As our high streets empty out, and we lose more and more of our community spaces, we in the co-operative movement know that sometimes it’s the old ideas that can be the most progressive solutions for our times.

Bar and brewery closures have been a staple feature of the decline of our towns since the financial crash, but it’s in that sector that we’ll find one of the co-operative movement’s best kept secrets.

A national federation of bars, each one owned independently and completely by its customers, in a national union, with regional structures and even an annual congress. This might sound like a pretty radical idea, but it’s been around since 1862. In all likelihood  you’ve come into contact with it yourself at some point, especially if you’re from a small town or ex pit village in Wales or the North of England. It’s called the CIU, the Club’s and Institutes Union, and it’s where I first came into contact with the co-operative movement, first as an employee and then later as a member.

As someone involved in both the CIU and the wider co-operative movement, I’ve been banging this drum for a while; a revival in the social club movement is exactly what we need to take back ownership of our community spaces. Clubs can carry a bit of stigma attached to old, outdated stereotypes. For example, I’m often asked by people outside the CIU things like “Do you let women in the bars?” (Yes! Women are full members!) But it’s true that social clubs don’t do a lot to promote themselves outside of those old stereotypes, and to showcase their potential either.

My social club and others near it show how a bar that’s owned by its community can serve its community, providing a space for local interest groups, games nights, support groups, warm hubs in winter for pensioners, a place for new local bands to try out or local artists to showcase, and even a space for councillor’s surgeries. These bars are part of their community and so become much more than just watering holes. And because they’re owned by the customers, profits tend to be reinvested back in.

If you live near a social club I will always recommend that you join it, and if you don’t like it or it’s not doing all the wonderful things I’ve talked about – well, you own it, so do something about that! It’s yours! But all of this doesn’t stop clubs from being among the hardest hit part of the closures in hospitality. 

Clubs are as important as public libraries and parks, if they’re managed well and understand what they are and what they have. To keep as many open as possible, we in the Co-operative Party are calling on the government to work with us and with the social club movement to create a new Social Clubs Charter, to herald a new era for the clubs movement. Developing a charter will help to identify and address the issues clubs are facing before we lose this vital part of our community space.

It would be tragic for these spaces, and the rich history they hold, to be resigned to history. Now is the time for a new chapter for the movement, one led by clubs and the communities they serve.