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Today in our series of interviews looking back over 50 years of friendship and finance, we meet Cath Muller of Radical Routes, a mutual aid network of co-ops committed to working for radical social change.

One of the things we do at Radical Routes is make loans to our Members using money invested by the public. Many of our Members would not be able to get started or develop without the financial support we provide as most conventional banks are not prepared to lend to the kind of project we aim to support. Over the years we have lent over £1.5 Million to member co-ops without any bad debts.

Radical Routes started in the mid-80s and had started making loans by the time my co-op joined in the mid-90s. ICOF has handled the admin and back office of the loans for us for more than 20 years and I’ve always enjoyed meeting up with them at events and conferences.

I remember hanging out with Ian Rothwell at a Worker Co-op Weekend – possibly the first one? – and we had a nice long chat about his worker co-op experience in Hiziki Wholefood Collective, a fantastic wholefoods shop in Nottingham. We walked and talked politics and it was really nice to find our political connecting points. That’s one of the great things about being around co-ops people – they get where you are coming from. Understanding that people have got into finance – which seems incredibly legalised and stuck inside a capitalist, patriarchal system – in order to create autonomy and challenge inequality – that’s why we organise as worker co-operatives.

I’ve hung out with the CCF team at Future Co-ops and Congress too – I remember a quiz where Ian got pretty excited about being able to ask so many questions about coop finance, and at Congress once, Radical Routes hadn’t managed to get a stall, so we were trying to get rid of stuff out of a suitcase, which the crew were happy to have next to the ICOF table. How very co-operative!

Happy birthday ICOF – a very many happy returns to you. Happy Birthday!

Today in our 50th anniversary stroll down memory lane, we meet Charlie Cattell, a former Director and Chair of ICOF, who was involved in ICOF in various ways for almost twenty years between 1986 and 2004

I’d worked full time for ICOM from 1986 to 1996. Part of my role at ICOM was liaising with ICOF. They had been sister organisations since the ‘70s though running independently, and I supported liaison between the two. Then, in 1996 I went freelance and got a contract with ICOM and ICOF jointly to do policy and promotion work. I did that for two or three years – I was out and about and representing them at meetings and events and preparing PowerPoint presentations for others to use at their own events, that kind of thing. Then I was a director of ICOF from 1998 to 2004, and Chair from 2001 until 2004.

The liaison work between ICOM and ICOF was interesting. These were two organisations which had come from one common origin – Scott Bader – but over time, they had evolved to become quite independent of each other. Communications between the two organisations were sketchy at best – meetings were meant to be held every few months but often didn’t happen for one reason or another. The liaison work I did for them in the early ‘90s helped bring the two organisations back together and led to them going on to work together on bigger projects, for example with the UK Co-operative Council.

When the Industrial Common Ownership Fund was launched as a PLC (in 1987), that was a fantastic development – I am sure the organisation would have been long since consigned to history without it, it was visionary and truly brave. PLCs and co-ops had never mixed before – PLCs were big scary things – we were used to little private companies and co-ops. It made a huge difference.

As an ICOF board member, there were always challenges and one I remember was an ongoing debate about the scope for diversification, which some thought necessary to keep the organisation relevant. At one stage, there were ‘the purists’ who wanted to stick with ICOF’s historic mission of promoting worker co-ops and democratic employee ownership, and another wing which wanted to diversify info microloans to support small business start-ups. All agreed that such support was valuable but we could not all agree that it was ICOF’s role to provide it. Over the years, many people had put a lot of work, time and trust into ICOF as an organisation because of their commitment to the principles of democratic employee ownership. There was an argument that if there was no longer a demand for what ICOF was offering, then ICOF should cease to exist rather than go off in a different direction. That particular battle raged for some time but ultimately the decision was taken not to diversify in that way.

One of the things I appreciated about ICOF was that the staff were really good about recognising that we as directors were volunteers. In the voluntary sector, a lot of people who give their time get taken for granted, but the staff of ICOF would always remember that we were volunteers and thank us for that. Once a year we’d have an away day, and it was never a dry stuffy event. We once went on the London Eye and to Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant. Fifteen was set up as a social enterprise, providing training and jobs for homeless people, and we had an extraordinary meal. It was funny. The restaurant staff told us about this incredible five course meal. As directors and good little volunteers, we were trying not to spend too much money and we tried to order just two courses, but the restaurant was adamant that we have the fully curated five course meal. We were all being so cautious, trying to save money wherever we could!

I’m very happy to see that ICOF is still going and has stayed true to its roots through recessions and all the disasters that have hit UK society in last 50 years. So happy birthday ICOF! You have managed to stick to your important if not widely understood mission and I’m proud to have been part of it.

We’re enjoying the chance to talk to people who have been involved in ICOF over the last 50 years and it’s particularly lovely to have a chance to catch up with our old Investment manager, Ian Rothwell. 

Ian left us early in 2022, after working for ICOF for 14 years. Here, he looks back on his experiences of us.

‘I first had any involvement with ICOF in the 1980s when I was chair of Nottingham Co-op Development Agency. We had a loan fund, and we worked with ICOF a couple of times on joint loans. Then in 2008 I joined them as an employee. I took over from Andrew Hibbert as Development Manager, and then I became Lending Manager, where I stayed until 2022.

As I said when we spoke before, I was really proud of the whole community shares initiative and setting up the fund to go with that. And then there were loads of loans that I look back on really fondly. I particularly enjoyed ones that were a bit different. There was Harrogate Working Men’s club, and bringing a Working Men’s Club into the co-op movement felt amazing. Retrofit businesses and the co-ops that made things were always fun – I enjoyed working with Specialised Castings at their foundry. And then there was the lovely Bishopwearmouth Co-operative who run a garden nursery and cafe, and work with people with learning difficulties. It was a fabulous model. I really enjoyed seeing all the ways that cooperation could work with something a bit different as well as the more traditional co-ops. Two others that I loved were Boundary Brewing in Northern Ireland, as that was again, making something tangible and it was my first loan in NI. And of course being part of October Books fabulous human chain, and the international press it generated, was incredible too. (See the story here in the New York Times, the Guardian and on the BBC)

It’s fabulous that ICOF has been around for so long, and for it still to be going, and true to its roots and values, is a huge achievement for everyone who’s been involved over the years. It’s done so much good and provided so much support for the cooperative movement and that’s down to the staff and trustees. Happy birthday ICOF – well done and keep going!