Peter Hunt founded Mutuo in 2001 as the first cross-mutual sector body to promote co-operative and mutual business to opinion formers and decision makers. Before that, he was general secretary of the Co-op Party for 10 years, and was co-founder of Supporters Direct.
How did you first find out about co-operatives?
Like a lot of people, I grew up with the co-operative movement all around me. My mum worked for Leicestershire Co-operative Society, and it was simply part of the fabric of our community. Every Christmas we would head to the toy department to see what we could persuade our parents to buy, and later in life we attended family funerals arranged by the society. It really was there from cradle to grave.
As a young idealist, I joined the Labour Party in 1983. My first experience of knocking on doors was campaigning for a Labour and Co-operative candidate who would later become something of a co-operative legend – Paul Gosling.
Tell us about your time at the Co-operative Party.
People often say that timing is the most important factor in a political career, and over my 14 years with the Party I certainly benefited from that. I started as the administrative officer and later became south east organiser. Just three years after joining, we found ourselves working alongside the first Blair government.
In 1998, at the age of just 31, I became the youngest-ever general secretary, with the challenge of making the Party relevant to the new Labour administration. It was a remarkable opportunity and a case of being in the right place at the right time.
The following decade, working in partnership with Labour ministers, opened up enormous opportunities to strengthen the Co-operative Party and demonstrate its relevance to some of the biggest issues facing the country.
We modernised the organisation, developed a range of fresh policy ideas, embraced the language of “new mutualism” and championed co-operative solutions across a wide spectrum of public policy.
I owe a great deal to the Party for those 10 years, which seemed to fly by. There were setbacks as well as successes, but on balance it was an optimistic period of positive change that, as a nation, we would do well to recapture.
Why did you set up Mutuo?
It was always clear to me that the benefits of the Party’s work extended across the wider movement, including organisations that did not share Labour politics.
Equally, many of the ideas we were developing attracted support from across the political spectrum. In 2001 we established Mutuo with the backing of the wider mutual sector, bringing together co-operatives, building societies, mutual insurers and employee-owned businesses for the first time.
We had two ambitions. The first was to create a think tank capable of developing co-operative ideas on a much larger scale. The second was to lay the foundations for the broadest possible coalition of support that could endure beyond the life of any single government.
Twenty-five years later, we are still pursuing those goals, and I think it is fair to say with a good deal of success.
What are the achievements you’re most proud of?
I have been incredibly fortunate in the opportunities I’ve had over the years.
My mind naturally turns first to legislative reform: helping to secure six acts of Parliament to modernise co-operative law in the UK, alongside a federal act in Australia with similar objectives.
Less well known, but equally significant, was the work to expand the mutual model into new areas, leading to the creation of NHS Foundation Trusts, co-operative schools and social housing mutuals. Together, these initiatives brought millions more people into mutual membership and represent a lasting legacy.
If I had to choose one achievement that has stayed with me from the very beginning, however, it would be the creation of football supporters’ trusts – the first real success that emerged from a collaboration with a certain, very young, Andy Burnham.
What are the biggest challenges ahead for the co-operative movement, both in the UK and internationally?
The opportunity for the co-operative sector has never been greater. Across the world we are seeing many of the same conditions that gave rise to mutuals in the first place: growing inequality, market concentration, declining trust in institutions, unfair practices and unmet needs. At times it feels as though history is repeating itself.
The difference today is that we can point to successful co-operatives in virtually every part of the world and demonstrate that this model genuinely delivers better outcomes. Almost every industry and community endeavour has examples that prove the value of co-operation in practice.
The biggest shared challenge is communicating that opportunity clearly and consistently. People need to understand that there is an alternative way of doing business, and it is our responsibility as a movement to explain how co-operatives can succeed in many more sectors and communities, and the positive difference they can make.
What support – political or otherwise – would you like to see next for co-operatives?
As a self-help movement, I have always preferred to focus first on what we can do for ourselves. So much more could be achieved through the application of the sixth co-operative principle – co-operation among co-operatives. We need to see far more collaboration across the movement, including between organisations operating in different sectors.
That said, governments establish the rules within which businesses operate. The UK government’s commitment to double the size of the co-operative and mutual sector presents a genuinely historic opportunity, and one that we all share responsibility for grasping.
That means thinking carefully about every co-operative we are involved in and how it can contribute to that ambition. It means challenging vested interests and removing barriers to co-operative development. An optimistic opportunity deserves an equally ambitious response.
Ultimately, what we need is a level playing field: a policy, legislative and regulatory environment that facilitates and encourages co-operative growth just as readily as it supports other business models. That should not be too much to ask.
