The Sunday morning session of the Industrial Democracy school was opened by Mr. Hilton, research officer of the N.F.B.T.O.. He began by defining co-operative democracy as "any experiment of any group of workers who combine together to attempt to control their own destiny." He said that it was morally right for people to aim for industrial democracy as well as for political democracy. He regarded this as the main argument for nationalisation as distinct from the "efficiency" argument.
The main part of his contribution was taken up with an analysis of the experience of building co-operatives in Britain since the 1830's. He felt that the early Robert Owm experiments had harmed the development of the building industry trade unions. However, at later dates there had been successes. In particular, Mr. Hilton drew attention to the growth of building trade workers! guilds around 1920. By 1922 they had , £3million of property; the guilds functioned democratically in their everyday activities with the workers electing their foremen on the building sites, But these successes were short-lived as most of the guilds folded by about 1925 mainly due to the lack of capital resources.
Mr, Hilton did not feel that these failures should be takne as an indication that such experiments in co-operative democracy were now out-dated. He was optimistic that the ideas of co-operative democracy could be applied in local areas, especially in the building industry, if there was less reluctance on the part of local groups of socialists, workers and local authorities to take up the challenge, He suggested that these were areas where political action could be taken now, without having to capture the allegiance of a major political party. .
Although the British Co-operative movement was experiencing economic difficulties, with their trading position declining relative to that of © private firms, Mr. Hilton was sure that it was possible to have successful co-ownership organisations in a predominantly capitalist society. The Government should be prepared to assist in this by making a pool of money available for genuinely socialist, co-partnership schemes.
Paul Derrick, the second main contributor, began by taking up Mr. Hilton's last point. The Labour Party had not done much to assist co-operatives in recent years, whereas in France there are 700 productive co-operative societies helped by public funds,
However, he said it was . wWifficult to imagine that co-operative enterprises could drive capitalist organisations out of business by competition. Rather,socialists should make a direct attack on private companies. Further nationalisation should be an important part of this strategy but he felt that this was insufficient in itself. Combined with further nationalisation, there should be an attack on the legal character of the limited liability company. Profits taxes will not achieve this, its operation even failed to limit dividends.
Dividends should be rigorously limited by the Government, Such a change could make an incomes policy effective.