This chapter deals with co-operative ambitions to create institutions that would establish international co-operative trade. This implied stimulating trade between the national co-operative wholesales, or more ambitiously, the creation of an international co-operative business organization. Free trade as a trade policy and as an approach to internationalism was a condition for the realization of international co-operative trade. Protectionism was not an option. But the very notion of free trade, and the ways in which co-operators have related to it, has been subject to subtle shifts and changes. In the chapter, we follow the endeavours of co-operators to agree on institutions for co-operative international trade and thereby also their discussion regarding free trade policy. The period covered is the first half of the twentieth century but focus is on the inter-war period.

The purpose of this article is threefold. First, it aims to delineate the flow of resources and the claims on those resources within the humanitarian aid system by locating task structures and functional units across the aid chain. Second, it draws on this account to highlight tensions in the system. Different stations in the organisational process are conditioned by the tasks assigned to them, how those tasks are anchored in a moral economy, and their historical interrelations. Third, it explores how aid organisations are perceived by experts in different parts of the aid chain. Four key agents were invited to recount their work experiences. We then consider how the outlook of the interviewees was shaped by their place in the aid chain. The interviews are an inventory of experiences, a preliminary corroboration of the organisational analysis that preceded them, and a source of future hypotheses. © 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.

This chapter looks closer at the concept fair trade and what this means within a co-operative context. More specifically it deals with the dilemma of negotiating consumer and producer interests and an equitable distribution of resources between all parties involved in the production and distribution of goods. The study puts the present day consumer co-operative organisations’ engagement for fair trade into a historic context. It discusses the possible links between classic co-operative convictions and fair trade today. It also shows how different ideals for an equitable distribution of resources developed within the Co-operative movement and that these ideals could clash. It is not a comprehensive study following the dealings between co-operators through the ages. Instead we focus on co-operators’ efforts to combine producer and consumer interests and how this relate to challenges for Fair Trade today. Examples discussed and compared in the text are taken from the history of the British and Swedish co-operative movements. The comparative element puts the familiar narratives of the British Co-operative movement into a new context and makes it possible for us to see how co-operative principles travel and are transformed.