The Feeling Is Mutual

And now Bradford & Bingley.

By the time that the mutual building societies were turning themselves into banks, our lords and masters had heard of trade unions and knew that they hated them (none more so than those who were financially dependent on them), but had no concept of co-operatives, credit unions, mutual guarantee societies or friendly societies.

They certainly had no idea that the building societies were part of this wider movement, including the unions, and entirely consistently built into the fabric of the extension of property ownership.

So they just let the building societies go, assuming that they were just another, if quirkily British, part of capitalism anyway. They were not. And the effects of this ruling ignorance are now being felt in earnest.