The board of the Co-operative Group of supermarkets and pharmacies is preparing to take a historic step back from direct involvement in politics with a decision not to endorse up to £1m of donations to the Co-operative party – which has had support from the mutual for almost a century.
The directors are meeting next week and are expected to conclude that the motion on political donations being put to a vote at the forthcoming annual meeting should not come with a board recommendation to vote in favour.
The change would be a significant break with the past. While members have long voted on donations to the Co-operative party, the motion has always been recommended to members. At this year’s AGM on 16 May – when the voting procedure is also being changed – the members will not have any direction from the group’s board, chaired by the newly appointed retail veteran Allan Leighton.
The agenda for the AGM is expected to be published in the coming fortnight, and possibly as soon as Thursday, when the Co-op Group is due to publish its results for 2014.
The directors are thought to be ready to make no recommendation because for the first time the AGM will be run on a one-member-one-vote system. The new system replaces the previous arrangement, where about 100 delegates represented the views of up to 7 million members of the group, and the independent societies that own the business.
About 2.6 million members are likely to be eligible to vote. The eligibility criteria include being a member for three years and meeting a threshold of expenditure.
The changes were made following recommendations by the former City minister Lord Myners – also a former chairman of the Guardian Media Group – in the wake of the losses caused by the scandal in the Co-operative Bank.
The Co-op party is allied with Labour and had about 30 MPs in the last parliament. It relies on the Co-op chain of supermarkets and funeral parlours for about 70% of its funding, under a relationship that has in place for a century.
The board’s decision not to recommend a vote for a donation to the Co-op party would contradict the views of the new national council – made up of 100 members and part of the new governance structure of the mutual – which has called for the funding to continue.
In a letter in Co-op News, Steve Thompson, who represents Yorkshire and Humberside on the national council, writes that the council wants its views to be made clear to members when details of the AGM are announced.
The Co-op declined to comment.
