The Co-operative Party was founded in 1917, volunteer interviewer Peter Reilly reflects on his recent oral history interview with David Lepper, a former ‘Labour Coop’ MP and what it meant to be a member of the Co-operative Party.
Recent interviews I have conducted for the History of Parliament Trust Oral History Project remind us that UK parties are ‘broad churches’ encompassing a range of views. Commentators have regularly referred to the ‘wings’ or ‘factions’ within the Labour and Conservative parties centred on an individual (Corbynites), ideological disposition (One Nation), membership of an interest group (Manifesto or Bow) or stance on an issue (the European Research Group). However, if one digs a little deeper one can see that all the principal British political parties are the product of mergers that have happened at one point or another. This is a consequence of the UK’s first past the post system which militates against a proliferation of mid-sized parties, unlike continental Europe where government is more usually exercised through coalitions of independent parties giving them an incentive to continue as separate entities.
The LibDems are the most obvious product of a merger. The Social Democratic Party founded in 1981, largely as a break-away from the Labour Party, formally joined with the Liberals in 1988 having previously been in an electoral alliance. The distinct origins and traditions of the two parts of the party were evident to David Howarth (LibDem MP for Cambridge, 2005- 2010) at the time of the LibDem merger, but over time have blurred. The personalities of key actors (such as David Owen and David Steel) were as important as ideology in shaping the party’s political direction at its foundation and have continued to do so.
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The Conservative Party is still officially the ‘Conservative and Unionist Party.’ The ‘unionist’ part of the title is less used these days, but reflects the fact that the Conservative party took on its modern form following a merger: in 1912 the Liberal Unionist Party (itself a splinter group from the Liberal Party breaking away over Irish home rule) joined with the Conservative Party.
Then there is the Labour Party which absorbed the Independent Labour Party in 1975 having been in various arrangements with ILP from its inception. Similarly, Labour has been in an electoral alliance with the Co-operative Party, the political wing of the cooperative movement, from 1927. Founded in 1917, the Co-operative Party decided to join forces with Labour because its political aims were so similar. The Co-operative Party states that it is ‘committed to building a society in where power and wealth are shared.’ Although the Labour and Co-operative parties are autonomous institutions, the joint designation is registered with the Electoral Commission. There are currently 26 MPs with this affiliation, down from a high point of 38 in 2017. For the Oral History Project, I interviewed one of these ‘Labour Coop’ MPs, David Lepper, who represented Brighton Pavilion from 1997 to 2010.
David Lepper’s connection with the cooperative concept started with his parents shopping at the London Co-op stores, from where I remember getting those blue dividend saver stamps as a child. Later he began to understand that there was a political component to the movement applicable to the workplace, schools and education: ‘a national Cooperative movement that meant more than simply buying something in the Co-op shop.’ (Lepper 3 20:10) He had a growing interest in popular participation in local decision making ‘about the things that influenced their lives’ (Lepper 3 22:45). He saw how housing could be improved and business enterprise stimulated through the application of cooperative principles. He was able to pursue these aims as a councillor in Brighton. Cooperative ideals flourished in the city where the cooperative movement began in ‘West Street in 1820’ and with the setting up of a Benevolent Fund and Trading Association in 1827.
At a practical level, being nominated by the Co-operative Party meant getting extra money for political campaigning, including the sponsorship of events, and obtaining the support of Coop MPs in making constituency visits. It also offered a chance to influence local political challenges through selection as a Co-operative Party delegate to the Brighton party committee. One such challenge occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the Co-operative Party delegates proved to be important in delivering a counterweight to the growing influence of the Militant Tendency in the Labour Party.
Although he had long been a party member, Lepper had to go through a selection process to be placed on the Co-operative Party parliamentary candidates’ national panel.
When Lepper was elected in the Labour landslide of 1997 he was arriving at a time of high hopes among Co-operative Party MPs who thought that through Labour’s success they could further their social and economic causes. These were detailed in a wish list given to the incoming Labour government, presented as an adjunct to its own plans. Lepper believes much was achieved through small amendments to other bills passing through the House of Commons or through private members’ bills, rather than through major pieces of legislation. He believes more progress was made on furthering cooperative business initiatives (for example establishing Community Interest Companies or credit unions) than on other causes such as cooperative housing or education.
Much of what the Co-operative Party was seeking was politically uncontentious. Indeed, many of its ambitions were shared by other parties. David Howarth, another of my interviewees, is a case in point. Both he and Lepper started their political careers in local government seeking improvements in housing, transport and the environment. Both were disposed to work on a cross-party basis. Lepper, for example, valued the All Party Parliamentary Groups which made cross party work on specific issues or policies easier. He describes how he was happy to join forces with opponents on leaseholder reform, urban business development and environmental issues, such as wildlife or countryside protection. Howarth gives depoliticising crime and limiting exemptions to Freedom of Information requests as topics where he had worked on a bipartisan basis. They, however, differed on some fundamentals of political ideology. Howarth explained how as a teenager he started objecting to the ‘authoritarianism’ of state socialism and the conflictual role trade unions played in society, favouring a programme of ‘industrial democracy.’
Lepper, for his part, saw the Labour Party as the only plausible, national vehicle for achieving social change of the sort he was seeking. With the electoral system limiting the number of viable political parties, he did not have much choice in deciding how to express his views in partisan terms. Yet Lepper was lucky in being able to combine the complimentary but different traditions of the Labour and Co-operative parties.
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