Journal of Co-operative Studies 54(4) 7-19

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.

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