Report Launch of 'Common Sense' Report by Co-operatives UK Dec '13

1. Commons Sense: What might be a
shared vision?
Pat Conaty
Co-operatives UK
5 December 2013

2. Commons Sense
Building a Co-operative Economy Closer to Home
BASIC NEEDS:
Food
Energy
Shelter
Reclaiming
the Commons
Democratizing
& Localizing
Ownership
KEY FUNCTIONS
Reclaiming
Finance
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3. Fair Trading and the Co-operative Capital Gap
‘The Roman arena was technically a level playing field.
But on the one side there were the lions with all the weapons
and on the other side the Christians with all the blood……
That’s a slaughter.
And so is putting people into the economy without equipping
them with capital, while equipping a tiny handful of people
with hundreds of thousands of times more than they can use.’
Louis Kelso

4. The Commons and co-operative networks offer a
a democratic way of working and living
• Commonwealth is
wealth beyond measure
– when times get hard
co-operative solutions
are always unearthed
• Micro-change agents
need to think of how to
connect mutually
• History and struggles to
build co-operative
commonwealth provides
guidance on the How
question

5. Back to the Future: Associative Democracy
Guild socialist movement in Great Britain: 1907 to 1949
(i) Co-operative strategy to organise industry democratically – national
guilds (railways, mines and construction) and local guilds – active work
1919 to 1929
(ii) Agricultural guilds for farming and the food sector
(iii)Garden cities and towns – for regional self-reliance
(iv)Social credit proposals for monetary reform (Clifford Douglas)
(v) Agricultural guilds, Garden City movement advanced and National
Construction Guild established that built affordable housing in many big
cities
(vi)Access to low-cost finance was a problem in the 1920s and 1930s
(vii)Movement leaders led work to create the Welfare State and the NHS in
the 1940s: Keynes provided ‘cheap money’

6. What do these current images from
across the UK have in common?

7. Community Co-operative
Shares Market: Registrations

8. Co-operative Place Making and the
Potential for Cross-fertilisation
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Community land trusts and Cohousing
Co-operative hydro-power schemes
Co-operative wind power
Solar Energy Co-ops for Community Buildings
Community Development Finance Mutuals for
housing repairs and green loans
6. Care co-operatives for social and health services

9. Evergreen Co-operatives (USA) – The
Democracy Collaborative
‘Green Economy’ Co-operative Partnership
• Cleveland, Ohio: a city that has lost half its population through deindustrialisation over recent decades
• Partnership backed by anchor institutions including the City, universities,
hospitals, the Ohio Co-op movement and the Cleveland Foundation
• $200 million social investment fund set up to invest at 1% to capitalise
worker ownership co-ops using a Mondragon model
• Co-ops created for solar energy installation, local food enterprises and a
low-carbon laundry for hospitals
• Largest urban farm in the USA set up with a wind power heated
greenhouse (3.5 acres) and growing annually 3 million heads of lettuce
and 500 tons of herbs

11. Mutual Home Ownership Society
Co-operative CLT model – researched by nef: Urban Model
1. Housing Co-op owns the dwellings – rent to equity system
2. Separate CLT company owns the land
• New members make a 5% deposit
• Mortgage is corporate, not individual, leases assigned
• Full repairing lease based on 35% of net household income
• Lease payments convert to equity shares to purchase home
• Co-op pays members that leave, their equity earned less 10%

12. Mutual Home Ownership CLT – CDS Co-ops
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13. LILAC – Leeds Eco-village
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
LILAC (Low-carbon Living affordable community)
First Mutual Home Ownership project – urban CLT
20 Co-housing homes – on former school site
Pre-fabricated strawbale housing, renewable energy
Investment from social bank, Triodos.
National partnership in Wales to develop 500 Mutual Homes
on CLT land by 2015 – 8 projects underway

14. CDS Co-operatives - MHOS
Limited equity return
at Year 10 projected
LEEDS Project - Lilac
•71 shares = £13,314
•86 shares = £16,271
•100 shares = £18,919
•128 shares = £24,217
•149 shares = £28,190
•191 shares = £36,136
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15. Co-operative Land Bank
1. Extension of London Jubilee line (11 tube stations) finished
in 1999.
2. Cost of public investment by taxpayers: £3.5 billion
3. Urban land value uplift: £13.5 billion
4. Co-operative Land Bank is a CLT for an urban district
5. CLB can self-finance affordable housing on a big scale and for
an Eco-town or city and new Garden suburbs
6. Precedents: Letchworth Garden City (33,000) and Irvine CLT
(USA) – similar size for the master plan – see also Japan and
Hong Kong

16. Co-operatives globally – Transformative
Power below the radar screen
•
•
•
•
•
•
I billion members worldwide - 15 million in the UK
Providing services every week to 3 billion people globally
More employees than the multinational corporations
Involved in every single sector of the economy
Two-thirds of farmers in Scotland are in agricultural co-ops
6000 co-operative enterprises operate in the UK and one new
co-op is setting up every day
• Co-operative sector expansion of 20% in the UK 2008 -2012