Co-op origins: the Rochdale Pioneers
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 4:00 pmThis was in the monthly mag from our local Food Co-op, and it told me something I did not know so thought I'd share:
In 1843 workers in the textile mills of Rochdale, England, went on strike. When the strike failed, the millworkers began to look for other ways to improve their lives. Instead of asking charitable groups for help, workers decided to take control of one of the most immediiate and pressing areas of their lives. They believed they needed their own food store as an alternative to the company store, and twenty eight people founded the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society.
The Rochdale Pioneers weren't the first group to fry forming a coop, but they were the first to make their co-op succeed and endure. Today, Rochdale is considered the birthplace of the modern cooperative movement, and the list of operating principles developed by the Rochdale Pioneers formed the basis of what we now know as the cooperative principles.
In 1843 workers in the textile mills of Rochdale, England, went on strike. When the strike failed, the millworkers began to look for other ways to improve their lives. Instead of asking charitable groups for help, workers decided to take control of one of the most immediiate and pressing areas of their lives. They believed they needed their own food store as an alternative to the company store, and twenty eight people founded the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society.
The Rochdale Pioneers weren't the first group to fry forming a coop, but they were the first to make their co-op succeed and endure. Today, Rochdale is considered the birthplace of the modern cooperative movement, and the list of operating principles developed by the Rochdale Pioneers formed the basis of what we now know as the cooperative principles.