Millom Co-op and the Nationwide (Background: Millom)
How the closure of Millom Co-op in 1969 sent shock-waves through the Co-operative Movement – and led the Co-operative Permanent Building Society to change its name.
Millom Co-op had come into existence in 1875: but the changing retail environment of the 1960s caused it to run into difficulties. At this time, there were well over 500 Co-op societies, many of them operating just the one shop. The difficult trading conditions, as Tesco, Sainsbury and others began spreading across the country, led to a spate of mergers, with small societies being taken into their larger neighbours – or rescued by a body set up in 1957 for that purpose, Co-operative Retail Services Ltd. In the case of Millom, the situation was made much worse by the closing of the ironworks. For some reason, though, the Directors of Millom Co-op decided not to merge with a neighbour, but instead to go into liquidation. This led to those local people who had put their savings into the co-op rushing down to ‘the stores’ to draw their money out.
At this date the BBC had a TV news and current affairs magazine programme called ‘Nationwide’, which had only recently been launched (September 1969), and which ran three nights a week in the early evenings. For some reason, they chose to run the story of Millom’s closure – but in such a way that many viewers thought it was ‘The Co-op’ as a whole that was going under. Particularly badly hit was the Co-operative Permanent Building Society, as people concerned about the safety of their investments began to withdraw their cash. The BBC rapidly back-pedalled and calm was restored – but one unforeseen result of the scare was the decision by the Co-operative Permanent Building Society to change its name, to avoid being caught up in any future scare of this sort involving the retail societies. And so it changed its name in 1970 – rather surprisingly, in the circumstances, renaming themselves the Nationwide!
Text by Bill Shannon, based in part on his own memories of the events of 1969/70 (when he was working for the Co-operative Wholesale Society, in Manchester, which was heavily caught up in them), augmented by Google searches, including the following – scroll down to 1969 https://www.principle5.coop/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Co-operative-Milestones-1769-2000.pdf
Photo of Millom Co-op in 2013, by Bill Shannon
To find out more about the history of Millom click here https://www.cumbriacountyhistory.org.uk/township/millom
For a full list of all interesting facts, click here
https://www.cumbriacountyhistory.org.uk/full-list-interesting-facts
