops were\u2019. I\u2019m like, \u2018why did you know that when it was rooted in working class culture?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Related: Co-ops find space in exhibition on working class culture of 19th century Lancashire<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite the clear links between the UK\u2019s co-operative and working class movements, their relationship has not always been straightforward, even from the beginning.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been debates for a lot of years, among labour historians and others, about whether the co-op was part of a so-called \u2018labour aristocracy\u2019,\u201d says Tom Woodin, professor of Social History of Education at University College London.<\/p>\n

But by the 1960s the co-op movement started to see \u201ca quite precipitous decline\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd what happens in movements that go into those kinds of decline, is people tend to hold on to their jobs, and so sometimes you get people who come from working class origins in good or quite well-paid jobs, or in elected posts, and then they just hold on to them, and it can ossify a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

This process took place as consumer co-ops in working class communities were being out-competed by bigger retailers with lower prices.<\/p>\n

\"\"Barnsley Co-op Grocers, South Yorkshire, 1954. Image: Michael Walters\/Heritage Images\/Getty<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 1960s is a massive decade in some ways\u2026it was the beginning of very significant changes, and in a way, that bypasses the consumer co-op movement. That\u2019s where you get other types of co-ops born, because co-ops and collectives become very much part of the ether in the 60s and 70s, some of which may be the health food co-ops and others, [that attract] certain types of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then national conversations about class declined as Thatcher\u2019s government weakened the labour movement and halted research on social class and poverty in the UK, and class became a topic people and organisations were more hesitant to talk about.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Related: How Nepal\u2019s co-ops are minimising caste-based discrimination<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I worked for the Co-op College in the early 2000s, I did a project with some consumer co-ops about improving their membership and attracting members. I wrote up a brief thing about one of the co-ops, and I went through the detail of how it had been established. I said, you know, it\u2019s established formal working class self-help, or something like that, about the people who had established it. And one of the co-op\u2019s marketing guys asked me to take out that reference to the working class, because they like to appeal to everyone nowadays \u2013 he was quite wary.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of this presents the question: are co-ops even of use to working class communities anymore? For Glenny, the question is one worth seriously considering.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThe community I live in, up in Glasgow, is one of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the UK, it has the highest rates of childhood poverty anywhere in the UK. And I was born in the UK\u2019s poorest constituency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re the two communities that I\u2019m thinking of, and honestly, I think that worker co- ops, for at least for those communities, are more of a hindrance than they are a benefit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that from being a part of co-op \u2013 it\u2019s a lot of upkeep, there\u2019s a lot of admin involved, certain structures, certain principles you have to adhere to, and a lot of interacting with other co-ops, which I think can be quite alienating, depending on the culture of those co-ops.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Woodin recognises this critique, but believes the co-op model still offers something uniquely valuable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat always attracts me to the co-op vision is the ownership models. They\u2019re much clearer on the need to create models in which working class people could potentially have a greater stake and long term ownership. \u2026 That\u2019s what\u2019s always appealed to me, that co-op models could provide more sustainable support structures away from the state for working class people.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds: \u201cThe huge benefit, I think, of the co-op model, is that you can potentially lock long term resources and knowledge into communities, rather than putting all your resources into helping people temporarily. All those resources can be stripped.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Slide from online workshop led by A Revolting Class<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat hasn\u2019t been done is all the educational work, all the creative work that\u2019s needed to take that model and make it useful for today, for the post-war world. You can\u2019t just take a model off the hook and apply that to working class communities. \u2026 There\u2019s a lot of work that would need to be done, and people have to take ownership over it, you can\u2019t force it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This idea of agency is key for Glenny as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA common trope we see again and again in social justice spaces is assumptions about what working class people want and need.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo \u2013 what working class people want and need is autonomy and resources. And those resources need to be given not on the terms of the middle classes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole point of wealth redistribution, for instance, is not to just give away your money, it is to also give away the decision making and the power that comes with that money.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause working class people know best where working class people should be putting money, because we\u2019re already doing it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In addition to the Exploring Class workshops, Arc facilitates events for working class organisers, as well as holding a number of wealth redistribution groups across the UK, called Common Treasury.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do a two-hour training session on redistributing inheritance, and the amount of money in the room every time, it\u2019s just disgusting. We\u2019ll have 120 participants, and there\u2019ll be like, \u00a360m. And that\u2019s our point \u2013 what are we struggling for within the left?\u00a0 There is so much wealth.\u201d<\/p>\n

These conversations around wealth and class more broadly have real implications for the future of the co-op movement. But, says Glenny, \u201cthe end goal of raising class within co-operative spaces is not to fragment the co-operative movement and break it down and silence some voices and highlight others.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe point is to name what\u2019s not being named. The point is to visibilise the wealth and class inequalities within a space\u2026 and through doing that, hopefully create a movement which is stronger, more cohesive and led by and for those who have experienced capitalism at the sharpest end.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The origins of the UK\u2019s co-operative movement are firmly rooted in working class history. But today, co-ops explicitly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[236174,748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764,46341],"class_list":["post-820349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","category-united-kingdom","tag-a-revolting-class","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-northern-ireland","tag-scotland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wales","tag-working-class"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116215146859340584","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}