How Blair Killed the Co-ops
From the Introduction to How Blair Killed the Co-ops
Organisations labelled ‘social enterprises’ are now redefined, reinvented and written up widely as though they were for low cost delivery of public services. Social enterprise today is also frequently presented as an alternative to, as an amendment or even resistance to neoliberalism and capitalism. But in this book the author shows that, far from forming an alternative to neoliberalism, social enterprise and much of the third sector now feature as platforms for its incursion into ever wider spheres of public life. As a central part of this process, especially for the Labour Party, a previous emphasis on co-operatives and locally controlled democratic organisations is now largely jettisoned.
Had their previous community control been retained, their transformation for this new purpose would not have been possible. A further motive for this shift of emphasis from co-operatives and community controlled structures to more loosely defined social enterprise structures is that all this encourages the growth of social finance and social investment – an infusion of external private funds to deliver so-called impact investment, which is nowadays even encouraged in university incubators. In its more recent incarnation of social impact bonds private investors receive payments when public service outcomes are achieved. Social enterprise is now promoted globally by the British Council and the Global Strategy Group for Impact Investment as an instrument of financial liberalisation and the dilution of the role of the public sector in the delivery of public services.
As a former Member of the House of Commons and the European Parliament, followed by a career in further and higher education and in training and funding third sector organisations (TSOs), the author is uniquely positioned to write with personal first hand experience of these developments throughout the entire period of this book. Having been first elected to Parliament in 1967, one year before Labour’s first Urban Development Programme in 1968 with its community development projects (CDPs), he was later joint leader of the occupation of the Triumph Motorcycle factory in Meriden in 1973 to form a workers’ co-operative.
He was then an Industry Minister in the Callaghan Government which introduced the 1976 Industrial Common Ownership Act and 1978 Co-operative Development Agency Act. He was a member of the London Co-operative Society Political Committee from 1978 until 1993. As a member of the Labour Party National Executive Committee, where he represented Co-operative Societies, he chaired the National Executive Committee Working Group on Worker Co-operatives, whose 1980 report formed the basis of co-operatives policy in Labour’s 1983 General Election Manifesto. As a member of the European Parliament from 1984 to 1989 he developed the use of community funding for third sector structures.
From 1989 to 2004 working for Merseyside College and the Association of Colleges in the West Midlands, he promoted and developed projects for TSOs.
After moving to Scotland in 2004 he set up the Plean Community Trust in one of Stirling’s Eastern villages in 2008 and in 2009 became a Director of the Social Enterprise Network Scotland (SENSCOT). After working on a series of third sector projects, in 2015 he conducted 11 EU Funding masterclasses across Scotland for SENSCOT, Social Firms Scotland, the Development Trusts Association Scotland and Scottish Community Alliance. From 2016 he has lectured in Social Enterprise at GCU, where he gained his PhD in 2018. In 2018 he became a member of the Shadow Chancellor’s Implementation Group which produced recommendations for Labour’s 2017 and 2019 Manifesto commitment to double the size of the co-operative economy.
The author’s role in policy development and implementation offers a first hand witness account from the 1960s and 1970s to the present day, which is reinforced by data collection and interviews with key participants over the same period. However, he recognises that others involved in social enterprise, co-operative and third sector narratives may not share his perspective and may offer different interpretations………………………
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The author is critical of a dominant interpretation of social enterprise in the UK as a market-oriented public service delivery vehicle, promoted under New Labour and augmented since 2010 by Conservative governments. His alternative narrative for social enterprise and the third sector is told in the seven chapters of this book.
From the Introduction to How Blair Killed the Co-ops
Author: Leslie Huckfield