Co-op Grocery-Not Dead Yet?

I’m rather keen on seeing the Co-op grocery tradition survive for several reasons. Firstly from my limited understanding it still pays for a lot, from (lethargic) MPs to some worthy social activities, perhaps it still underpins the UK co-operative movement. Secondly there remains a significant minority of the grocery market who continue to choose co-op purchases because of ideology, despite an often tired range of goods in their local store. Thirdly the current domination of UK grocery by Tesco et al is not a lost cause particularly by an organisation with land, buildings, it’s (allegedly) own political party and it’s own agricultural sector. There are also uncomfortable parallels between current food production and the very stimulus for the earliest societies.

Adam York presents a personal view of the future for cooperative grocery in a paper he presented at the 2006 conference which you can download here.