Remembering the Fallen – Midcounties Remembers

Poppy Appeal 2021 – Donate to them 

The Royal British Legion is one of our main charity partners that the Society supports, alongside the focus on our Regional Community Areas & Keeping it Local Fundraising Partners.

As a Society, we are proud to support the annual Poppy Appeal and you will recall that in 2020, like so many things, the annual campaign was forced to adapt to the threat of Covid-19. With millions of people across the UK unable to leave their homes, collectors were unable to carry out face to face collections, however, this year the appeal sees a return to ‘a more normal’ with Royal British Legion representatives out in force to sell poppies to the general public and throughout our stores.

Show your support by donating in-store or via the methods below:

The Royal British Legion is offering several ways to donate to the Poppy Appeal including:

• Cash

• Contactless terminal

• Text

• Web (via a QR code quick link)

To donate please click here.

Tales from the past – How we were involved during the War

Following our Your Co-op Conversation event in September, ‘Talking History and Heritage of Your Co-op’, we reached out to the group who provided us with some very interesting history on how our Co-operative was involved during the World War and the impact it had.

Have a read of three incredible stories below regarding our Oxford region:

Taken from the extract by Diana Gulland entitled Basque and Jewish Refugees at Tythrop House, Kingsey, 1937 to 1940. Read how the Society provided Support to Spain with the 'Milk for Spain' campaign.

The Co-operative Society gave staunch support to Spain throughout the civil war. Their national policy was to condemn the brutality and barbarism of modern warfare, as conducted by dictatorship tyranny. Their ‘Milk for Spain’ campaign had raised over £22,000 by November 1938, and was used for the provision of dried milk supplies and food. Despite the bombing, every shipload for Spain reached its destination safely.

The Oxford Co-operative Society (OCS) took an active part in welcoming the Basque children, holding concerts and other fundraising activities on their behalf. The educational committee arranged a display of films dealing with graphic pictures of the war in the Cowley Road Co-operative Assembly Rooms in Oxford, at which Poppy Vulliamy, an activist, gave an account of her personal experiences in Spain. She played an important role in caring for 50 of the older Basque children, and later arranged for them to be transferred to Tythrop House.

The OCS were later to extend their welcome to the Jewish refugees when they arrived in England and, as will be seen, played a leading role at Tythrop. 

Taken from the extracts; Tythrop House Agricultural Institute, 19 May 1939 & ‘Society helps refugees’ - The Wheatsheaf, Magazine of the OCS, September 1939. Read how the Society provided support to German, Austrian and Czech Jewish refugees who resided at Tythrop House only 11 & 1/2 miles from our Thame branch.

The Oxford Co-operative Society (OCS) who had helped the Basque refugees, now turned their attention to ‘German, Austrian and Czech Jewish refugees coming to reside at Tythrop House only 11 & 1/2 miles from our Thame branch’:

“Twenty-five of the homeless and unfortunate young men arrived some six months ago. Some of them are straight from Hitler’s concentration camps... At the time of writing [September] there are now 117 residing there and being trained as agriculturalists and when more fully competent most of these will be transferred to British Dominions and overseas. They will then be replaced by others now living in destitution and misery in Germany... Within five months they have performed miracles.

The gardens are well stocked with all kinds of English vegetables, fields of corn, well-stocked pigsties, chicken sheds, cattle sheds, and stables. It is no secret to say that practical help and assistance has been rendered by the Society, who materially helped them in bedding and household utensils as near cost price as possible. In particular J. Read (General Manager), Mr W.G. Wallis (President), F. Andrews (Butchery Manager), and G.Lallemand (Dairy Manager) have all given valuable advice and assistance.

Taken from the extract in the October 1946 - The Co-operative Home Magazine which was reprinted in Carterton community magazine approx 2002. Read how an unexploded bomb saved many lives at the Carterton branch.

Fortune was indeed kind to our Society one Friday afternoon in August 1940, and the distance of 100 yards, and a 300lb. German bomb which failed to explode enables the writer, states H. J. Jelleyman (Branch Manager at Carterton), to record a very near miss.

This branch, which is situated beside an important German target, was indeed lucky to escape serious damage during this short but heavy raid in the late afternoon. Except for broken windows and a fall of the ceiling, and shrapnel everywhere, all was well, but we tremble to think what might have happened if the bomb, which in those days was considered a big one, had gone off. Instead, we saw it taken away, after being rendered quite harmless by a bomb disposal unit.