A forerunner to the modern co-operative school?
'Lost' Co-operative Community Found in Wallsend
Traces of a ‘lost’ community have been found by researchers in Wallsend.
The community was based in several streets erected in the middle of the Victorian period by the then Wallsend Co-operative Society. It even had its own school created along co-operative lines.
Inspired by the social philosopher and humane educator, Robert Owen, whose New Lanark cotton mills were also home to the world’s first infants’ school in1816, the members of the Wallsend Co-op set out to transform their town’s appalling social conditions. With the money they made from their Co-op grocery business, they decided to tackle poor housing and a lack of schools.
Towards the end of the 1860s they started building dozens of terraced houses to rent to members of the Co-operative Society. In true Co-op fashion they chose street names drawn from their own Movement, including Rochdale Street (a link with the famous Rochdale Pioneers who founded the first modern Co-op Society in Lancashire in 1844), Equitable Street, Provident Terrace, and Mutual Street which still exist today.
Their next step was to open a school. This took place on 1 July 1872 at a public ceremony in the school room, a new church hall leased from the Primitive Methodists on the corner of Equitable Street and Blenkinsop Street (named after a leading early member of the Wallsend Co-op). 130 children, drawn from the neighbouring streets, enrolled at the school for 5-12 year olds, which was managed by the Co-operative Society’s education committee elected by the Society’s members.
The school lasted for three years before being replaced by the new Wallsend School Board.
Nigel Todd, Regional Director of the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), who conducted the research as part of the North East WEA’s centenary activities, said: ‘We started looking for information about the school that was in some ways a forerunner of modern co-operative schools. But we were amazed to find that there was an attempt to create an entire co-operative community in Wallsend by people who took their cue from Robert Owen. The existence of this community appears to have been completely overlooked, and the school was absolutely unique we think.’
The present day Co-operative Movement has been supporting the emergence of co-operative primary and secondary schools and, so far, about 100 have been established.
A. Horsburgh 22.09.10