THERE'S a story of a young Bacup soldier who, when taken prisoner by the Germans in the last war and asked by his captors for his name, rank and number, gave his mother's Co-op number.

It was engraved more indelibly in his memory than the one the Army gave him.

But though it's possible the tale was made up, it still rang true.

Back then, the Co-op was a such a huge cradle-to-grave influence in the lives of tens of thousands of East Lancashire folk and had been for at least three generations.

Their Co-op numbers were burned everlastingly into members' memories because they were repeated and recorded time after time whenever they made a purchase in the shops of their society -- in order to earn the dividend payments they received when its profits were shared.

The "divi" made a big difference to people's lives, with the pay-outs often providing families with spending money for holidays or for Christmas.

It was a system that led to co-operative societies springing up like mushrooms across the region after the mutual movement was begun by its famed pioneers at Rochdale in 1844.

More than 20 different Co-ops were formed in Victorian times in the Blackburn area alone -- with such as the Havelock, Blakey Moor, Knuzden, Bank Top and Grimshaw Park societies.

They served not only the communities whose names they bore, but also spread further afield through an expanding network of branches supplying not just groceries but providing access to services as diverse as funerals, excursions, shoe repairs, furnishing, wedding receptions, tailoring and self-improvement reading rooms

The Daisyfield Industrial Bees Co-operative Society, whose impressive central stores in Peter Street are pictured above had 11 branches supplying groceries, clogs, drapery and coal. The society's main store was built in 1871 and rebuilt -- as shown here -- in 1901. It was demolished in 1968.

The Grimshaw Park Co-operative Society, whose main store was in York Street, had started off in 1860 -- in a decade during which many of East Lancashire's other Co-ops also began -- as the Blackburn Industrial Provident Society and by the turn of the century also had 11 branches, including ones in the villages of Belthorn and Guide.

Though several of Blackburn's smaller societies had united earlier, it was the merger in 1920 of the Daisyfield, Grimshaw Park and the Blackburn Industrial Co-op that created the society that was by the 1960s to have 35,000 members -- roughly a third of the town's population.

The merger formed the 14,000-strong Blackburn (Amalgamated) Co-operative Society, whose principal store was that erected in 1910 at Northgate and Town Hall Street in the town centre by the Industrial Co-op at a time when it had just short of 4,000 members.

But though the enlarged Amalgamated was formed just as East Lancashire was embarking on two decades of trade depression and high unemployment, especially in its major industry, cotton, the society had by 1930 more than 20,000 members with more than half a million pounds invested in it. Though hard times continued, with annual sales amounting to £700,000, the society was sufficiently confident to open its giant new emporium that year on the the Northgate and Town Hall Street site -- of which the Blackburn Times said: "Admirably constructed, splendidly arranged and furnished and brilliantly lighted, the emporium is a notable addition to the shopping centre."

From its Northgate frontage, the emporium was transformed into Blackburn's central library in 1975 following the Co-op's move in 1970 to its new department store in Ainsworth Street. But when it opened, it was the hub of a Co-op empire in Blackburn that comprised nearly 60 other grocery branches, 10 butcher's shops -- supplied by the society's own abattoir -- and four drapery stores as well as six shoe shops.

It was at the opening ceremony that an intriguing snapshot was given by MP Mr TH Gill of the importance of the "divi" in members' lives -- when he told of how rates collectors and doctors experienced a sudden influx of payments of outstanding bills after the pay-out of the Co-op dividend. And of the £570,000 that the Blackburn society's share capital amounted to in 1930 -- the year it dropped "Amalgamated" from its title -- the majority was mainly dividend that members had left to accumulate.

It was the source, too, of the "tens of thousand of pounds" which, as the brochure for the new emporium told, had been advanced to members to buy their own homes.

The divi could amount to a considerable percentage return on members' spending.

That paid quarterly by Oswaldtwistle Co-op -- which had nearly 1,600 members in 1910 -- reached 3s 6d (17p) in the pound, though one shilling (5p) of this was in the form of a shopping voucher. By the 1960s -- when it had taken over its last in-town rival, the Excelsior Co-op in 1957 and was going on to absorb those in neighbouring Clitheroe, Great Harwood, Clayton-le-Moors, Rishton and the 22-branch Darwen society founded in 1860 -- Blackburn Co-op's divi was one shilling in the pound against the sixpence (2p) that Oswaldtwistle's was reduced to. One amazing story of what the divi could provide to was told by Blackburn Co-op's president, Mr John Farish, at the opening of the society's fifth self-service store -- at Higher Croft -- in 1957. A works manager, he revealed, had been able to go away on a week's holiday, paid for by the divi he received on the purchase of 2,500 twenty packets of cigarettes at 3s 10d (19p) each.

That was the sum he got shop stewards to collect from each employee in order to acquire a leaving gift for the firm's oldest worker as he was about to retire.

The man was presented with a TV set got from the Co-op with the tokens from the cigarette packets while each of the workers received the 20 smokes they had paid for -- and the boss enjoyed a free holiday.

The dividend system was replaced in 1969 by Co-op trading stamps -- of which customers received 40 for every pound spent.

A book full of 1,200 stamps could be swapped for 8s (40p) cash or 9s (45p) worth of food or 10s (50p) worth of dry goods.

By then, as changing social patterns, shopping by car and the emergence of the new giant supermarket chains began to render many smaller Co-op branches uneconomic -- forcing the closure of those like that in 1966 of the Underbank branch in Bacup of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society.

It was a development followed by mergers of societies across the country into giant groups and axing of thousands of Co-op branches -- so that by 1983 the movement that saw hundreds of societies spring up in Victorian times had shrunk to just 25 regional societies.

The following year, the once-mighty Blackburn Co-op became part of the mammoth Lake District-to-Midlands United Co-op that had been formed the previous year by the merger of the Greater Lancashire and North Midlands society.

In 1987, the society's Ainsworth Street store was shut and the dividend stamps axed and towns like Darwen, Accrington and Clitheroe were soon to lose the Co-op stores that had served generations.

The movement soldiers on, but the days when its numbers were both numerous and unforgettable are now a memory.