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Co-operative News is the oldest Co-operative Newspaper in the world - and also, arguably, the oldest democratically controlled paper. We celebrated 130 years of continuous weekly publication in September 2001.

The News began life with £400 in share capital and a selling price of a penny. The founders intended the paper to be indispensable reading for members of co-operative societies, which were going through a period of rapid expansion at the time, and so it has remained.

The newspaper has always fought hard and passionately for its independence, which was under threat right from the start. At the 1873 Co-operative Congress the then chairman of the News, Thomas Hayes, declared: 'The board believes that its perfect independence should be preserved and that it should be above the suspicion of being controlled by an existing organisation other than its own.'

Crusading role

Early examples of the paper's pioneering spirit and crusading role were support for the Manchester Ship Canal - in which the Co-operative Wholesale Society became a prominent shareholder - and advocacy of the movement's entry into the milk trade, a market in which retain co-operatives were dominant for more than a century. We also played a major part in helping to establish the first national organisation for working class women, which became the Co-operative Women's Guild.

Later causes championed by the News were standing out against jingoism in the first World War; campaigning for a proper food rationing system at the start of the second World War, and later hammering home the message to the retail Co-op that self-service was the way ahead.

In recent times our campaigning zeal has continued, most notably in the 1990s when Andrew Regan's company Lanica attempted to take over the CWS and other elements of the Movement. During this struggle the News was a vehement opponent of Regan, its columns being quoted regularly by the national media, which followed the story with great interest.

Independent source of information

The Co-operative Press Limited, which publishes the News and this associated website, is a secondary federal co-operative society owned by other co-operative societies and sympathetic organisations. The Press Board has stated its determination that co-operators continue to need an independent source of information to enable them to ensure accountability and participate fully in the affairs of their co-operatives and the wider movement. The Board has also published an Editorial Charter and Code of Conduct.

For more than a century the co-operative publishing tradition - which includes not only the Co-operative Press but also its forerunners, such as the National Co-operative Publishing Society - extended way beyond The Co-operative News to a wealth of other titles, such as Millgate Monthly, Our Circle, Woman's Outlook and Co-operative Youth.

Most ambitious, in 1929, was the purchase of Reynolds News. This national Sunday newspaper, first published in 1850 as a champion for reform and social change, was an enormous and ambitious project for a special interest publisher to take on. The paper nevertheless flourished for a number of years under co-operative ownership, surviving until the 1960s when, as the renamed Sunday Citizen, it folded after becoming a victim of the intense competition in the national newspaper market.

Other co-operative News sites:

• ethical reporter
• credit union News
• social enterprise News