The relevance of Sir Horace Plunkett to modern co-operative enterprise Peter Couchman

Where his ideas came from How they were delivered The lessons for us today

“It was a period of my life that I took a strange, somewhat vague idealism. That either the English or the Irish social economy, in which I had been brought up would endure, I did not believe. It some ways it all seemed wrong…”

“Whether it would not be more reasonable to amend our state than to complain of it and how far this may be in our power” Bishop Berkeley

“ And so my mind turned towards certain simple economic schemes.”

“ Few have any conception how much the real movement, which has been defined as organised self-help, has done to raise the moral, social and material condition of the English working classes.”

“ I have often regretted that the Rochdale Pioneers continued to divide up a chest of tea instead of killing a co-operative pig”

Better farming Better business Better living

Technical Economic Social

“He had fifty unsuccessful meetings before he could get the first farmer's creamery started. Fifty meetings without a result! I think most of us would be ashamed to face an audience after two dozen unsuccessful attempts to get a hearing.” George Russell (A.E.)

“Works without faith are of no more use in agricultural co-operation than in religion”

“It will take the best men of Ireland to create effective co-operative structures for farmers, but the best men in Ireland are with us and the task will be performed.”

“to show how such co-operation may best be effected, what form of society may be founded and carried on with profit to the members and the whole community.”

“The Better Living is the crux.”

“That this has been the main interest of the Donor’s life to work for rural, social and economic development and being most fully convinced by an experience of many years that it is not enough to afford to the worker on the land a livelihood but that it is necessary to secure a life enriched with the social thought and interests of modern civilisation and that the prosperity of the rural community depends not only on greater efficiency in the methods of the farming industry and on the more economic organisation of its business, but also on the development of a rural social life, a policy which is summed up in the words “better farming, better business, better living” and in particular desiring that there should be greater facilities for the systematic study of the principles and methods of agricultural and industrial co-operation in which lies possibilities of great promise for the future well-being of the rural community and of the nation as a whole and in the world-wide spread of which principles is to be found a growing and enduring bond of international sympathy based on the sure foundation of democratic ideas which underlie true co-operation;”

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“The work of tomorrow will largely consist of the impossible of today. If this adds to the difficulty, it also adds to the fun.”

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