Co-op

The "Co-op", one of the world's most successful businesses, has been a common experience for millions of working-class people in Britain since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. This work celebrates, in words and pictures, the history of a social movement which began with shopkeeping and grew into a large-scale international business, completely owned and controlled by its customers. This title tells how this British invention spread across the world - from the 28 "Rochdale Pioneers" of 1844 to the 700 million members of today's International Co-operative Alliance - and how it was adapted to meet a variety of human needs, including worker, housing, fishing, agricultural and credit co-ops. It shows how, as a third way between capitalism and state control, co-operative businesses continue to transform the lives of the poorer people in the "Third World" and in the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe.