Cliff Mills

Behind the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, there is an implicit admission: we haven’t been taking sufficient account of the interests of future generations.

We've partnered with Co-operative Energy and the Phone Co-op for Greenbelt 2017 to host a brand new venue and programme called The Exchange.

Fundamentally, it’s an economy operating for the common good, rather than for private benefit. People might previously have thought that that’s what we already had, though recent events have made it clear that we don’t.

It can be done from the bottom up, as new businesses are set up; and it can emerge through transformation of existing private businesses, many of which already recognise the strong social benefit of trading but don’t yet self-identify or promote themselves as social businesses.

This clever trading arrangement only worked because of another less well-known feature: the funding of the business by members. Co-operative retailing could not start until impoverished individuals had saved sufficient capital to commence trading.