In recent years the Conservatives have been attempting to recast themselves as the party of cooperation and mutualism.
Real progressives in the Labour and Cooperative parties correctly identified this as pre-election PR to detoxify the Tory brand. The coalition’s shameful treatment of the movement at a national level demonstrates this point all too well. When presented with the crucial test decision of whether or not to re-mutualise Northern Rock, they failed epically. It is also interesting to note that of the 11 London boroughs yet to achieve fair trade status, eight are Conservative controlled.
But, after one term in office, what has Boris’s Conservative administration actually done for cooperatives in the capital? As a Labour and Cooperative assembly member I decided to ask the mayor himself at a recent session of mayor’s Question Time. The answers my questions prompted didn’t come as a great surprise. As a strong supporter of the co-op movement, I was well aware of the mayor’s scant support for it. But what did come as a surprise was the total lack of pretence that the mayor supported cooperatives or cooperation in general.
As members and supporters of the Co-op movement, we are all part of the global cooperative community. There are 1.4 million cooperatives globally and one billion members of cooperatives spread across every continent. As a major global city, with a proud history of links to the Co-op Movement, London should be at the centre of the celebrations.
So I asked the mayor: ‘What will the GLA be doing to mark the UN International Year of Cooperatives?’ The response: ‘There are currently no plans for the GLA to stage any activity as part of the UN International Year of Cooperatives.’
The International Year Celebrations are a golden opportunity to promote the cooperative business model as a way of developing sustainable and socially responsible economic growth. Yet the same Conservative party that tells us of its admiration for our movement won’t so much as inflate a balloon depicting the International Year logo, to show support.
Credit unions are one of the areas of our movement in greatest need of assistance from City Hall. When asked what action the mayor had personally taken to support community finance, a reply detailing national changes to legislation was given. Boris also claimed to have supported debt management work but failed to give any detail on how this support was given. This is pitiful, when resources could be used to give targeted help to credit unions and help pilot educational programmes to teach the next generation of Londoners how to avoid debt and the plague of legal loan sharks.
We all know that cooperatives have a significant role to play in contributing to the success of the capital’s economy. It is therefore vital that we provide as much support as possible to those who are seeking to start up new SMEs, particularly those enterprises in the co-op sector that have the potential to revitalise local communities as well as create new jobs.
I asked the mayor if he could provide me with a detailed borough by borough breakdown of all the support the GLA and London Development Agency had provided to cooperative and mutual start-ups. Again, the answer I received only served to highlight the inadequate level of support available. The reply stated that mutual and co-op start-ups were likely to have benefited from support services funded by the LDA. However, the mayor could not name a single beneficiary for sure as the LDA never kept records of the legal status of those receiving assistance. This falls a long way short of the targeted assistance that London’s cooperative economy requires. Too many people are put off starting a cooperative enterprise because of fear about the lack of support available.
Following the coalition’s decision to abolish Regional Development Agencies, the London Development Agency is being dismantled and incorporated into the GLA. The effect this change will have on business support in London is not fully clear, but the early signs are not good. Further to my question on what support had specifically been provided to co-op start-ups, I asked the mayor precisely what information and support is available generally to SMEs of any legal status. In the mayor’s answer it becomes clear that cooperative start-ups are not alone in being left to sink or swim by the Conservative mayor’s administration. He states that the LDA was responsible for business support; however, this is now being run from Whitehall at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The most crucial phrase is left until the end: ‘therefore the GLA does not directly fund projects on business support’. It seems a mayor who has become notorious for his vigorous defence of the unreformed practices of big business in the City isn’t prepared to lift a finger to help co-op enterprises or SMEs of any kind in re-balancing the Capital’s economy.
These answers show that the Conservatives have just used the cooperative movement as a way of detoxifying their brand. There was never any real intent to support the movement and far from helping the co-op economy their policies have actively hindered its development. In 2007 ‘localism’- loving Conservatives claimed they would support the mutual economy. In 2012 the Conservative administration running our capital washed their hands of it and redirected Londoners to Whitehall for business support. On credit unions, we are still waiting to see targeted support provided. As for International Year celebrations in London, there simply won’t be any.
David Cameron may continue to feign interest in co-ops, but from the mayor’s answers it seems Boris really doesn’t care, and isn’t afraid to say so. When Cameron’s staff wrote out the briefing detailing the new conversion to all things cooperative, we can only assume that Boris never got the memo.
Jennette Arnold OBE AM is the Labour and Cooperative assembly member for Hackney, Islington and Waltham Forest