Plunkett Foundation

The Plunkett Foundation helps rural communities in the UK to take control of the issues affecting them through community ownership.[1]

The Plunkett Foundation's work

The Foundation's work includes:

The Plunkett Foundation was founded in 1919 by the pioneer of rural co-operation in Ireland, Sir Horace Plunkett. Since being founded it has been involved in a range of work relating to international development, rural development and agricultural development. It is based in Oxfordshire, England.

To celebrate 2012 being designated as the United Nations International Year of Co-operatives the Plunkett Foundation held the World of Rural Co-operation International Roundtable event.[4] This event led to the development of the Dunsany Declaration for Rural Co-operative Development[5] which has fed in to the Blueprint for a Co-operative Decade.

Plunkett Foundation history

On 21 December 1918, Horace Plunkett, then in his 65th year, wrote in his diary, "Most of the day with Adams. Agreed to make him and A.D. Hall trustees of my new rural reconstruction bequest and donation. I meditate starting this thing during my life, centring it at Oxford and the Plunkett House, Dublin."

On 13 January 1919, Plunkett wrote again, "Founded the Horace Plunkett Foundation with a first endowment of £5,000 and made it the recipient of a provision in my will." So the Plunkett Foundation, or rather the Horace Plunkett Foundation, as it was then known, was formed. But for the first five years of its existence the trustees moved cautiously, partly because they had yet to find a role for the Foundation and partly because the initial endowment was not large enough to employ full-time staff or provide a permanent office. Instead interest on the fund was used carefully to promote courses and studies on co-operative and rural sociology subjects in England and Ireland.

Then, in 1924, the Empire Exhibition was held at Wembley, and the opportunity was taken to prepare a survey of agricultural co-operation in the British Empire and organize a conference of co-operators. The 170 participants of this conference, representatives from most parts of the Empire, found the experience of meeting and comparing notes new and stimulating and so before parting called for a permanent "clearinghouse of information on agricultural co-operation in the English-speaking world" to be established. As a consequence Plunkett more than doubled his original endowment, the Co-operative Reference Library (Plunkett’s private collection, first housed with the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society) was brought over from Dublin, a permanent staff was appointed, and the Plunkett Foundation was moved into No.10 Doughty Street in London.

In 1927 the Empire Marketing Board, a statutory body set up to promote trade within the Empire, agreed to make the Plunkett Foundation a five-year annual grant. This was used not only to appoint further staff, but allowed for travel and investigation of agricultural co-operation in Commonwealth countries.

The new headquarters of the library, the contacts made on overseas journeys, and the publications that now began to appear including the Yearbook of Agricultural Co-operatives all brought visitors to the Foundation. Further afield, the range of European contacts was extended and the Foundation was represented at many international meetings and congresses. A world survey of co-operative law gave the Foundation some claim to authority on co-operative legislation, and it was regularly consulted on the drafting of new enactments by Commonwealth countries.

Early in the 1930s detailed surveys of agricultural co-operation in the British Isles were undertaken. Relatively small but successful movements were known to exist in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, looked after by the Agricultural Organisation Societies that had been formed under the inspirational guidance of Horace Plunkett, but little was known about the English position since its central organisation had collapsed in 1924. The surveys revealed that the movement in England was far from dead, and although the Foundation organised a number of conferences that re-vitalised interest in a national body, it was not until 1936 that the co-operatives themselves made a move towards unity by forming the Agricultural Co-operative Managers Association (ACMA), with the Foundation providing secretarial support.

Financial difficulties arose when the Empire Marketing Board grant ended, and at a time of economic depression alternative sources of funds were difficult to come by. Although Plunkett had made some provision in his will, it formed part of his residuary estate and was not immediately realisable. The cost of running the Foundation was drastically cut, but so too was its power to continue its development, so self-financing activities were adopted and charges were made for work carried out on behalf of other bodies.

Students and officials from Commonwealth countries where co-operation had been little known or practised had begun to arrive for briefings on the organisation of co-operatives, undertaking study tours and making use of the library. But the days of expansion and widening international contacts were rapidly drawing to an end. With the outbreak of the Second World War the Foundation’s work, like its library, went into cold storage as its staff joined the war effort, all except for the Yearbook, which continued to be published, albeit in a much reduced version.

Following the war the Foundation struggled to regain its former level of success. Many contacts had been broken; costs of everything, including wages, had increased; the building in Doughty Street was in disrepair; the library was in a state of neglect; and travel was difficult and costly. But as frontiers began to open in the late 1940s and early 1950s the visitors returned. Later on, grants became sporadically available to support not only the provision of library facilities, but also a variety of research activities and the publication of a series of Occasional Papers and other books and documents.

Gradually the Foundation was able to receive foreign contacts, for in addition to receiving co-operative enquirers from overseas, it was the recipient of an increasing number of invitations to contribute through visits, lectures, participation in conferences or the preparation of reports. At the Foundation’s recommendation a co-operative adviser was appointed to the Colonial Office, through whom much overseas work was subsequently made possible.

For many years the Foundation had been giving thought to the problem of training for the UK agricultural co-operatives, so in 1954 when funds become available through the Ministry of Agriculture it was immediately able to put forward a scheme for a co-operative business correspondence course. It proved to be extremely successful and quickly aroused overseas interest, so much so that it was soon adapted to meet the needs of tropical countries. Short training courses were also organised in Africa under the guidance of the Foundation’s newly appointed overseas education officer and with the support of outside lecturers. As the variety of training courses grew, so did the need for appropriate course texts, and the Foundation’s range of publications began to expand.

So although the Foundation had been formed with very wide terms of reference in a distinctly academic context, it emerged from these formative years with a fairly well defined range of practical co-operative development services, maintaining the international outlook of the original Wembley Conference of 1924.

Margaret Digby

The name of Margaret Digby deserves of be remembered as long as that of the founder, for by any standards hers was an exceptional record of service. In 1927 she became the Plunkett Foundation’s first research assistant, working closely with Horace Plunkett in pursuit of his ideals, but in 1934 she took over leadership of the Foundation as its secretary, a position she held for the following 33 years.

Carrying out the work of the Foundation with a very small staff, sometimes single-handedly, involved her in constant and extensive travel. Her global knowledge of co-operation was unsurpassed, and so she came to enjoy the trust and respect of co-operators throughout the world. During the course of her 50 years of untiring work she wrote books, articles and papers; carried out research, consultancy and advisory projects for governments and international organisations; drafted co-operative laws; set up training courses and lectured throughout the world. She was undoubtedly a principal witness to, and leading instigator behind, the development of an organisation that is today known and respected internationally.

Margaret Digby’s long association with the Plunkett Foundation was interrupted only once when, during the Second World War, she temporarily became a civil servant. On her return to the Doughty Street premises she was faced by a building that had been damaged by bomb blast and was in need of a great deal of structural attention and a library which had been completely neglected for five years. In a nearby street, however, she noticed a tree which, though shattered to its roots, had sent up a slender green shoot. In the next few years she watched it re-establish itself, and so when the Foundation began to re-publish books the tree was used as a symbol of regeneration.

The tree remained as the Plunkett Foundation’s logo until 2004 although the early form had been superseded by an image that reflects what the Plunkett Foundation is today.

References

  1. ↑ The Plunkett Foundation website
  2. ↑ Plunkett Community Shops Network - http://www.communityshops.coop
  3. ↑ See for example http://www.makinglocalfoodwork.co.uk
  4. ↑ World of Rural Co-operation - http://www.rural2012.coop
  5. ↑ Dunsany Declaration for Rural Co-operative Development - http://www.plunkett.co.uk/templates/asset-relay.cfm?frmAssetFileID=1507
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