Page 427 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

The Controversy of 1908.
risks, and these no other single company acting prudently would
undertake." A joint committee of inquiry of the Scottish and
English Wholesale Societies and the C.I.S. was agreed upon, and in
December the different proposals from the societies were adjourned
at the Committee's request until March, 1908. Then, however,
they reappeared, reinforced by similar resolutions from 68 other
societies, great and small.
As a result of the negotiations with the C.I.S. the Committee
already had become convinced that the proposals for joint working,
beyond which the Insurance Society never would move, were
unsatisfactory, and that an absorption was the only real way forward.
Now, hopeful of this view prevailing in the conferences, they secured
in March a further adjournment of the quarterly meeting resolutions.
Meanwhile the agitation continued. A special committee was
elected by the forward societies from north to south, and there were
further conferences and reaffirming resolutions. No system of
election upon the ground of adherence to this or that rival
principle as yet has developed in regard to candidates for the C.W.S.
directorate, but in the North a test question was now framed to
elicit each man's attitude toward insurance. On the side of the
Insurance Society a conservative attitude was maintained. " The
strength of the movement against the existing state of affairs," wrote
Mr. Odgers {Co-operative News, March 21st, 1908), "is a manufactured
thing, having for its object the substitution of a reckless future
policy for the safe and progressive policy of the past." " With the
exception of taking all risks in fire insurance, which they had
declared as being unsafe and gambUng," reiterated Mr. T. Wood,
the chairman of the Insurance Society, at the C.W.S. Quarterly
Meeting of June 21st, 1908, " they were prepared to take the whole
insurance of the co-operative movement, in connection with life,
industrial, and everything else." The defence was so far successful
that at this June meeting, although Mr. Tweddell, the vice-chairman
of the C.W.S., again was the protagonist of an advanced pohcy,
the Sunderland motion for a C.W.S. general insurance department
was defeated. It was lost by 859 votes to 1,154, despite the fact of
the proposals of the Northern group (now endorsed by over one
hundred societies) being withdrawn in its favour. A motion by the
Insurance Society itself, however, recommending a legal partnership
between the Enghsh and Scottish Societies and the C.I.S., suffered
so badly that it also was withdrawn, and the Insurance Society's
support given to a Warrington and Manchester and Salford proposal
339