You haven’t had it bad enough…

About 12 years ago (in the shadow of Port Talbot Steel Works) I met someone from Mondragon University. They were explaining the economic and cultural miracle that is the Mondragon Corporation, the mega cooperative in the Basque Country.

When I moaned about the lack of a similar cooperative ecosystem in South Wales their response was simple and brutal… “maybe it is because you haven’t had it bad enough”

I was completely stunned by that statement.
It felt like the 1984/85 Miners Strike and its aftermath for South Wales had been pretty bad.
What did they mean by ‘bad enough’.

The answer didn’t come immediately, it surfaced through the Churchill Fellowship I undertook in 2018, partly inspired by that ‘bad enough’ comment.

How bad is bad enough?
For me, the Mondragon Corporation is like the ‘Mother Ship’ of cooperatives.
Formed in 1956 in the Basque town of Mondragon (yes, I’ve been there) by a Catholic Priest, Father José María Arizmendiarrieta, who was trying to make people’s lives better.

At the time the region was seriously suffering from the consequences of opposing General Franco during the Spanish Civil War; poverty, economic decline and repression of political and cultural identity were the everyday experience for people.

Life was hard.

By any measure what was happening was ‘bad’. A situation that might well act as a catalyst and motivate action across communities, as described in this book chapter.

Through his education work to develop a Technical College in the 1940’s Father Arizmendiarrieta ultimately inspired the creation of the first Mondragon worker cooperative.

By the mid 2020’s the Mondragon Corporation was a federation of over a 100 worker coops, employing over 70,000 people and turning over £11 Billion annually.
It sits at the heart of a wider ecosystem of cooperatives and social enterprises that helps shape regional economy and culture.

Forgetting our past.
Fast forward to conversation in 2018 with someone else I met from Mondragon University. They worked in the Business School and commented that outside of the typical things that Universities do; teaching students, research etc, one of their challenges was to educate current Mondragon cooperative members about cooperatives.

In their view, there was a lack of understanding and appreciation of what it meant to be part of a workers cooperative.
Given that Mondragon is the ‘Mothership of Cooperatives’ (in my view) I was again stunned.
How could this be?
Perhaps things had become ‘too good’?

Different century, different country, same problems

Fast forward to a recent visit to the Cynon Valley Museum and jump back a hundred years to the Aberdare and District Cooperative Society.

Historically the challenges faced by many people in the Cynon Valley have been by any measure ‘bad’.

The origins of the Aberdare Coop can be traced back to the 1850’s compared to Mondragon which emerged in the 1950’s. But there is a lot in common around how they emerged – a tough life for people.

And yes, the Aberdare Coop was based on retail / consumer provision, and Mondragon began with manufacturing, but stick with me on this.

What I want to focus on is ‘The Wheatsheaf’, specifically the edition from September 1927.
The Wheatsheaf was the newsletter of the Aberdare Coop and in that particularly issue, the front page detailed the challenges of educating Cooperative Members. Here’s the full text:

“The Principles of Cooperation
We are sorry to find that there is a depth of ignorance prevailing even amongst faithful and loyal members of our movement regarding the principles of co-operation. We cannot expect loyalty and steadfastness in the movement if our knowledge and conception of its principles are narrow and superficial. There is a great need of educating the members in the history of the development of the co-operative movement in our own country. We hope that greater efforts will be made again during the next winter session to emphasise the need of co-operative education and to organise study groups and classes in connection with our own Society.”

Education might not be the only answer.
There’s a few things rattling around my head here. Is education alone ‘enough’ when it comes to developing cooperatives and the people who run them?

The Wheatsheaf flagged the issue in 1927 and the person I spoke to at Mondragon University said something similar in 2018.
The Aberdare and District Cooperative Society was clearly doing a lot of good and made peoples lives better. But why did it disappear in 1988 and become part of the larger Cooperative Society?

Many reasons have been cited like a changing society, out of town shopping outlets and the impact of the 1984/85 Miners Strike on finances. But I do wonder if there was something deeper… were things ‘bad enough’?
If ‘things are generally ok’ does that undermine the need for a retail coop?

I do wonder if the emergence (and longevity) of coops is connected to ‘tough times’ and when things are better, it’s harder to sustain that engagement and commitment in the substantial effort in what is effectively ‘running the business’?

But what happens when we return to bad times? (because that’s how the world and history works)
I’ve been reading this post from Dave Snowden that discusses a concept about human knowledge and collective memory.

My clumsy summary would be: if someone in a group holds a skill or knowledge, does the group therefore retain that knowledge? The answer was a sort ‘yes, but’. You require the appropriate conditions for that skill or knowledge to be brought forward when it is needed (and that includes not loosing that individual in the first place).

A happy ending.
Where does this leave me? I was initially going to write a post focusing solely on why education about cooperatives is important – it is, I haven’t changed my view on that.

But what I would say is that education sometimes isn’t enough. It needs to be linked to relevance (why does this matter to me and how is it going to make my life better) and the prevailing conditions. It’s also a very good idea to have ‘system memory’, someone who knows how these things work, so you can ‘activate’ them at a time of need.

So, What’s the PONT?

• Cooperative Education is a very good thing. From an economic, social and, I’d suggest, a moral standpoint. But sometimes education isn’t enough. There are other things that need to be present so that people can form Cooperatives and take control of their lives.
• ‘Bad Times’ can stimulate remarkable responses that make life better. Like the consumer cooperatives of the late 1800’s. But what happens when ‘life gets better’ and society changes? The hard work of keeping a cooperative business running is a challenge.
• Keeping community memory of the skills required to run a cooperative is important, for when the bad times return. It might be individuals, it might be museums, it might be small residual coops….but the important thing is not to loose the memory, skill or people.