Robb on Cooperation

Tower Colliery – the cooperative advantage demonstrated

Posted by Alan Robb on 29 September 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags:

On 25 January 2008 the Tower Colliery, Hirwaun, South Wales closed. It had finally run out of workable coal.

Cooperators around the world should take note of this co-op and the people who created and ran it for the past 13 years.

In the 1990s, British Coal designated Tower as a mine with no future. It was the last deep mine in South Wales.

British Coal were adamant that it should be closed down. The result would have been devastation in the local community.

The 238 miners, led by the union branch secretary, Tyrone O’Sullivan, refused to lie down. They mounted an employees’ buyout. Each put in £8,000 which was their redundancy money.

This provided about £2,000,000. They borrowed a further £2,000,000, part of which came from cooperative sources.

The miners believed that cooperation could succeed where the dog-eat-dog capitalism of Britain under Thatcherism saw no alternative.

The Tower Employees Buyout (TEBO) did not have a smooth run, but O’Sullivan and the members of the cooperative believed that there is a real cooperative advantage.

As a cooperative, Tower succeeded magnificently. Wages and conditions were improved, the mine operated profitably, and community activities were supported widely.

When I heard O’Sullivan speak to a cooperatives conference in Cardiff in September 2006 he acknowledged that one day “in the near future” the workable coal would be exhausted. The cooperative was therefore investigating alternative uses for the land so that continued employment could be ensured for the community. The reinvention of co-ops to meet changing circumstances is well known to those who have studied cooperative history.

The story of the formation of the Tower cooperative is told in Tower of Strength by Tyrone O’Sullivan (with John Eve and Ann Edworthy), Mainstream Publishing, 2001 (ISBN 1 84018 500 7) and on DVD in Charbons Ardents. Made by French filmmaker Jean-Michel Carré, it won an award at the 1999 Florence Film Festival and comes with an English soundtrack.

What lessons there are from Tower Colliery for cooperators everywhere?

● Believe in the cooperative advantage and you can overcome the negatives of capitalism.

● Treat employees as the only real resource and the business can face almost any difficulty with strength.

● Adapt to changing circumstances so that members’ needs are met, and the future of the cooperative and its members will be enhanced.●

— from the February/March 2008 Cooperatives News