Rochdale Pioneers Museum

My morning was spent in Rochdale - a meeting at Rochdale Town Hall. This is one fabulous building, both inside and outside. Only special buildings really lift the spirits, and this is one of them. I have added a couple of extras of the detailing inside. It is an Arts and Crafts extravaganza of a building, one of my personal top 10 in the North West of England.

I met up with EllisRoger at lunchtime. He gave me a bit of a tour of the town centre. We ended up at the Rochdale Pioneers Museum, a new one for me. There had been attempts at creating cooperatives in the first half of the 19th century, and they all failed. The 1840's was a period of famine and poverty. In August 1844 28 working men in Rochdale met and formed a cooperative society. They wanted to give ordinary people an equal share in decision making and a fair share of the profits. And so on December 21st 1844 they opened a shop, in the building featured in this blip. And they laid down key principles to put their values into practice. The enterprise succeeded, and those principles formed the basis of every subsequent cooperative society that was formed in the UK and abroad. 

This museum attracts visitors from all over the world. Apparently Japan now has more cooperatives than anywhere else. And the lady in the museum told us that yesterday a group from South Korea visited. I liked the modern extension - old and new blend well together. 

For me this was a timely reminder of ideals that are in danger of being forgotten. There should be more cooperatives !