ABSTRACT
When, in January 1921, G. D. H. Cole surveyed the state of the co operative movement he concluded that
Most socialists and all revolutionaries, until quite recently, have treated the Co-operative movement with patronising contempt. It was a satisfactory grocer’s shop and a good savings-bank, but no self-respecting revolutionary would be lieve that it would ever make a big breach in the walls of capitalism.1
