Background
Hilda Smith and I have worked in partnership for nearly four decades in promoting Co-operative Development. Hilda initiated and drafted the resolution at the 1976 Labour Party conference, which successfully proposed the establishment of local Co-operative Development Agencies as part of the Government’s interventionist approach to regional economic planning. I followed this up in Wales with practical action, as the then Director of the EC funded South Wales Anti-Poverty Action Centre, in establishing in partnership with local authorities, four local CDAs: West Glamorgan Common Ownership Development Agency, Antur Teifi, North Wales Employment and Resource Centre and Gwent Common Ownership Development Association, from 1977 onwards.
In retiring to Wales, Hilda was later appointed as a lay member of the Government’s National Partnership Forum for Older People (2006-2012). She used every opportunity to promote the Co-operative business model, including contributing to official working groups concerned with Phase 2 of the Strategy for Older People (2008-2012), the Government's ‘Dignity in Care’ Programme (2011) and reviewing the National Service Framework for Older People (2011). Making no visible impact, from 2009 we again combined efforts to promote user controlled co-operative approaches, through conferences, workshops and publications, with financial support from our Co-operative Society. The Wales Co-op Centre were approached in 2010 but, although sympathetic at that time, they were unable to support social services development without specific Ministerial support.
We initiated the Welsh Branch of the Progressive Co-operators on International Co-operators Day 2011 in preparation for 2012 UN Year of Co-operatives. Hilda proposed that we invite international co-op experts Jean-Pierre Girard (Quebec) and John Restakis (Executive Director of the British Columbia Co-operative Association) and subsequently hosted these co-operators in her home in February and June 2012. During 2012, other people and organisations became involved, but our abiding memory was one of frustration experienced in advancing co-operative solutions over many years in seeking to change a deeply engrained culture, based upon state provision and then increasingly privatised provision.