This week the Annual Congress of the Co-operative Union has
been held at West Hartlepool. An important part of the business was the consideration of the Report on municipal trading. This Report does not directly raise the question of the alliance of the Co-operators with the Labour Party, but quite undesignedly it emphasizes the inconvenience and dangers of the alliance. The official view of the Co-operative Party is that all is well, and that the dissatisfied societies which have seceded because of the alliance are insignificant in size and im- pOrtance. It would be contrary to human nature if the officials of the Co-operative Party acknowledged that they had made a mistake, but the fact remains that there is an essential conflict of principle between, Socialism and Co-operation which rests upon voluntaryism.
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