More than simple economic mechanisms poised between capitalism and socialism, co-operatives could offer critical social, political, and cultural choices for Britons in the early twentieth century. Emerging among workers who sought to effect their own bargaining positions as producers and consumers in the nineteenth century, co-operatives, both as individual societies and federative organizations, came to have a major impact in shaping consumer experiences in the early twentieth century. In this work, Nicole Robertson contributes to a developing historiography that since the mid-1990s has continued to challenge the marginalization of co-operatives by early labor historians and deepened our understanding of the co-operative experience in shaping working and middle-class communities. Robertson’s formidable research addresses the co-operative movement’s cultural and educational efforts within local communities, as well as its wider national aims for the protection of consumer interests through product testing and quality control, political organization, and general support for workers’ interests. She offers some important insights on the decades of the mid-twentieth century when co-operatives struggled to adapt to a changing consumer environment. However, her work comprises a series of individual essays rather than a full narrative and leaves the reader seeking greater analysis of how the simultaneous impact of the social, political, and economic factors alluded to in the book helped to bring about the critical stage the co-operative movement had reached by 1960.

In her study, Robertson situates co-operatives within the fabric of early twentieth-century communities, where they could vary enormously in size and scope but were often anchors within central shopping districts. Though by the early twentieth century the vision of establishing a new society based upon the principles of co-operation had retreated, the principles of the early Rochdale Pioneers still galvanized committed co-operative leaders whose understanding of their members’ interests went so far as to include the sponsorship of holiday packages as well as the sale of basic necessities in co-operative shops. The ideology of democratic ownership, however, was often at odds with the practical attention many members gave to the dividend (or “divi”). Robertson highlights the efforts of many activists to foster a co-operative culture through sport and leisure activities or the organization of events such as “Co-operators’ Day.” She also assesses the efforts of co-operative activists who sought to inculcate co-operative principles of social progress through education, but she notes that despite support for education at the national level, such efforts could receive short shrift from those in the wider body of members. Although the membership rolls of individual societies could be impressive, the numbers of those actively participating on or supporting administrative committees were minimal.

Among Robertson’s most interesting contributions is her review of the co-operative role in improving standards for purity and quality in the marketplace. She writes that co-operatives had undertaken efforts to prevent adulterated staples from reaching consumers in the early twentieth century, and, with further efforts to introduce rationing and prevent war-profiteering in succeeding years, they had taken the lead in protecting their members before the later controls of a wider welfare state. She goes on to assess the adaptive qualities of co-operatives as some leaders pushed for a greater political movement when they felt their interests were being overlooked or penalized at the close of the First World War. Robertson’s look at the co-operative interest in political organization sets up her analysis of the sometimes awkward relationship between co-operatives and organized labor. She argues that although the Co-operative Party was closely aligned to the Labour Party, its supporters were not subservient, and they voiced concerns when their relationship created friction. However, Robertson’s work indicates it was the question of its relationship with the trade union movement that may have been the most nettlesome for the co-operative movement. Co-operatives sought to portray themselves as offering better labor conditions and wages than their capitalist competitors and in the interwar period may well have achieved real success. However, though they acted in support of trade union movements to secure better wages and conditions, Robertson contends it was not without periodic discord sparked by concerns over both prices and restrictions in shopping hours for co-operative members.

Robertson hints that some of the stresses of acting as both managers of capital and supporters of workers’ interests may have weakened co-operatives by the close of the 1950s. Indeed, her work illuminates important midcentury decades not covered by Peter Gurney’s important work, Co-operative Culture and the Politics of Consumption in England, 1870–1930 (Manchester, 1996). Yet, despite the attention to these years, her work lacks a review of the position of co-operatives at the close of the 1950s, when their market presence significantly weakened in relation to retailers that attracted younger and more numerous customers in the 1960s. In addition, though Robertson’s research is assiduous and her recognition of other scholars thorough, the work leaves some basic discussion of the overall organization and structure of the co-operative movement, particularly the lines of connection between national and local interests, until later chapters, an arrangement that might not serve well nonspecialist readers. The differences between productive and consumer co-operative societies and the functions of the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS) are not elaborated upon until the eighth chapter. Yet, with these reservations, Robertson’s work is a substantive contribution that makes clear the enormous complexity of a movement composed of regional or local societies whose membership, productive and retail interests, ideological commitments, and local community roles varied enormously.