ABSTRACT
Given the diversity and the sharp contrasts within the movement, the virtue in the absence of definition starts to become apparent. Advisedly, the basic law on co-operative societies, the Industrial and Provident Societies Acts 1965 to 1975, pronounces that for the purposes of that law, a society is a co-operative if it satisfies the Registrar of Friendly Societies that it is authentically so. None of this is to say that co-operatives are obliged to register under the Industrial and Provident Societies Acts. For a co-operative to succeed, both the material benefit and the appeal to morale must be real. Emphatically, it is not the morality of a preordained prescription to which fallible humanity may hope to aspire but never to attain, but of a much humbler kind which asserts no more than that it is best economic policy. Such an economic policy would recognise an industrial co-operative sector as the third-way.
