On 9th November 1769 The Fenwick Weaver’s Co-operative Society, the worlds first co-operative association, was founded.
In the Anglocentric education system that most of us older Scots grew up with we were told that the Yorkshire town of Rochdale were first to have a Co-op, this was in 1844. The truth of the matter is that The Fenwick Weavers' Society is considered to be the earliest known co-operative in the world for which full records exist.
The cooperative movement was born over 250 years ago in a barely-furnished cottage in the East Ayrshire village, when local weavers manhandled a sack of oatmeal into John Walker's whitewashed front room and began selling the contents at a discount.
In Yorkshire a sign on the railway bridge above the A664 leading into the town from the M62 states: "Rochdale: birthplace of cooperation", while the council's website describes the town as the "home of the worldwide cooperative movement", so I made a wee meme gif with the Still Game Neds to put hings right.
The Fenwick societies foundations started 8 years before when on 14th March 1761, 16 weavers met together in Fenwick Church to sign the foundation charter of the Fenwick Weavers’ Society. By signing the document, they agreed to its terms and conditions. These included ‘being honest and faithful to one another’ and to their employers, making 'good sufficient’ work, and setting prices that were 'neither higher nor lower … than are accustomed in the towns and parishes of the neighbourhood’.
The society members promised to pay an admission fee of two shillings and sixpence which was to be used for the good of the Society. Regular contributions to the poor fund were made from these shared investments. As well as offering mutual support to its members, the society aimed to bring benefit to the wider community.
On 9 November 1769, the society agreed that its funds should be used to buy, 'victuals’, or food, in bulk to be sold to members and non-members at a good price. In addition, members enjoyed the privilege of up to four weeks’ credit.
The society funds were also used to buy books and, in 1808, the members established a library for the local community. In the society records, there is also evidence of a form of 'credit union’, or community-based bank organised on co-operative principles. People could borrow money from the communal funds at a fixed rate of interest.
Sadly handloom weaving could not resist the advance of the factories and, in 1873, with only three members left, they wound up the Society. However, their memory lives on, both in the descendants of the Weavers now all over the globe, and also in our great world-wide Co-operative Movement with almost a billion co-operators affiliated to the International Co-operative Alliance.
The Society was reconvened in March 2008 and has been reconstituted as a co-operative, in legal form as an industrial and provident society, in order to record, collect and commemorate the heritage of the Fenwick Weavers.
