A workers’ co-operative for the British upper middle classes

It’s a curious anomaly; John Lewis is a chain of shops that caters mainly for the British middle classes and yet it’s run as a workers’ co-operative. Actually they’re not called workers but partners. The first clue I got about the firm’s unexpected status was the door marked "partners’ entrance" on their store in London's Oxford Street. I thought it odd to have a door just for the board members who probably rarely visited the shop but all became clear when I noticed ‘ordinary’ staff using it and I asked one of them about it.

I caught the end of Katherine Whitehorn, who sounds very posh but who used to review films for the Observer so might be a bit of a leftie, describing the joys of John Lewis on Fi Glover’s Saturday Live. It turns out not to be quite as dull a programme as I first thought.