FRIENDLY SOCIETIES AND THE NEW MUTUALISM
Paper to be Presented to the Friendly Societies Association Conference “Friendly Societies - the Co-operative Spirit” by the Honourable Race Mathews, Melbourne, 25 April, 1993.
Introduction.
In taking as my theme today the role of friendly societies in bringing about a better life for all Australians, I speak, in effect, of the relevance of the mutualist philosophy to our times. I speak of the need for a New Mutualism which brings back together that great family of organisations which are heirs to Australia’s enduring tradition and history of mutualist self-help. I speak of the need for innovatory methods of applying a mutualist approach and outlook in the difficult and turbulent years which are ahead of us. Australia’s most distinguished political journalist - Paul Kelly - has called his most recent book The End of Certainty[1]. As a recent seminal study by Hugh Mackay points out, “ Whether we realise it or not, all Australians are becoming New Australian as we struggle partly to adapt to the changes going on around us, and partly to shape them to our liking”[2]. It may well be that the acid test for mutualism in the times to come is whether - and, if so, to what extent - it enables us to shape changes to our liking. The most effective way for us to restore certainty to our lives is to take back control of them to the greatest possible extent for ourselves.
I start from the premise that Australia stands today at an historic watershed in our national affairs. It is plain now as never before in our postwar experience that neither the welfare state as we know it today nor the unfettered market economy are capable of meeting the expectations which many have invested in them. The lessons and consequences of the “greed is good” ‘eighties are far too recent and painful to require significant or extensive reiteration. Unemployment levels are higher than ever before in our postwar experience. So too are levels of longterm unemployment. The capacity of even an otherwise healthy economy to provide work for all who seek it is - at the least - in serious doubt.
The gap between the rich and the poor has at the same time become greater than at any earlier postwar stage. The Mackay study reminds us that:
In just sixteen years (1976-92), the proportion of Australian households with an income of more than $72,000 (based on constant 1991-92 values) rose from 15 percent to 30 per cent. At the same tie, the proportion of householdswith an income of less than $22,000 rose from 20 per cent to 30 per cent. ... If we define the economic middle class as being households with incomes between $22,000 and $72,000 (in 1991-92 terms), then the middle class has shrunk from 65 per cent of households in 1976 to 40 per cent of households in 1992[3]
We have moved within the space of two decades from being one of the most egalitarian nations on earth to one which is characterised instead by profoundly anti-egalitarian attitudes and practises. The rebound from welfare at the same time threatens to become a wholesale retreat, as governments everywhere scramble to rebalance their budgets and extricate themselves from financial commitments which are seen to be unsustainable. The safety-net on which many have relied for support in times of adversity is seen increasingly to be ungenerous and inadequate. The upshot has been the emergence for the first time of an Australian underclass, similar in most respects to those which have also emerged in the United States of Ronald Reagan and George Bush and the Britain of Margaret Thatcher. Failing a new approach, hundreds of thousands of Australians will in future experience lifelong unemployment. Far from either the public or private sectors responding adequately to these great structural problems, both are seen widely as compounding them. Where jobs should be created they are instead being destroyed. The New Poverty and the New Inequality cry out for remedies and solutions which so far have not figured on the agendas of either government or opposition parties.
Mutualism.
Our forefathers in nineteenth century Britain faced problems of endemic unemployment, underemployment, poverty and inequality which - in kind if not in degree - strikingly resemble those of today. Then too governments could offer no effective alternative. The times gave rise instead to the philosophy of mutualism which now brings this conference together. Great mutualist movements emerged, with a shared, unshakeable belief in “Each for all and all for each”. The Rochdale Pioneers, for example, established their co-operative store in Toad Lane in order to obtain affordable access to such household requisites as food and clothing. Credit co-operatives provided affordable consumer finance. Friendly societies were initially a source of burial benefits, and, later, unemployment benefits, sickness benefits and medical care. Life assurance was offered by mutual societies, as was home finance by building societies. Processing and marketing co-operatives enabled small farmers to participate in the adding of value to their products. There were industrial co-operatives where the workers owned their jobs.
The usefulness of all these institutions, and the validity of their mutualist principles, is evidenced by their survival. They have endured - and skilfully adapted themselves to new needs and challenges - in the face often of hostility on the part of the professions, the indifference and incomprehension of governments and the short memories of many who in the past figured among their most notable beneficiaries. The 1992 Friendly Societies’ National Report, for example, lists no fewer than 21 major areas of activity in which friendly societies are currently engaged. The success of the Victorian Friendly Societies Pharmacy Co-operative - established as recently as 1982 - clearly exemplifies what can be achieved from small beginnings. The pharmacy co-operative now operates two dispensaries of its own, and provides management services for a further twelve dispensaries. The financial strength of the venture totals in excess of $5.5 million. The current assets of friendly societies all told are in excess of $9 billion. Credit co-operatives affiliated with the World Council of Credit Unions currently have more than 44 million members. Co-operatives affiliated with the International Co-operative Alliance - the world umbrella body for the co-operative movement - currently total more than 650 million members. Taking into account the worldwide membership of friendly societies and building societies, mutualism is a movement numbering more than a billion people. Add to this the policy holders of the great mutual assurance societies who are also the members of those societies, and the number becomes still more impressive. Mutualism rivals in its following many of the world’s major religions.
It is appropriate at this time to ask whether a New Mutualism – a mutualism intellectually revitalised, its sense of purpose renewed, re-stated in contemporary terms and able to build on solid and long-standing foundations - may not remain at least as relevant to our current situation as it was to those whose demands mutualism has met so triumphantly in the past. It is unnecessary in a forum of this character to refer by way of answer to the success stories of individual friendly societies which are already well known to you. I offer instead outstanding examples of the success of mutualism in enabling ordinary peope to house themselves, to bring about the economic development of the communities of which they are a part and to provide themselves with jobs. I refer in particular to the great common equity rental housing co-operatives of Ontario in Canada, to the Desjardins credit co-operatives in Quebec in Canada, and to the great industrial co-operatives at Mondragon in Spain. There is no doubt in my mind that the need for jobs, local economic development and affordable rental accommodation will be as real and urgent in the years immediately ahead of us as was the need for affordable food and clothing in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain, or for affordable consumer finance in Australia in the nineteen-fifties and nineteen-sixties.
Rental Housing Co-operatives.
Housing co-operatives which I visited in Toronto in Canada, in 1989, prided themselves on having eliminated what they saw as being “the high price of individual home ownership and the unpredictable rent increases, insecurity and anonymity that come with living in rental housing”. Unlike rents, they argue, the monthly housing charge in a co-op rises only with increases in operating and mortgage servicing costs. There are no profits or refinancing costs to be paid for. In most areas, over time, the co-op housing charges will fall below the rents charged for private rental accommodation of the same quality. Co-op housing, in the view of the co-ops, gives residents an equal voice in the decisions affecting their homes. There is no landlord. Co-op housing, it is argued, provides a unique opportunity for people to build a community and to share and assist each other in ways beyond meeting their housing needs. Democratic control, it is said finally, guarantees that money budgeted for maintenance is spent on maintenance, and not skimmed off for extra profit while the property deteriorates.
All these Canadian housing co-operatives were independent, self-directing, incorporated organisations. The people living in the co-operative apartments, town houses or free-standing homes made up their memberships. Each resident member had one vote in the affairs of the co-operative. Every year, the members elected from among themselves a board of directors to manage the co-operative. The monthly charges paid by members represented the cost to the co-operative of its mortgage, property taxes, reserves for future repairs and other operating costs. Since the members themselves owned the property, there was no requirement for a profit margin. Members made a small down-payment for shares or a membership fee - together with a maintenance guarantee and their first and last month’s housing charges - when they took up residence. Government assistance was provided in the form of interest-free loans and mortgage guarantees under Federal and Federal-Provincial Housing Programs; as it was also through interest-free loans for up to 35% of capital costs under a Provincial housing program. The government required in return that at least 25% of each co-operative’s members should be elegible by income for welfare rental subsidies. The Woodsworth Co-operative - where much of my visit was spent, and to which I have since returned - was in compliance with this requirement, and 44% of the residents of the nearby Windmill Line Co-operative were subsidy recipients.
A recent social audit of the Woodsworth Co-operative established that 19% of its members had annual incomes under $10,000; as did 12% incomes between $10,000 and $19,900; 27% incomes between between $20,000 and $20,900; 19% incomes between $30,000 and $39,900; and 17% incomes in excess of $40,000, including some in excess of $100,000. Seventeen percent of the Woodsworth residents were aged between 19 and 29, as were 38% betwen 30 and 39; 26% between 40 and 49; 10% between 50 and 59; and 9% over 60. In the view of 84% of the Woodsworth residents, the co-operative had “a good mix of members from different ethnic, cultural and national backgrounds”, and the co-operative was currently considering a recommendation from its Social Audit Committee that a unit should be set aside for a refugee family.
Eighty-five percent of the members felt that their housing charges were “just right”. The quality of the accommodation was rated as good or excellent by 88% of the residents, as was the maintenance service by 73% of the residents. Good neighbourhood was a reason for living in the co-operative mentioned by 85% of the residents; as was low cost housing by 78%; inability to own private housing by 69%; and security of tenure by 66%. Seventy-four percent of all parents reported that the co-operative was a good place to bring up children, as did 82% of single parents that it was a good place to be a single parent and 95% of senior citizens that it was a good place for them. Forty percent of the members had run for office within the co-operative, although the 31% of households with incomes under $20,000 accounted for only 11% of current and former office-holders. It is at least open to question whether any survey of Australian housing - public or private - would disclose comparable causes for satisfaction. The reality of our situation is that a significant switch of resources from public to co-operative housing would be highly cost-effective. Social dysfunction would be massively reduced. Rental housing in Australia currently is crying out for the mutualist approach.
The Desjardins Credit Co-operatives.
The Mouvement Des Caisses Desjardins began in Levis in Quebec in 1900, at the instigation of Alphonse Desjardins. Desjardins was a Hansard reporter for the Quebec provincial parliament, and later Clerk reporting of the Canadian parliament in Toronto. His conscience was aroused by the poverty and unemployment which were driving away large numbers of his fellow citizens to the United States in search of work. He was appalled also by the inability of working people and farmers to borrow at interest rates which were within their means. His original caisse or credit union - La Caisse Populaire De Levis - was seen by him as “putting the savings of the people at the service of the people”. As in all credit unions, members pooled their savings, and took turns for affordable loans. The first transactions were conducted on 23 January, 1901, at Desjardins’ home, which remained the nerve-centre of the movement until his death in 1920, and is now preserved in his memory as a museum by La Societe Historique Alphonse-Desjardins.. Caisse members, Desjardins believed, would be encouraged to adopt practice thrift and financial responsibility. Christian and humane values would be fostered. Usury would be discouraged. In time, caisses would form federations, and a great movement would emerge.
Desjardins’ dream is now a reality. The Mouvement Des Caisses Desjardins. consists today of caisses populaires or community credit unions, and caisses d’economie or industrial credit unions. Individual caisses populaires within Quebec are grouped regionally in 10 federations. There is a separate federation for the caisses d’economie, and three auxilary federations for caisses populaires outside Quebec. The functions of the federations are to promote the effectiveness, growth and development of their affiliated caisses, and provide joint services such as communications, technical support, training and human resources management. The federations comprise in turn La Confederation Des Caisses Populaires et D’Economie Du Quebec. The Confederation sets objectives for the movement as a whole, after extensive consultation with the caisses and their members. It is also a service provider for the caisses and federations, in part through wholly-owned subsidiary companies. Direct clearing within the Canadian payment system and at the Bank of Canada is made available through La Caisse Centrale Desjardins du Quebec. A security, liquidity and mutual aid fund is operated through La Corporation De Fonds De Securite De La Confederation Desjardins. Majority interests are held on behalf of the Confederation by La Societe De Services Des Caisses Desjardins in four companies providing respectively security services, plastic card services, information technology services and an automated system of authorisation and payment for pharmaceutical services, and by La Societe Financiere Des Caisses Desjardins in four intermediary companies with subsidiaries offering general insurance, life assurance, trust and investment management services and corporate financing services.
To this point, nothing about the Desjardins caisses has differed significantly from credit unions as they operate currently in Australia. What is novel in Australian terms is the adoption by the caisses of economic development and job creation as key aspects of their services to their members, through subsidiary companies established for the purpose by the Confederation. Investissement Desjardins is a wholly-owned holding company through which the Confederation backs the development of industrial and commercial enterprises and participates actively in Quenbec’s economic growth. Three subsidiary bodies invest on the company’s behalf.
The objectives of the first subsidiaries -Tremplin Desjardins - are set out as:
(a) To support the development of Regional Investment Funds;
(b) To support high-tech businesses, in industries such as communications, electronics, health care and the environment;
(c) To assist businesses associated with the Desjardins movement in gaining access to international markets; and
(d) To act as a consultant for regional federations on investment in corporations within their regions.
It is hoped that, within five years, there will be ten Regional Invesment Funds, with assets of the order of $100 million. Tremplin Desjardins is to invest in the Funds in conjunction with three financial partners, namely:
(a) La Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec (a semi-public corporation managing funds for the Quebec Pension Plan);
(b) Le Fonds de Solidarite des Travailleurs du
Quebec (a trade unions investment fund) and
(c) The National Bank of Canada.
The second subsidiary -Capital Desjardins - seeks out entrepreneurs who have proven capacities for making their businesses grow and become profitable, and who need additional strategic and fiancial support for acquisition, expansion or diversification projects. The third -Gestion Desjardins - acquires or maintains majority or preponderent shareholdings in large companies which are actual or potential leaders in their sectors and should be owned in Quebec. It is envisaged that a further holding company yet to be established - La Societe Immobiliere Des Caisses Desjardins Inc. - will ultimately systematise investment by the Confederation in real estate. Caisse capital is supplemented for Investissement Desjardins through overseas initiatives. The organisation’s president, Raymond Gagne, sees its international thrust as having three objectives: “to find foreign investors to become partners in Quebec businesses, open foreign doors to Quebec businesses and stimulate foreign investment in Quebec”. The movement also participates vigorously in international aid and development projects through the Societe De Developpement International Desjardins, and within Quebec fosters education, culture, social action and the development of the co-operative ideal through the Fondation Desjardins and the Centre de Formation Desjardins.. So successful - and so popular - have the caisses become that in 70% of the communities which make up Quebec they have no competitors. The Mouvement Des Caisses Desjardins now comprises 1,329 caisses populaires and caisses d’economie, with 4.9 million members and assets totalling $42.6 billion. In Australia as in Quebec, the cry of local communities is for the means to bring about local economic development and put back to work the unemployed.
The Mondragon Co-operative Corporation.
The essentials of the Mondragon story are simple. Mondragon is a small town in the Basque region, mainly engaged since the Middle Ages in producing steel. The regional economy was devastated in the nineteen-thirties by the Spanish Civil War. Poverty and massive unemployment remained endemic well into the nineteen-fifties. At that point, a remarkable parish priest, Don Jose Maria Arizmendiarietta, prompted a handful of townspeople to establish an industrial co-operative - Ulgor - using hand tools and sheet metal to manufacture paraffin-fired heating and cooking stoves for the local market. What has developed from that small beginning is a group of more than 100 manufacturing and service co-operatives, with a workforce of 21,000 members and and a 1991 turnover of 315,172 million pesetas - up 8.8% on 1990, which was in turn a 15% increase on 1989. No Mondragon worker has ever been made redundant, and more than a quarter of the group’s output is exported.
The success of the Mondragon stems in part from the fact that every worker is a stake-holder, who shares equally in the profits - and, on occasion, losses - of the co-operative of which he is a co-owner. His rights as a member include participating directly in the making of the policies of the co-operative, which then delegates the day-to-day conduct of its affairs to a manager hired for the purpose on contract. Members’ entitlements - and the obligations which go with them - are taken seriously. However, if the story had no more to it than that, the Mondragon co-operatives might - like some, but by no means all worker-owned co-operatives and companies on other countries - have had a short lifespan, or failed to achieve acceptable rates of growth. The key difference - over and above the checks and balances designed into the structure of the co-operatives by Arizmendiarietta - is that, shortly after the inception of the first co-operatives, they launched a bank - the Caja Laboral Popular. The Caja Laboral Popular - now the thirteenth largest savings bank in Spain, with a staff of 1321 worker-members, 201 branch offices and assets in excess of $US3 billion. - has made the Mondragon co-operatives capital self-sufficient, and equipped them with comprehensive financial services and skills. It is a “support” or “secondary” co-operative, governed jointly by representatives of its staff and affiliated industrial or “primary” co-operatives.
The bank in turn has given rise to further support co-operatives. For example, since members of co-operatives are classified by Spanish law as self-employed - and are therefore inelegible for pensions, health care and other social security benefits - the group has had to develop a social security system of its own, through the Lagun Aro support co-operative. The Ikerlan research and development support co-operative keeps the group at the cutting edge of technological and scientific advances, and has specialised recently in numerically-controlled machine tools, artificial intelligence and robotics. The group’s university of technology - the Eskola Politechnica - is a support co-operative, as are its school of business administration - Otalora - and its forty-odd Hezibide Elkartea primary and secondary schools. Students taking courses at the Eskola Politechnica can if necessary pay their way as members of a co-operative of their own - Alecoop - whose products include teaching machines. The Mondragon group includes finally six construction co-operatives, seven agricultural co-operatives, ten housing co-operatives and 271 Eroski co-operative supermarkets and other stores.
Following the establishment of Ulgor in 1954, the Mondragon co-operatives experienced spectacular growth. The expansionary phase then ground to a halt in the ‘seventies, in the face of the first oil price shock, and the onset of a recession which was experienced far more keenly in Spain than in most other parts of Europe. Faced in the ‘eighties with continuing financial stringency, the group conducted an exhaustive re-appraisal of its position, followed by a root-and-branch re-structuring which once again placed its activities on a secure foundations, while preserving intact its co-operative guiding philosophy, principles and structure. The success with which the membership was able to work its way through to agreement on the necessary changes is an object lesson in the capacity of ordinary people to adopt and adhere to difficult decisions which they have been enabled to understand and own.
As stake-holders, the Mondragon workers expect high standards of wealth creation from those to whom the governance and management of the co-operatives is delegated. Unlike share-holders in conventional corporations, they are in a position both to monitor performance directly on a day-to-day basis, and develop informed views about the need for improvements and how they can be brought about. The outcome has been seen widely as an “institutionalisation of entrepreneurship”. Even so, the concern of state socialist critics such as Beatrice and Sidney Webb - that the interests of producer co-operatives would necessarily be incompatible with those of consumers, and therefore of the community as a whole - has proved to be unfounded. The difference is owed substantially to the adherence of the co-operatives to Arizmendiarietta’s principle of equilibrio - of balance in the relationship of one co-operative with another, of industrial co-operatives with support co-operatives and of co-operatives both individually and collectively with the communities of which they are a part. As the Cornell University scholars William and Kathleen Foote Whyte have written following a definitive seventeen-year study of Mondragon:
In the discussion of important decisions, the word equilibrio appears again and again as the justification for any action proposed. The basis idea is that life in a co-operative should not be carried on as if it were a zero-sum game in which some win and some lose. There must be a balancing of interests and needs; we hear it said that technological imperatives must be balanced with social objectives and that the financial needs of the firm must be balanced with the economic needs of members.[4]
A further American writer - Roy Morrison - sees equilibrio as the key to a successful integration of human freedom and community[5].
Tested against the principles of co-operation - democracy, voluntarism, autonomy, equity, mutuality, universality and the capacity to evolve - Mondragon emerges with flying colours. Economically, the story is similarly impressive. The ‘nineties find the Mondragon co-operatives once again undergoing expansion. Earnings and exports are up. New markets are being acquired. A random selection of current products includes industrial robots, heavy earth-moving machinery, tugs, fishing-boats, and other small ocean-going vessels, buses and motor coaches, machine tools and hydraulic presses, refrigerators, washing machines and other white goods, furniture and hi-fi systems. As from the inception, productivity of the co-operatives has been higher by far than that of comparable private sector businesses in nearby areas, and signs of dysfunction such as absenteeism are spectacularly fewer. Overall, wealth has been created. Jobs have been provided for workers who would otherwise be unemployed. Household purchasing power has increased and the regional economy has been stimulated. In 1991, in the face of continuing recessionary conditions, the Caja Laboral Popular lifted its level of deposits per worker-member by 11.45%, its earnings per worker-member by 13.2% and its profits by 14.8%. Clearly somebody is doing something spectacularly right.
Action Plan.
It remains accordingly for the movement to determine how these examples of world best practice in the application of mutualist principles to current problems can be harnessed to the best possible effect in the interests of Australians. Clearly it is neither necessary nor desirable for us to adopt overseas models uncritically, or in their entirety. We should endeavour instead to learn from the experiences of others those lessons which are relevant to our needs. An action plan for the short to medium term future might include some or all of the objectives and initiatives which follow..
First, the unity and identity of mutualism as a movement must now be restored. The response of building societies, friendly societies and credit unions to measures proposed by governments in the aftermath of the Pyramid collapse was the less effective for being largely unco-ordinated. There was no tradition of co-operation between mutualist organisations on which those directly in the firing line could draw for support. By and large, those mutualist organisations not directly threatened - namely the general co-operatives and mutual assurance societies - sat on their hands. “Each for all and all for each” should apply to the mutualist sector as a whole, as well as to its component parts and individual members. Our actions as a movement should not be seen to contradict our principles.
Two years ago I suggested as a starting point a conference at which all parts of the mutualist sector could compare notes and explore the nature and extent of the attributes which are common to all of them. Most then felt - perhaps correctly - that the timing was inappropriate. Such a conference may well now be an idea whose time has come. One possible outcome might be a standing consultative committee of mutualist organisations. A second possibility is a journal of mutualist world best practice. A third is the instigation of proper arrangements for research into mutualism and mutualist organisations within our universities and other learned bodies. For example, many of the questions raised by David Green and Lawrence Cromwell in their pioneering study Mutual Aid or Welfare State: Australia’s Friendly Societies raise a wealth of issues which need urgently to be further examined[6]. It may well be that these small steps forward will lead to larger things, such as backing from a range of bodies within the mutualist sector for rental co-operative housing.
Meanwhile, it should be our hope also that at least some mutual assurance societies will learn again to value their status as mutualist organisations, relate as mutualist organisations to the policy-holders who are also their members and - perhaps - throw their weight behind a realisation of the possibilities of mutualism in its widest sense. Significantly, the drift of the assurance societies away from their mutualist roots has coincided with their descent into what the the Chief Executive Officer of the AMP, Mr Malcolm Salmon, now sees as “a terribly difficult position”. Mr Salmon was quoted recently as acknowledging that failure on the part of the industry to respond to its current problems could call into question its long-term future[7]. The question arises of whether a closer adherence to mutualist principles and practices might not have had a happier result. There may be greater sources of strength and wisdom in mutualism than is dreamt of in conventional corporate philosophy.
Secondly, mutualism needs a higher public profile. The public are mostly unaware of the existence of mutualism, the principles for which we stand, or what our movement can offer them. The major political parties fail consistently to sufficiently understand or value mutualism. The Labor Party in this respect has been no less culpable than the conservatives. I remain deeply saddened that the reaction to the Pyramid Affair by the then Victorian Attorney-General - and now Leader of the Opposition - the Honourable Jim Kennan was to solicit recommendations for the regulation of building societies, friendly societies and credit unions from a firm of chartered accountants who knew nothing about mutualism and cared less. The recommendations of the accountants were then accepted uncritically, despite the fact that they would have had the effect ultimately of destroying the bodies whose solvency and liquidity they purported to protect. It remains a major source of satisfaction to me that the Caucus Co-operatives Committee of which I was then a member was successful in staving off the consequent legislation. A Christmas parliamentary recess intervened, and wiser counsels in part prevailed. The Acts which found their way eventually on to the Statute Book was less destructive by far - and also less offensively patronising and paternalistic - than otherwise inevitably would have been the case
We should not now settle for less than a return to the greatest possible measure of self-regulation for mutualist bodies at the earliest possible opportunity. This will involve in part restoring to the Labor Party and the trade union movement the institutional memory of their mutualist roots, and of the enduring relevance of mutualism to social justice. It should be a major aim of a standing consultative committee of mutualist organisations that mutualism is thoroughly understood, highly valued and - above all - acknowledged as having earned the right to be independent of government by all our political parties and leaders and by the wider community. “Put not your trust in princes” - however well-intentioned - is sound advice, as friendly societies well know from the attentions of Lloyd George in Britain, and Page and Menzies in Australia.
Thirdly, the strength of mutualist bodies is in their memberships. In order for members to be able to contribute effectively to the sector they must first be enabled to understand it for themselves. We need, in short, to give much more attention to member development. Two years ago, the Asia-Pacific Co-operative Research, Training and Development Centre was established. The aim primarily was to provide education and training services for co-operatives, but potentially to do so for the mutualist sector as a whole. The Centre subsequently has received overseas students for training courses and residencies with Australian co-operatives, and is now trialling the course for the Australian Certificate of Co-operative Management. The development of the certificate course was funded by the New South Wales and Victorian Education Foundations. The NSW Foundation is now funding a training needs analysis for directors of co-operatives. The Centre’s courses are offered in Victoria in conjunction with the Graduate School of Management, which also now incorporates an accredited unit on Management of Co-operative Businesses in its MBA syllabus. I was invited recently to a meeting of university lecturers who are interested in the establishment of of an institute for the scholarly study of mutualist and other democratically managed bodies. It would be of interest to members of the Board of the Asia-Pacific Centre - of whom I am one - to explore further how the Centre can be used for the advancement of the mutualist sector in its entirety. It could be a function of a standing consultative committee of mutualist organisations to act as a venue where such negotiations can take place. It should be our aim ultimately to have an autonomous mutualist training college, equalling and perhaps improving upon bodies such as the Co-operative College in Britain and Japan’s Institute for the Development of Agricultural Co-operation in Asia.
Fourthly, following the recent elections, there is a Commonwealth Minister with responsibility for regional economic development. The Secretary of the ACTU, Bill Kelty, has responsibility for regional economic development within the trade union movement, and has appointed an officer from within his organisation to assist him. There is a role here for involvement by mutualist bodies along the lines of the Desjardins caisses populaires and the Caja Laboral Popular at Mondragon. As the Plunkett Foundation for Co-operative Studies rightly points out in its 1992 Annual Review, co-operatives “are particularly valuable in correcting imbalances within the market; sustaining local economies; mobilising local capital; they are particularly important in the context of economic restructuring; meeting the needs of businesses with longer term objectives, which are relative to sustainability and environmental considerations; and contributing towards the creation of employment and maintaining local control”. “The promotion of co-operatives”, the statement continues, “is made outside the context of any political or other ideology, and is based simply on the assumption that by taking joint action, individuals can achieve benefits which might otherwise be unachievable”[8]. We must now think creatively, in terms not only of co-operation between bodies within the mutualist sector, but of strategic alliances with the public and private sectors.
Conclusion.
Standing by the grave of the father of the co-operative movement and father of mutualism, Robert Own, as I did in the northern summer of 1989, it seemed to me that nothing about the sentiments so eloquently now encapsulated by the Plunkett Foundation would in any way have been unfamiliar or unacceptable to Owen. I was reminded that we in the mutualism movement - be it through friendly societies, building societies, credit unions, general co-operatives or mutual assurance societies - are the custodians of perhaps the most powerful idea ever to have been given rise in human history. I was reminded also of Victor Hugo’s prophetic observation that nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come. At a time when the advocates of the statutory corporation school of state socialism, and their “greed is good” counterparts in the corporate sphere, have simultaneously, permanently and irrevocably discredited themselves, the way is open for mutualism in all its forms to assume the larger role - locally, nationally, regionally and on a worldwide basis - to which its merits so plainly entitle it. What has been identified mistakenly by some as marking an end to history marks potentially the birth of new opportunities and applications for mutualism. My subject today - friendly societies and the New Mutualism for which our times cry out - is one aspect of the on-going effort which our movement now requires of us, so that the dream of Robert Own can, at long last, be brought finally to fruition. The events of recent years, and the problems which the world now finds confronting it, have opened up for us, as a movement, a window of opportunity such as we have not previously experienced - and which, if it is not grasped now, may never be seen again.
[1] Kelly P. The End of Certainty: The Story of the 1980s, 1992, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
[2] Mackay H. Reinventing Australia: The Mind and Mood of Australia in the 90s, 1993, Angus and Robertson, Sydney. p. 6.
[3] Ibid, p. 138.
[4] Whyte W.F. and K.K. Making Mondragon: The Growth and Dynamics of the Worker Co-operative Complex. 1988, ILR Press, Cornell University.
[5] Morrison R. We Build the Road AS We Travel. 1991, New Society Publishers, Philadelphia.
[6]Green D and Cromwell L. Mutual Aid or Welfare State: Australia’s Friendly Societies. 1984. George Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
[7] Australian Financial Review, 21 April, 1993.
[8] Plunkett Foundation Annual Review 1992. The Plunkett Foundation, Oxford. p. 6.