Co-operatives 2010: Creating a fairer society through co-operation

At Co-operatives 2010 in Plymouth this year I was lucky enough to be responsible for a workshop entitled "Creating a fairer society through Co-operation".  The two speakers for this session were Richard Wilkinson, co-author of "the Spirit Level" and Robin Murray a founder member of Twin Trading and early pioneer in the Fairtrade movement.

Both of their presentations are here:
Richard Wilkinson
Robin Murray

The session was chaired by Jo White and ended with a fascinating debate which covered among other things:
Tthe power of Co-operatives to redistribute wealth and thereby reduce the need need for Governmenet intervention via taxation and benefits.

There was also a salient point (and later proved accurate) about whether ther was also a correlation between more equal socieities doing better at the World Cup than less equal Socieites.