Climate activists new to Hull are working to build a co-operative economy in some of the most disenfranchised neighbourhoods in the country. Gully Bujak of Cooperation Hull explains the challenge.

As we say goodbye to another record breaking year, it is clear that humanity is walking a path towards civilisational collapse and fascism. 18 months ago I upended my life and moved to Hull to join four other people desperately trying to chart a different course (one of us from Hull, for the rest of us it was a new city). Cooperation Hull is an experiment, figuring out how people’s assemblies can help build new democratic economies based on a new culture of self-determination in one of the most disenfranchised parts of the country. We’re one part of a growing international movement, and we’re building the bike as we ride it.

Before discovering the book Jackson Rising with it’s inspiring and yet pragmatic story of building a post-capitalist economy in a Mississippi town, and starting Cooperation Hull, we spent several years testing the limits of civil disobedience with Extinction Rebellion. We learnt that demanding legislative change from the top down was never going to be enough to meet the multiple, intersecting challenges of our age.

Last year, the Sahara flooded whilst in Southern Africa 27 million people suffered the worst drought in a century, and Just Stop Oil activists received Britain’s longest ever prison sentences for nonviolent protest. The US re-elected its first convict-president, and war and genocide was livestreamed to our living rooms. In the UK, Islamophobia-fuelled riots erupted on the streets, a record 3 million children went hungry and Starmer pledged £22 billion to carbon capture, a nonsense project secured by fossil fuel lobbyists. It’s not just the earth’s natural systems that are in collapse, but our man-made ones, too. 

We cannot simply reduce emissions but keep all the other systems of power as they are. We must interrogate each institution and system and determine if it is fit for purpose. Does it help us make the progressive and bold decisions that are now necessary? Does it incentivise reciprocity or extractivism? Does it encourage cooperation or individualism? And ultimately, can we remake it in a better way?

Models for a better world

The experience of Rojava and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) with its network of assemblies, unions and cooperatives making decisions from the bottom-up through rotating delegates has, recognising it’s complexity and distinct context, also been an inspiration. 

In our first year, Cooperation Hull held 13 neighbourhood assemblies around the city, with attendance ranging from a dozen to 70. One sustainable and practical outcome was a weekly pay-what-you-can restaurant called Waffle, building community and contributing to a budding solidarity economy. We haven’t ruled out a run at local elections – supporting independent candidates who’s only policy is to enact the wishes of the assemblies – but we need to build up an assembly culture in Hull first. We’re now testing the waters with other practical outcomes like community solar and food buyers cooperatives. And we’re always looking for the best strategies to catalyse self-organising here in Hull, creating opportunities for people to take charge of their own lives and communities. It’s not easy.

Skepticism is widespread in Hull, a fundamental challenge for us coming in as outsiders. Even without accents that put people on guard, people here are distrustful of do-gooders, having been ‘experimented on’ repeatedly in what has sometimes felt like a kind of poverty-tourism. Our obvious commitment and sincerity works in our favour, and we have found allies amongst some of the many, dedicated local organisers in the city. But we’re still up against the generational trauma of an ex-industry town in a part of the country screwed over time and time again. 

Through the liberating experience of actually deciding for ourselves how we want to live, we are preparing ourselves for the road ahead

It takes time to build trust, and the belief that another way is possible. Hull has the lowest voter turnout in the country (as low as 13% in some wards) so the disgust with the current system is obvious, but even here we have our work cut out for us convincing people we can do better. In neoliberal heartlands like England, we all have to shake off the feelings of impotence and subordination which have become so ingrained, and start to trust in ourselves again.

But with the far right on the rise, in Hull as much as anywhere, we can’t afford to let skepticism get in the way of a bold vision. The rise of the far right has been fuelled by austerity, rising costs, lower pay and a diminishing sense of community – all consequences of neoliberal capitalism. But although many remedies exist – things like worker and housing cooperatives, credit unions and timebanks – they have remained small in both scale and reach, often only accessible or appealing to the middle class or time-rich hippies.

Our movements need to bring these tools into the mainstream, the everyday, and put them into the hands of the people. When these tools are directly connected to decision-making structures like assemblies, and owned by the people who really need them – that’s when we’ll really offer an alternative to both the current failing political system and the ascendant far right.

Building community

In Hull, we are figuring out how to build alternative institutions and systems, alongside migrants, ‘stop the boat’ protestors, and everyone in between. There is lots of work to do in building bridges and we are in the early days. The majority of our members still broadly agree on the polarising issue of immigration – but that is certainly shifting, and posing new challenges to our strategy and our values. How do we build a truly democratic movement where all voices are heard, whilst not giving a platform to far right views or marginalising people who are under threat from those views? Like everything else, we’re figuring it out as we go and there are very few maps to follow. But from our conversations on the day of the riots, outside mosques and on the high street and at rallies since, one thing is absolutely certain: we cannot solve any of our problems by excluding the people we disagree with. 

This reality is hard for the traditional left to swallow. But in Hull, we’ve tasted the potential of people’s assemblies. Catherine, born in the city and a guiding member of Cooperation Hull, often tells this story of her first assembly. As it usually does, immigration came up as the source of all our problems, and she ‘felt a kind of collective holding of breath around the table. But instead of shaming or isolating him for his views, the facilitator responded with questions. Questions which seemed to help him unravel the narrative he’d accepted as the truth. He ended up saying he hadn’t thought of it like that; and my guess is that he wouldn’t have been able to do the swift unpicking I witnessed were it not for the genuinely non-judgemental way his opinions were listened to’. 

In assemblies, we learn to really listen. And listening (not reacting, debating or correcting) creates opportunities for unlikely allies to cooperate around shared needs and dreams, and work together to envisage systems that serve all of us. This is how we fight fascism. More than that, through the liberating experience of actually deciding for ourselves how we want to live, we are preparing ourselves for the road ahead. The practice of real democracy helps us cultivate practical skills, respect for each other, human dignity and connection – and this is the scaffolding which will steady us in times of collapse. No government, no billionaire or boss can give us that. We must build it ourselves.

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