Co-opolitics: A Journal of Political Co-operation

Aim

Launch Co-opolitics: a new journal examining how co-operatives can address inequality, job loss, and community decline in Britain

Why Co-opolitics?

Britain is entering a period of profound economic change. Artificial intelligence is reshaping the labour market, high streets continue to hollow out, and many communities feel they have lost control over the institutions that once sustained local life. Where people feel the system no longer works for them, they start looking for alternatives. For more than 180 years the co-operative movement has offered one: enterprises owned and governed by their members rather than distant shareholders. From the Rochdale Pioneers’ shop in 1844 grew a network of shops, factories, farms and financial institutions embedded across Britain. Co-opolitics is a new journal examining how that tradition might help rebuild communities in the twenty-first century.

Why Now

When Labour entered government in July 2024 it did so with forty-three Co-operative Party MPs and a promise to double the size of the co-operative sector. Eighteen months later the picture is mixed. Some legislative progress has been made and consultations have begun, but the gap between the language of community empowerment and the support required to make it real remains clear. Communities may gain rights to bid for assets, yet the capital and infrastructure needed to exercise those rights remain limited. The political opportunity exists, but the strategy for building a genuinely co-operative economy is still unclear. We explore these questions in more detail here:

https://www.independentlabour.org.uk/2026/02/09/labour-in-government-co-op-politics-in-the-21st-century/.

What’s Already Happening

Across the country organisers are experimenting with new forms of co-operation. Middleton Co-operating is rebuilding networks of trust in a community shaped by decades of economic decline. Cooperation Town has created more than fifty food co-operatives that cut grocery bills through collective purchasing. workers.coop has built an independent federation after many organisers concluded that existing institutions were failing to support worker co-operatives. Meanwhile Great Care Co-op and Equal Care Co-op are exploring how worker ownership can transform social care. These initiatives show what is possible, but they also show how fragile the movement remains.

What Co-opolitics Will Do

Co-opolitics will be a journal devoted to the political economy of co-operation. It will publish research, essays and investigations examining how co-operative institutions can address some of the structural problems facing Britain today: automation and employment, the decline of local economies, ownership of essential services, and the institutions needed to scale the sector. This is not intended as a promotional magazine. If co-operation is to play a serious role it must be open to criticism as well as celebration.

Who We Are

Principle 5: Yorkshire Co-operative Resource Centre has spent more than a decade supporting co-operative development in Sheffield and across the UK. Through that work we have seen both the potential of co-operation and the obstacles faced by those trying to build new enterprises. Co-opolitics is an attempt to document those experiences and place them within a wider debate about ownership, democracy and the future of the economy.

How You Can Help

We are raising funds to establish Co-opolitics for its first year. Your support will allow us to design and print the first issue (around 80–100 pages), pay contributors fairly for research and writing, distribute copies to co-operators, policymakers and organisers across the UK, and build an online platform for future issues and debate.

The Stakes

The content for the first issue is already in place. All that we require is the printing and distribution costs. We also have plenty of ideas in place for future editions.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made