ABSTRACT
The British Co-operative movement grew up and assumed its present form in hard times. In the prevailing atmosphere of ‘economic liberalism’, the Co-operative movement was bound to develop entirely apart from the State, to which it looked only for freedom to go its own way with adequate legal protection for its funds. The basis of Co-operation had to be voluntary membership: there was nothing else it could be. Co-operators had to manage their affairs apart from the State: there was no point of contact between their affairs and the State’s. The Co-operative movement cannot, even if it would, contract out of the social programme and claim the right to go its own way unaffected by it. It cannot claim that, if the case is made out for a unified system of agricultural marketing, Co-operative farms and marketing agencies shall be exempt.
