The British cooperative movement is one of the oldest and most structured in the world. It owes this success to its federal development model based on a dense network of consumer cooperatives. By the middle of the twentieth century, 1,070 consumer societies had combined sales of several hundred million pounds and 10 million members. However, production cooperation has almost been forgotten. This paradox, while not unique to Britain, is striking. It is explained by an early integration strategy and ideological hostility. In Britain, the existence of production cooperatives has long been reduced to cycles of decline and resurgence in various forms, which complicates their analysis. While remaining marginal in a capitalist economy, they experienced a resurgence in popularity in the changed context of the 1970s.