This film is one of two made by the Barnsley Cooperative Society in the possession of YFA. The other is of the Barnsley Cooperative Society on an organised staff tour to Hastings in 1959. This film was made by   Sheffield Photo Finishers (aka Sheffield Photo Company) established and run by the Mottershaw family. These made films from the turn of the century through to the 1970s, with a good selection on YFA Online – see the Context for An Eccentric Burglary (1905) and Drive with Clare...

This film is one of two made by the Barnsley Cooperative Society in the possession of YFA. The other is of the Barnsley Cooperative Society on an organised staff tour to Hastings in 1959. This film was made by   Sheffield Photo Finishers (aka Sheffield Photo Company) established and run by the Mottershaw family. These made films from the turn of the century through to the 1970s, with a good selection on YFA Online – see the Context for An Eccentric Burglary (1905) and Drive with Clare (1963-68) for more on Mottershaw and Sheffield Photo Finishers.

The idea of a co-operative was not new in Barnsley. The Barnsley British Co-operative Society, in their 1902 publication (References), note that already, “The weavers of "Wilson Piece" and "Barebones" had a Co-operative Store at the top of Joseph Street, Barnsley, as shown in “Baines’ Directory" of 1822.”  This was still there in 1840. There was also a Co-operative Store in Barnsley in 1829, and a Co-operative library of seventy-two volumes.  A George Marshall represented Barnsley at a Co-operative Congress in London in 1832. A Co-operative Society also existed at nearby Wombwell for some years before the Barnsley British Co-operative Society came into being.

The BBCS started up in 1862, the year that the Industrial and Provident Societies Acts (I&P Act) gave co-operatives a corporate status for the first time. They were first established on Warren Lane, before eventually being housed in an impressive building, Arcadia House, at 72 Market Street, in the town centre. Their 1902 publication declares that their “story is much like that of other Societies — how, in the days of scanty earnings, meagre education, and lack of social benefits or pleasures, a small band of uneducated yet shrewd, far-sighted, and, above all, lion-hearted men pinned their faith to the principle of Co-operation, though it had failed before, in the hope, which admittedly has been realised, of ameliorating the then miserable condition of the working classes.”

It started when the coalfield around Barnsley was still in its infancy. Yet just as it was formed an explosion on December 8th 1862 at Edmund's Main Colliery, on the outskirts of Barnsley in Worsbrough Dale, killed 59 men and boys.  No sooner had the Society recovered from this when another explosion at the nearby Old Oaks colliery, on December 12th and 13th 1866, killed another 364. Without compensation from either the government or the colliery owners it is little wonder that the BBCS thrived as a local self-help support for those in need. 

The co-operatives not only branched out in the sense of establishing shops in towns and villages throughout an area, but also in terms of the kinds of activities they got involved in. As well as savings and shops they moved into insurance, funeral services, banking, travel, and many other areas, such as local housing provision, and credit unions.   The Co-operative Insurance Company (CIC) was set up in 1872, becoming the Co-operative Insurance Society (CIS) in 1899. They also ventured into entertainment, especially theatre, as with the York Co-Operative Players who were filmed in 1972 by Patrick Olsen, who also filmed the International Co-operative Day at York Rugby Club in 1969 – both with the YFA.

Those who set up the Barnsley society had already been meeting regularly for some years at the Tinker's Temperance Hotel, May Day Green, in Barnsley. Yet although they had a shared purpose, there were large political disagreements and this hindered progress at first. What tipped the balance was the arrival of a Lancashire man named George Adcroft, who for many years had been a member of the Rochdale Pioneers. For two or three years before the conception of the Society he teamed up with other early promoters of the Society, including Charles Crossley and James Kaye, at the Old Oaks Colliery. After helping to fund a flour mill in 1861 – a common origin of co-ops – the Barnsley British Co-operative Society was declared open to new members in March 1862. 

The following year, the North of England Co-operative Society was launched by 300 individual co-ops across Yorkshire and Lancashire.  In 1866 Barnsley joined what was to become (in 1872) the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS).  The BBCS 40th year booklet provides a detailed account of this history, and the records of the Barnsley British Cooperative Society covering 1869-1972 are held with Barnsley Archives and Local Studies. There is a great picture of an old Barnsley British Cooperative Society wagon on Richard Hawley’s blog (References). 


Famously, the ‘modern’ co-operative movement was set up in Rochdale in 1844, although, as already seen, many similar schemes were already underway; and, as with writers like Robert Owen, it was a time for progressive ideas – The Communist Manifesto appearing 4 years later. They have maintained their strong commitment to an ethical policy across the range of their services.

By 1958, the year that an Independent Commission Report into its state was published, the co-op had a staggering 12 ½ million members, although by this time its share of retail trade had almost halved from 20% immediately after the war. The report was critical of outdated policies (not serving alcohol), and practices: offering chimney sweeps in Bristol and blacksmiths and cartwrights in Middlesbrough. It proposed large scale amalgamation and more modern management. Yet in his overview of this period, John Walton gives the example of Grossmont on the North Yorkshire Moors as a co-op that retained its local and democratic character (in one of many fascinating essays gathered together in Black and Robertson, References).  This is something that it has maintained thanks to the trade from the local steam railway.


Despite suffering reversals through strong competition the movement is still looking forward. On the Co-operatives UK website it declares:  “Co-operation is back in vogue. The principles developed by the Rochdale Pioneers in the UK over 166 years ago, are now the foundation for a global economy supporting half of the world's population, a co-operative sector in the UK to which one in five of us belong and the government's new coalition leadership.”

The co-op themselves define co-operative as follows: “A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.”   This is then expanded upon: “Co-operatives are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. In the tradition of their founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.”   At the time of writing (July 2010) the Conservative Government are pushing their idea of the ‘Big Society’; but the notion of “self-help” employed in this may have more in common with the Victorian ideas of Samuel Smiles, with a strong emphasise responsibility, than with the stated values of ‘equality, equity and solidarity’ of the co-operative movement. 

Recently too, in June 2010, a formula for co-operation was announced, developed by Ian McDermott of International Teaching Seminars and Jason Miller of Tinder-Box, initiated by Ed Mayo, the Secretary General of Co-operatives UK, and under the auspices of Manchester: Knowledge Capital. The formula is T Sc * (Ci + Mt) = Co: Shared commitment x Common interests + Mutual trust = Co-operation. The formula is meant to incorporate the seven principles of co-operation. These were first formulated in 1844, and then revised in 1966 and again in 1995. The 1995 version is: 1. Voluntary and Open Membership 2. Democratic Member Control 3. Member Economic Participation 4. Autonomy and Independence 5. Education, Training and Information 6.Cooperation between cooperatives 7.Concern for community.

But the co-operative idea, and organisation, is not confined to these shores, and flourishes in many countries. At a time of much jingoism and nationalism the co-op movement went international with the founding of the International Co-operative Movement, or International Co-operative Alliance, in 1895. This now claims 242 independent member organisations from 91 countries, active in all sectors of the economy representing nearly one billion people.

At the time that this film was made the "divi" – a stamp that members got in a book, entitling a share of profits that went back to 1844 – was still very much a way of saving for many people, lasting until the late 1960s. A similar scheme is recounted by Douglas Theaker, whose aunt Connie Priestley worked for Barnsley British Co-operative Society in the 1930s, going around the houses of members collecting money. “Co-operative money was loaned to members normally at about 5 to 10 pounds in the form of a voucher which could only be spent at the Co-op. Any change given was given in Co-op money which was lightweight and could only be spent at the Co-op.” (References) 

The real fascination of the film though is perhaps in the range of office machinery and equipment on display, such as the expense analysis machine and the comptometer. This latter was invented by the American Dorr E. Felt in 1884, and produced by the Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company. It was the first successfully key driven adding and calculating machine. The one in the film is probably the model  J introduced in the middle of the 1930s (Wikipedia has a good entry on its history, as has the Early Office Museum).  

Another interesting piece of old office machinery is the recording machine. This is a "Dictaphone", trade marked by the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1907. This originated as wax cylinders for voice recording, losing out to discs because of cost and convenience.  However, they continued in use for office work, and the Dictaphone became a separate company in 1923.  After relying on wax cylinder recording through the end of World War II, in 1947 Dictaphone introduced their Dictabelt technology, which cut a mechanical groove into a plastic belt instead of into a wax cylinder – probably the latter in this film.  Later, of course, came magnetic tape recorders.

Just like factories, large offices had come under the sway of the ideas of scientific management. Originating in the US in the late 19th century through Frederick Taylor, this evolved a set of principles designed to make workers more productive. Every detail of a worker’s activity and practice was examined to cut out anything unnecessary. It required a strict division of labour. As stated by the Smithsonian Education on their excellent website,  From Carbons to Computers: The Changing American Office, the “principles were meant to separate the worker from his Old-World artisan culture--the idea that one person created an object, according to tradition and his own skill. The new order divided skills into a sequence of simple procedures to be taught to workers and monitored by management. . . . Soon there were clerks who only opened letters all day, clerks who only typed, clerks who only filed, and couriers who picked up and delivered files from one person to the next. Typists did not take shorthand, and clerks who took shorthand (stenographers) did not file. Theoretically, valuable company time was wasted when a stenographer left her desk to file.”

Management is slightly more enlightened now, having recognised that productivity is not only a function of dividing tasks.   An industry of work psychologists have discovered that other factors affect performance, such as whether workers are happy in their work (up to a point!).   And so, along with the ‘paper free office’ (how dull in comparison), some might even be allowed flexible time. It is a moot point though whether the employees of the co-op, either in 1951 or today, feel any better off than their colleagues with other employers. After all, in our society, at the end of the day, despite all the co-operation, competition rules.

References

 

Barnsley British Cooperative Society (BBCS), The Coronation History of the Barnsley British Cooperative Society Limited, 1862-1902, Cooperative & Wholesale Society, 1903, reprinted by  Kessinger Publishing, 2009.

Lawrence Black and Nicole Robertson (editors), Consumerism and the Co-operative movement in modern British history, Manchester University Press, 2009.

John Walton, ‘Post-war decline of the co-operative movement’, in Ibid.


From Carbons to Computers: The Changing American Office

The International Co-operative Alliance

Co-operatives UK

Vintage Calculators Web Museum

Early Office Museum

Richard Hawley’s Forum

Douglas Theaker