91´ô¸ç

Abstract

This study spotlights alternative journalism’s contributions to the British co-operative movement’s take-off in the nineteenth century. It shows five waves of press activism that powered movement expansion: the Owenist agitations, the Brighton wave, the socialist turn (including the radical unstamped), the Rochdale moment, and the establishment of a movement-owned press. This historical sociology of co-operators’ press activism demonstrates that alternative media innovation was central to advancing literacy, intellectual and press freedoms, and the early British movement’s advance. Indeed, co-operative news-work — from street-hawking to the activist journalism of movement intellectuals such as Robert Owen, Dr. William King, Henry Hetherington, and George Jacob Holyoake — drove the democratic broadening-out and working class cultural empowerment upon which movement gains depended. From 1821’s The Economist to the 1871 launch of The Co-operative News (later Co-op News), the analysis thus shows that alternative media fostered co-operation’s emergent culture. The analysis concludes by assessing co-operative press history’s implications for contemporary co-operative theory and movement strategy. It reveals the continuing importance of media innovation — to develop alternative media, the emerging sector of news co-operatives, and an alternative public sphere in which the co-operative movement’s counter-hegemonic values flourish.

References

Alternatives Économique (2019). Le projet d'Alternatives Économiques.
 
Assis, C. (2018, April 18). Argentina newspapers recuperated by workers' cooperatives. The Bullet.
 
Banks, J. (2019, October 22). Newspaper group launches co-op bid to save titles. Co-op News.
 
Bishopsgate Institute Special Collections and Archives (1998). Holyoake, George Jacob (1817‑1906). Archives Hub (GB 372 HOLYOAKE). Retrieved from:
 
Boyle, D. (2012). Good news: A co-operative solution to the media crisis. Co-operatives UK Limited.
 
Co-op News (2020). Annual Report.
 
Curran, J. (1993). Rethinking the media as a public sphere. In P. Dahlgren & C. Sparks. (Eds.), Communication and citizenship: Journalism and the public sphere (pp. 27-56). Routledge. 
 
Curran, J., & Seaton, J. (1982). Power without responsibility: The press and broadcasting in Britain. Routledge.
 
Durr, A. (2017). William King of Brighton: Co-operation's prophet? In S. Yeo. (Ed.). New views of co‑operation (pp. 27-51). Routledge.
 
Engels, F. (1880). Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Marxists Internet Archive.
 
Engels, F. (1987). The condition of the working class in England. Penguin Classics. (Original work published in English, UK 1892).
 
Fairbairn, B. (1994). The meaning of Rochdale: The Rochdale pioneers and the Co-operative Principles. Occasional paper. University of Saskatchewan, Centre for the Study of Cooperatives.
 
Federación de Cooperativas de Producción del Uruguay (2019). Uruguayan media cooperatives are in astonishingly good health. Work Together.
 
Fuchs, C. (2010). Alternative media as critical media. European Journal of Social Theory, 13(2), 173-192. 
 
Gramsci, A. (1977). The revolution against Capital. In Q. Hoare& J.Mathews,(Eds.), Selections from political writings (1910-1920). Lawrence and Wishart. (Original work published 1917).
 
Gurney, P. (2017). George Jacob Holyoake: Socialism, association and co-operation in nineteenth century England. In S. Yeo (Ed.). New views of co-operation (pp. 52-72). Routledge.
 
Harrison, J. F. C. (2009). Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America: Quest for the New Moral World. Routledge.
 
Hollis, P. (1970). The pauper press. Oxford University Press.
 
Holyoake, G. J. (1879). The history of co-operation in England: its literature and its advocates (Volume 2). The constructive period, 1845-1878. Trübner & Co.
 
Holyoake, G. J. (1898). Essentials of co-operative education. Labour Association for Promoting Co‑operative Production based on the Co-partnership of the Workers. [Earl Grey Pamphlets Collection 01-01-1898].
 
Holyoake, G. J. (1900). Self-help by the people: The history of the Rochdale Pioneers, 1844-1892. Charles Scribner's Sons
 
Holyoake, G. J. (2018). Self-help by the people: The history of the Rochdale Pioneers. Routledge. (Original work published in 1893).
 
King, W. (2012). Pauperism and crime. In Mercer T.W. (Ed.). Dr. William King and 'The Co-operator,' 1828-30. Forgotten Books. (Original work, The Co-operator, published 1828, May 1).
 
La Diaria (2020). Historia.

Legette, C. (2017). Cooperative quotation: George Eliot and George Jacob Holyoake. Victorian Studies,59(4), 585-608. 
 
MacPherson, I. (2007). Into the twenty-first century: Co-operatives yesterday, today, and tomorrow. In I. MacPherson. (Ed.). One path to co-operative studies: A selection of papers and presentations (pp. 219-254). New Rochdale Press.
 
McCabe, J. (1922). George Jacob Holyoake. Watts and co.
 
Mercer, T. W. (2012). (Ed.). Dr. William King and 'The Cooperator,' 1828-30. Forgotten Books. (Original work published 1922).
 
Owen, R. (1813). A new view of society. R.& A. Taylor and Co.
 
Pankhurst, R. (1991). William Thompson (1775-1833): Pioneer Socialist. Pluto Press.
 
Podmore, F. (2019). Robert Owen: A biography, Volumes 1 and 2. Wentworth Press.
 
Polanyi, K. (2001). The great transformation: the political and economic origins of our time (2nd ed.). Beacon Press Books (Original work published1944).
 
Pollard, S., & Salt, J. (1971). Robert Owen, prophet of the poor: Essays in honour of the two hundredth anniversary of his birth. Macmillan.
 
Rogers, H. (2017). Women and the people: Authority, authorship and the radical tradition in nineteenth century England. Routledge.
 
Royle, E. (1974). Victorian Infidels: The origins of the British secularist movement, 1791-1866. Manchester University Press.
 
Shaw, L. (2012). International perspectives on co-operative education. In A. Webster, A. Brown, D. Stewart, J. K. Walton, & L. Shaw. (Eds.), The hidden alternative: Cooperative values, past, present and future (pp. 59-77). Manchester University Press. 
 
Thompson, E. P. (1966). The making of the English working class. Penguin.
 
Thornes, R. (2017). Change and continuity in the development of cooperation, 1827-1844. In S. Yeo. (Ed.). New views of co-operation (pp. 27-51). Routledge.
 
Williams, R. (1962). Communication. Penguin.
 
Williams, R. (2013). The long revolution. Parthian.
 
Woodin, T. (2012). Co-operative education in Britain during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Context, identity and learning. In A. Webster, A. Brown, D. Stewart, J. K. Walton, & L. Shaw. (Eds.), The hidden alternative: Cooperative values, past, present and future (pp. 78-95). Manchester University Press. 
 
Yeo, S. (2017a). A useable past: The history of association, cooperation and un-statist socialism in 19th and early 20th century Britain (Vol 1): Victorian agitator: George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906): Co‑operation as 'This New Order of Life'. Edward Everett Root Publishers Co. Ltd.
 
Yeo, S. (2017b). New views of co-operation. Routledge.