Now is the time to re-mutualise our interests and adopt  a collective approach, says former General Secretary Michael Stephenson in the latest edition of Fabiana, the journal of the Fabian Women’s Network.

As the UN Land Rover pulled off the road the first thing I saw was a mass of children waving welcome signs. The Onambele Co-operative in Zanzibar was a hive of activity with its poultry houses, grain milling rooms and overgrown gardens. As I stood before the members of the co-operative to speak about the Co-operative Party in the UK I was struck by a sight to which I was totally unaccustomed back home: the vast bulk of the members of this organisation were women. Not only that, but the majority of the senior management were women too.

I came away reassured that the nature, values and structure of cooperatives make them the best model there is for encouraging equal participation in business.This is particularly so in the developing world where there is greater scope for different types of business to emerge and not be bound by the traditional shortcomings of the western approach.

Pauline Green, the Chair of the International Co-operative Alliance made an important point on International Women’s Day – that co-operatives gave women the vote 88 years before Parliament legislated for universal suffrage for general elections. And although the proportion of women involved in co-operatives around the world needs to increase, there is no doubt that equal opportunity and participation are in the very DNA of the co-operative movement. The values that guide co-operatives are set out by the ICA as self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity.

They are based on 7 principles – voluntary and open membership; democratic member control; member economic participation; autonomy and independence; education, training and information; co-operation among co-operatives; and concern for the community. Given recent economic history, nothing could be more timely than this approach.

In our own country, the co-operative sector is recovering after a period of decline. More than 12 million Britons are members of co-operatives. More than 5,000 co-operative organisations in the UK employ around a quarter of a million people and have a turnover in excess of £33 billion. In the last 3 years the number of cooperatives in the UK has grown by 15%.

In the wake of the global economic crisis, that success has shown that co-operative values will trump short term greed every time. While our banks queued up to take hundreds of millions of pounds of bailout funds from the taxpayer, co-operative and mutual financial organisations just carried on doing what they do best – serving their members and using their money prudently and sustainably.

So if we want to build (or indeed rebuild) a strong co-operative economy, what do we need to do?

First, we have to recognise that economic change is not just about regulations or institutions.

It’s also about values and culture. Our regulators do not understand the difference between a conventional shareholder business and a co-operative. Our civil servants still subscribe to the false view of co-ops as inefficient and small-scale. Our education institutions do not teach the co-operative approach as a legitimate business model on a par with traditional firms.

Those outdated and incorrect perceptions are part of a culture that has dominated our economy and society for decades. What makes co-operatives unique is not just their corporate governance structure but the fact that their values are built into that structure and – unless we rebuild our economy in a way that puts values ahead of institutions – we are doomed to repeat the mistakes that led us into our current economic woes.

Second, we have to expand the mutual sector in our economy.

Before Margaret Thatcher legislated to encourage our building societies to demutualise, we had a strong and healthily diverse financial services market. Every single one of the mutual organisations that de-mutualised as a result of the Tories’ legislation either collapsed, was bought out by a bigger bank, or had to be rescued by the taxpayer.

The Co-operative Party campaigned hard to re-mutualise Northern Rock – yet the Tories and LibDems chose to sell it to Richard Branson, and missed a golden opportunity to return it to the mutual sector where it belongs.

If we continue to have a financial system dominated by a small number of large players who all represent a single business model we will greatly restrict our options in terms of customer choice, access to finance, financial inclusion and financial education. A strong mutual sector is a compelling civilising force on our economy and we should give that the recognition it deserves.

Third, our economy has to have greater transparency.

One of the greatest lessons of the credit crunch was the danger of a lack of information about what our banks are actually doing with our money. We need to take action now to address that.

That is why Co-operative Party MPs have introduced amendments to the Financial Services Bill that would require the collection of data on all transactions in our financial market, allowing for the first time a map of financial risk taking. Based on the Dodd Frank Act in the US, the proposal would allow monitoring of the build-up of risk within the system and help avoid the sort of deception Sir Fred Goodwin used to conceal the real risk of RBS’s speculation.

Co-operative and mutual organisations understand the importance of this because their business model is based on prudence and the involvement of their members in the decisions that affect their organisation. We need to encourage other ways of addressing this issue so that we can link our banks and financial institutions to the communities they are supposed to serve rather than separate them from shareholder scrutiny and outside regulation.Fourth, we have to learn from international experience.

If you measure business activity by number of shareholders and employees, co-operatives are the largest business sector in the world. They represent 800 million members, employ 100 million people and generate $1.1 trillion. In Sweden the co-op sector accounts for 13% of GDP. In the US 42 million people get their electricity from co-operatives. In Finland 75% of people are members of a co-op. In Switzerland co-operatives hold 49 per cent of the retail sector. In developing countries, 75% of all Fairtrade products are produced by co-operatives.

But the co-operative sector cannot just grow within national boundaries. It needs international support. That is why Europe has already taken a lead on cross-national development of co-operatives.

The Europe 2020 plan for the European Community specifically focuses on smart growth, sustainable growth and inclusive growth as the key to the European economy of the future. Each of these priorities is best served by adopting cooperative business practices and the cooperative movement in Europe is using all of its experience to put its approach at the heart of the plan.

More broadly, the United Nations has recognised the importance of co-operatives. 2012 is the UN International Year of Co-operatives, a time when the co-operative approach is not only celebrated but practical action is being taken to develop the model internationally.

The UK has a major role in making that a success as it is the birthplace of the co-operative movement. The Rochdale pioneers in 1844 and visionary co-operators like Robert Owen laid the foundations for that model. We owe it to them and to future generations to build the long term stability and sustainability that the old economy did not deliver in our lifetimes. And we owe it to future generations to make sure that the economy allows for everyone, regardless of gender, background and circumstance, to be an active and successful player in that economy.

This article first appeared in Fabiana, the journal of the Fabian Women’s Network.