[CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY]

Want to start by thanking Gareth Thomas, who was a fantastic candidate for London Mayor and Karin Christiansen and her team for the amazing work they did on the Keep it Coop campaign.

Recently I’ve been taking inspiration from the Dickens classic Hard Times. And in particular Gradgrind. As I like a good fact. And facts are indeed a wonderful thing.

Liechtenstein, the world’s sixth smallest country, is the largest exporter of false teeth. I hadn’t any idea anyone was counting!  Facts can tell us a lot about the modern world.

• A third of all divorce petitions now contain reference to facebook – a social media only made publically available eight years ago
• Centarians are the fastest growing demographic in our country.
• 35% of jobs will be replaced by computers within 20 years – though I’ve checked and you will be disappointed to hear that sadly politicians are not on the list…

Every generation has faced change, but ours is the first to see in its lifetime such a pace and scale of multiple challenges, leading to a sense of powerlessness.

Traditional politics is struggling to keep up with modernity. In a world where both opportunity and insecurity can be transmitted by the touch of a trader’s button, lack of access to decision making is an inequality in itself.

Talk of ‘giving power away from the centre’ makes it sound as though it is a lump of plasticine held in Whitehall or Westminster to be bequeathed in small pieces to passengers, patients or parents at the benevolence of the Government of the day. Real change will not come from holding more meetings, but how we can all hold more power for ourselves.

That is why it is time to look to the Coop movement for a way forward. Ours is a movement that not only values people power, but applies it. From your spending habits to your social activism or political engagement, cooperativism taps into individual and collective energy for change.

We know the strength that comes not just from changing the law but changing the country. That when it came to beating the legal loan sharks, it was not just a law on the cost of credit that was needed but also credit unions and communities to come together to support those in financial difficulty so that they had an alternative.

So we of all understand when everything seems so uncertain, so fraught, it is people not institutions that should be our starting point- and that to unleash the power they have within them we should not be afraid to pioneer. An answer as old as our very movement itself.

Those men in Rochdale in 1844 wanting to sell honest food at honest prices recognised that in times of uncertainty and unfairness, we our each other’s greatest hope. 171 years later the principles they set out to define how to work together in practice are even more relevant than ever to our shared futures.

Self help, Self responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. They were concerned as much for the benefits to the individual, as to the community, of participation. To protect the vulnerable as well as to make a profit. They were both entrepreneurs and trade unionists. They used their collective might to take the means of production into their own hands- and make markets work on their terms.

But the world we face today is very different to the world the Rochdale pioneers faced. After all I have jumpers older than the internet.

So our task is how to put these values into practice now recognising all – equity, self help and solidarity- matter in unlocking the power to change the world.

When we do we see markets can be mastered by people if we work together. We are now living through a Marxist revolution thanks to the digital age. The means of production and innovation are in the hands of workers. It is not hyperbole to say that the pioneers prefigured it.

The pioneers were both entrepreneurs and trade unionists. They used their collective might to take the means of production into their own hands- and make the markets work on their terms. William Cooper. Sam Ashworth. Their weekly meetings to decide what to sell, held in a pub. Some coop things never really change.

What then can Coop thinking offer to today’s world? Within a few years there will be more self employed than working in the British public sector. Where this Government is stripping away employee rights, and markets are driving insecurity for many, Coops offer an exciting alternative. Freelancer coops for music tuition and careers advice are helping workers regain control over their careers. In the disruptive new sharing economy of Uber, kickstarter and Air b’nb, social enterprises like Room for Tea and Startsomegood offer contrasting models of how all involved in commerce get a better deal.

These principles are not just for small businesses. It is time we tackled legal loan sharking in the public sector, applying the lessons from credit unions to PFI debt management. We want to learn from the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund to give citizens more direct influence over national infrastructure investment. Mutualism can also protect and drive innovation for the greater good. Every citizen member of the Swiss Health Bank has retained direct control over their own valuable personal data to manage how is used for medical research, and not sold for private profit to third parties.

So too, for Britain’s deepening housing crisis, coops can offer a better deal for tenants, home buyers and landlords alike. With 20% of housing in Sweden in cooperative management we have a long way to go – schemes like the Oldham Housing Investment Partnership is showing the way forward.

Cooperators do not defend faceless bureaucracies that ignore people’s needs, whether in the public or private sector. But we know the ‘discipline of the market’ alone is not the answer. Instead it is to give the public the direct ability to shape services for themselves through mutualisation- whether of our railways, our NHS or our utilities. Coop councils are also the real radical future of devolution. I’m proud to have been a coop councillor before I was a coop MP. Whether Plymouth driving down electricity costs, Edinburgh promoting social enterprise or Milton Keynes community asset transfer schemes they are transforming their communities for the better.

Our principles guide too where we see when change isn’t happening quickly enough. We call out those companies whose women are only in their boardrooms as non-execs- there to make up numbers not make decisions. We seek equality and equity for all. With others in Europe and America acting, we know we cannot afford to be left behind by failing to introduce quotas for representation across all sectors. So I want to help the Women’s Cooperative Guild be a powerful force for these values.

These are the distinctive ways of thinking that our movement can offer –why we want to keep it coop. Because we know it is not a choice between the power you hold individually or we exercise politically- its about the combination of both.

That is why mutualism challenges the political status quo most of all- including some on the left. It recasts where the power to make things happen should lie. Not in the hands of the market or of a few in Westminster or even the town hall. But in strengthening the assets, networks and self responsibility of people themselves.

Over the course of this weekend you will hear many more exciting ideas for our future from people like Luke Pollard, Cllr Chris Penberthy and Gareth Thomas. But we must also recognise our movement needs to be more than a pamphlet. I’m proud to be part of the Labour party under Jeremy and Tom.  I took part in the deputy leadership contest as a proud co-operator and campaigner as well as Labour MP. But that process taught me that it is a fact whilst some disagree our ideas in the coop movement, many more of those who share our values simply don’t know of us at all.

And that is one fact I definitely want to challenge. Because if we don’t speak up for and fight for our cooperative principles and the benefits of the cutting edge work our colleagues in places like Plymouth, Edinburgh and Milton Keynes are doing, there is no guarantee they will remain in office.

So I’m asking you today to help me in capturing that pioneering spirit for our generation. For those here and now living in this time with this government and these challenges. Not to leave it to someone else, but to be part of working across this country to develop cooperative campaigns that speak to the best of our values, reaching out to those who share our values but not our membership card – and to get those Labour and cooperative candidates re-elected and increased in 2016.

What I am calling the Cooperative Action Network is about working across the country to develop support and training for activists to show that coop difference. Tapping into the creative best of our movement and helping them campaign with their local coop members and supporters, as well as link up with their coop MPs and candidates. Using the latest online and offline techniques it is our ambition to put coop principles, policies and people at the front and centre of progressive politics and practise in this country.

But we can’t do it without you. So I’m asking you to join in. And I’m committing to helping run the training to help get this started. So what will you do to be the pioneer lead in your community- not just in the pub!

In Hard Times Dickens exhorts us

“Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.”

Let that be our maxim for the months and years ahead –social justice cannot be achieved when power is the plasticine plaything of the elite. Power is in our people. The time is now for us to unlock it – I look forward to working with you all to show the coop difference.