Today, on the 19 August 2020, International Cooperative Alliance – ICA is celebrating its 125th anniversary, showing a longevity and strength that few international organisations can claim. It was on this day the first international Cooperative Congress was held in London 125 years ago.
The cooperative movement and the ICA have managed to survive and grow through the great economic depression, the fascist regimes, the tragedies of two world wars, the high tensions of the cold war and the arms race, crimes against humanity during internal conflicts, pressures to conform to-profit motives as well as so many concurrent crises and challenges.
The ICA is representing today 315-member organisations in 111 countries—more than at any time in these 125 years. There is corresponding evidence that, since the industrial revolution until today, cooperatives have been economically sustainable in all sectors of the economy, and continue to be responsive to the fundamental and evolving human needs.
On this occasion Bruno Roelants, Director General has written a letter to members sharing some materials specially prepared for this day. Several co-operators and historians have contributed to this exercise, Roelants reveals.
One of these the video address by ICA President Ariel Guarco who thanks all co-operators for their contributions and efforts to overcome the current global challenges including Covid 19.
In this video, Rita Rhodes, ICA historian; Martin Lowery, ICA Cooperative Identity Committee Chair; and Vina Vida Rempillo, training coordinator and youth co-operator from the Philippines’ National Confederation of Cooperatives, Gillian Lonergan, retired UK National Cooperative Archive Librarian share their knowledge of, and enthusiasm for the cooperative movement.
Several national co-operators and historians of the cooperative movement from countries which had delegates at the very first international Cooperative Congress held in London 125 years ago, share their views here with their analyses on their countries’ participation at that congress and the reason why it has been such a remarkably influential event.
They also reflect upon what 125 years of relations with the ICA has meant for their national cooperative movements.
Roelants writes “Whereas cooperatives today represent an impressive global reality in terms of membership, employment and economic share in the most diverse sectors, the international cooperative movement as we know it today would probably not have survived, had not the ICA been established in the first place.”
In her think piece, Gillian Lonergan explains the rise of the cooperative model over those 50 years preceding the ICA’s foundation in 1895. The Rochdale Pioneers’ Rulebook was quickly followed by hundreds of British cooperatives and is known as the “Rochdale method”.
Interestingly, in the middle of the 19th Century, early co-operators crossed borders and travelled long distances to meet and exchange observations and ideas. Co-operators from various countries attended and participated in each other’s early national congresses.
US Madison University Emeritus Prof. Ann Hoyt and Prof. Daniel Plotisnsky, Director of Idelcoop, Argentina, explain how the US and Argentinean cooperators made study visits to several European countries at that time.
Prof. Jean-François Draperi from France explains that, during this early period of incubation and networking, the French and British co-operators developed a positive dialogue about the two forms of cooperatives represented by consumer and producer cooperatives.
Sadly, while the ICA was carrying out its first review of the cooperative principles in the 1930s, the German, Austrian and Italian cooperative movements, undergoing fascism, were excluded for several years.
Following the second world war, as Prof. Rita Rhodes explains, a second revision of the cooperative principles in 1966 was driven partly by the changing international arena.
The 1966 review of the cooperative principles, as well as the 1995 one, discussed the sensitive issue of political neutrality, autonomy and independence, and Daniel Plotinski explains that Argentina took an active part in this debate.
During that time, with decolonization, more organisations affiliated from outside Europe, making the ICA gradually a truly global organization, and more representative of the various regions of the world. This laid the ground for the rise of the ICA Regions.
Martin Lowery, in his think peace about the present and the future of the cooperative movement, discusses the important contribution of cooperatives to the immense advances of today’s world in the fields of human rights and equality of opportunities.
Martin Lowery also elaborates on the addition of the seventh cooperative principle of ‘Concern for Community’, with its full conformity with the UN Sustainable Development Goals – SDGs- which were approved 20 years later, and their triple bottom-line vision of development: economic, social, and environmental.
He argues that the global challenges of today as further evidenced by the current pandemic, and the key role of cooperatives in contributing to meeting such challenges, require to deepen the understanding of the cooperative principles, including the possibility of their being completed in the light of these ongoing challenges.
The achievement in establishing the ICA 125 years ago and the continued strength of the cooperative model is a testimony to its relevance and contribution of cooperatives to cooperative members, their families and communities, and societies at large, around the world.
