16th July 2010

Each for All, All for Each

As anyone could tell from a short walk around the Carr Street Co-operative Deparment Store any time in the last few years, the business was not doing well.  When crunch-time finally came, the management, wanting to do all it could to preserve the business and the jobs that went with it, sold the department stores to someone who promised to be able to bring new skills and expertise to the team.  Here was, so everyone thought, a chance of making it work again.

But it was not to be.  The new owner, a company called Vergo, seemed only interested in shifting old stock.  With depressing inevitability it was not a year before the administrators were called in.  Staff were summoned into a room and summarily dismissed, with five minutes to collect their belongings.  The rest were kept on only until they had closed the place down.

I went to meet the ex-Co-op employees, in Carr Street, a few weeks ago.  They are a remarkable bunch: most had worked for the Co-op for many years, some for decades, one lady I met had been a loyal employee for forty-two years, another for forty-four; several of the people there had met their husband or wife through work.  All of them were loyal to the Co-op and rooted in its values.

Yet now, because the store was in administration, their jobs had been axed and they could claim nothing more than what they could get off the state.  I have to say that when these Co-op employees told me what had taken place, I had to catch my breath.  For all this to happen to people who in a few final months had been cheated out of fair treatment earned through many years of loyal service to an organization dedicated to mutual aid.

As I walked away, I glanced back at the old Co-op building: the pediment, as many of you know well, carries the legend: “Each for All, All for Each”.

These are noble sentiments, in the spirit of the Rochdale Pioneers who founded the co-operative movement.  The members’ offices are still in that building, and on divi day queues of people would once stretch from there as far as Tavern Street – filled with men and women for whom the co-operative movement meant everything.

You can understand why the whole affair made me so furious – and so determined to do what I could to help.  Although these people were not technically employed by the Co-op, they were surely their responsibility.

And so the Co-op Board agreed.  They have decided to pay their former employees as if they had been working for the Society all along.  That is a brave and expensive thing to do, but cheap at the price if it means that the values of our local Co-operative Society are to remain true.

Ipswich Art School

In the favourite words of Hannibal, ringleader of the A Team, “I love it when a plan comes together”.

And that’s what happened last Friday at the old Art School, where I opened the exhibition of art from the world-famous Saatchi collection.

It’s a project that many really dedicated people have bee working on for some time – and they’ve done it at no cost to the Borough.  What’s more, it won’t cost you a penny to get in.

I know that contemporary art is not to everyone’s taste: I struggle to get what a lot of it means.  But it’s free and well worth seeing, if only to view – and smell – two giant shoes made out of liquorice, and much else besides.

Now how’s that for austerity-proof fun!