Tripti Joshi (Editor)

The Rochdale Pioneers

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
7.4
/
10
1
Votes
Alchetron7.4
7.4
1 Ratings
100
90
80
71
60
50
40
30
20
10
Rate This

Rate This

Duration
  

Country
  
UK

7.2/10
IMDb

Genre
  
Drama, Family, History

Language
  
English

The Rochdale Pioneers movie poster

Director
  
Adam Lee Hamilton and John Montegrande

Writer
  
J.S. Papenbrock (screenplay)

Release date
  
11 November 2012 (2012-11-11) (UK)

Cast
  
(John Holt),
Andrew London
(William Cooper),
Jordan Dawes
, (Dr. Dunlope)

The Rochdale Pioneers is a British biographical feature film, released in 2012, that tells the story of the foundation of the first successful cooperative retail store by working class members of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, in 1844. This came at a time of chronic unemployment, poverty, hunger and social inequality, and it was met with prejudice and opposition.

Contents

The Rochdale Pioneers BBC How Rochdale Pioneers changed commerce forever

A documentary, The Making of 'The Rochdale Pioneers', was also created to accompany the film.

The Rochdale Pioneers 21 December 1844 The Rochdale Pioneers open for business

The rochdale pioneers p m adamson


Background

The Rochdale Pioneers The Rochdale Pioneers DVD Rochdale Pioneers Museum

The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 brought with it famine, chronic unemployment and drastic wage cuts, especially amongst textile weavers and spinners, and this – coupled with a lack of suffrage (voting rights) – led to calls for reform which culminated in the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 in Manchester, England when a peaceful demonstration of radical reformers was attacked by cavalry.

The Rochdale Pioneers The Rochdale Pioneers Official Trailer YouTube

Several cooperative ventures had since been begun, in an attempt to improve conditions, but they had all failed, and the pioneers in Rochdale, too, were faced with a hard struggle.

The Rochdale Pioneers Watch the trailer for the Rochdale Pioneers film Cooperative News

The Rochdale pioneers' aim was to provide an affordable alternative to poor-quality and adulterated food and provisions, using "honest weights and measures", and to use any surplus to benefit the community. The vision and efforts of these twenty eight working class men is recognized as the birth of the co-operative movement, and the Rochdale Principles which they developed formed the foundation of the principles still in use by the modern cooperative movement which now numbers around 1.4 million independent enterprises with nearly 1 billion members worldwide.

The Rochdale Pioneers The Making of The Rochdale Pioneers The Cast YouTube

The Rochdale Pioneers was inspired by the 1944 film, Men of Rochdale which had marked the centenary of the first shop's opening and had been in turn based upon G.J. Holyoake's The History of Co-operation.

The original shop at 31 Toad Lane in Rochdale in Lancashire, England opened on 21 December 1844 and was used for trading until 1867. It was re-opened in 1931 as the Rochdale Pioneers Museum and again reopened in 2012 after renovations costing £2.3 million.

Plot

The story is set in 1844 when a group of working-class people from the town of Rochdale came together to change the unfair society they were living in.

Fed up with dishonest and corrupt shopkeepers selling poor quality products at high prices they decide to take matters into their own hands. By pooling the few resources they have, the group manage to get enough money together to open their own shop and pledge to only sell quality, unadulterated products, sharing the profits fairly with their customers.

The shop is only small and stocks just a handful of products like butter, flour and sugar, but the idea itself is revolutionary and the way they do business is fundamentally different in its nature.

Production

Commissioned by The Co-operative Group and produced by the Co-operative British Youth Film Academy, The Rochdale Pioneers was released as part of the United Nations International Year of Cooperatives, 2012.

A documentary, The Making of 'The Rochdale Pioneers', was also created to accompany the film, and this was directed and produced by Darren White.

Many of the cast and crew were recruited from local communities, to work alongside established actors like John Henshaw and John McArdle. Shooting was partly carried out in the historic Yorkshire village of Heptonstall, just a few miles from Rochdale.

Screenings and availability

The Rochdale Pioneers premiered at Co-operatives United in Manchester, England on 1 November 2012. The television premiere was on Film4 on Sunday 11 November 2012 at 5.45pm, UK time.

The story of the rochdale pioneers


References

The Rochdale Pioneers Wikipedia
The Rochdale Pioneers IMDb The Rochdale Pioneers themoviedb.org