In 1827 Dr William King became convinced that surpluses from a shop run on co-operative principles could provide the money to finance an Owenite community, and set up a co-operative store in Brighton.
The shop became the centre of several social activities, and a piece of land was taken over nine miles outside Brighton where members grew vegetables for the store.
A second society was soon formed, the Sussex General Co-operative Trading Association.The shop was capitalized by working men in Brighton contributing sixpence a week.King issued a journal The Co-operator, a four page monthly selling for one penny, and propagated the ideas.
Robert Southey in a letter in 1829 described how ‘the profits and the continued subscription were next invested in a mackerel boat; then in a garden of 28 acres.’In 1829 Southey noted that already seventy such societies had been formed, but he was alarmed to discover that they ‘aim at nothing short of a community in land and goods.The men who write these papers are plain, practicable, strong-headed men.Very soon fellows such as Cobbett will take up the principle, and use it is an engine of mischief, - the most tremendous that has ever yet been brought to bear upon society.’[1]
By 1830 The Co-operator reported that some 300 such societies had been established.
[1] Quoted in W H G Armytage, Heavens Below: Utopian Experiments in England 1560-1960, 1961, p 90.
