The Maholian Way - Part Three: The history of Maholia & relationalism

Turning to movements promoting economic development in Maholia, we can see that there were several strands to these. In the early 1970s two semi-retired businessmen who had grown up in New Galloway but worked in Fensham most of their lives wondered why Fensham, Delaney and San Marco were prospering and growing while many other parts of the country languished. What was stopping these other areas expanding their populations and economies? Then Len Gillies and Philip Sawyer decided to stop wondering and do something about it in the island of their childhood. New Galloway’s whaling industry had been closed down, forestry and fishing were in decline and there was little secondary industry. As a result, unemployment was high and people were moving to other islands. So Gillies and Sawyer established a non-profit business development corporation in Winslow, a regional city in the depressed south-west of the island. They invited people to come forward with business ideas, and they screened those that were put to them. They obtained start-up funds for viable proposals through local banks and credit unions and their own financial connections. They also provided initial and ongoing advice, and persuaded local further education colleges to start new courses to meet the new enterprises’ emerging training needs. In addition, they involved other current and retired business people in advising the start-up businesses. Among the first enterprises assisted were a gourmet poultry processing plant, a joinery workshop and a wheelchair factory. Most of the businesses survived, many thrived, and the local prosperity they generated enabled other enterprises to start up. Depressed regions elsewhere noted these successes and began to copy the process, often with advice and assistance from Gillies and Sawyer and their growing band of colleagues.

At around the same time a Latino engineer and business executive, Miguel Radondo, was returning to Maholia from Spain, where he had lived and worked in Mondragon in the Basque region of that country. He had worked in a cooperative that was part of a network that had turned a depressed economic backwater into a major centre of Spanish manufacturing.

He wanted to do the same thing in the impoverished western suburbs of San Marco. For twelve months he visited business people, engineers, banks, chambers of commerce, church parishes, philanthropic organisations and community groups, promoting his idea and trying to elicit support. Many wondered why he wanted to start up a cooperative rather than a conventional private enterprise, others saw him as an impractical dreamer who had no hope of succeeding in the backblocks of western San Marco, and yet others were simply not interested in his proposal. Eventually, though, he got together a core of engineers, business people, a designer, a cooperatives expert, a priest and a banker to take the idea further. A market research firm was persuaded to do pro bono work on the feasibility of manufacturing whitegoods – which was what Radondo had worked on in Mondragon, and what he favoured for Maholia – and the market researchers substantiated his hunch that this could be viable. There was only one other whitegoods manufacturer in Maholia, and it didn’t have a very good reputation for quality and efficiency.

In time, the ‘Marc’ cooperative was set up, finance was obtained, the plant was built and fitted out, the necessary workforce was recruited (locally and from further afield), and operations commenced. There were also discussions with education authorities about new training programs so that more of the skilled positions could be filled by locals. With modern technology and an emphasis on quality and good after-sales service the enterprise did well against its local competitor, and held its own against imported fridges, stoves and washing machines. In addition its research and development staff were savvy enough to see two possibilities emerging as the 1980s arrived: tariff cuts and the push for more environmentally efficient products. When both of these did occur Marc was ready with new greener models to introduce, ahead of local and overseas competitors – models that suited both the environmentally aware consumer and, later, the Kincaid Government’s policies favouring green technology. Marc’s success provided a spur for other manufacturing cooperatives to be set up in regions around the country.

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