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Co-op: The People's Business. By Johnston Birchall New York: Manchester University Press, 1994. viii + 217 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-71904421-9; paper, $24.95, ISBN 7190-3861-8.
Reviewed by H. Vincent Moses
By Johnston Birchall's own assertion, this is a celebration of human cooperation, especially among the working class peoples of Great Britain. Published on the 150th anniversary of the English Rochdale Pioneers' founding of today's extraordinarily successful consumer cooperative, Johnston Birchall's study thus falls squarely within the genre of commemorative literature. As a true believer, intent upon spreading the good word of consumer cooperation, Birchall has written this study primarily for a lay audience. He relies little on theoretical interpretive models and scholarly apparatus. Nor does he attempt to place his study of the Rochdale Pioneers within the context of other scholarly treatises on the meaning of cooperation.
Nonetheless, Birchall's work does give historians, and general readers alike, an interesting, provocative overview of a successful alternative to pure free-market delivery of goods and services. Co-op is packed with information-filled photographs and illustrations, depicting the...