THE popular Colne Valley-based travelling theatre company Mikron will soon be heading off on board their canal boat at the start of their 2009 nationwide tour – but before they do they are staging a ‘warm up’ production for local people at their home base of Marsden.

Next Saturday at Marsden Mechanics, Peel Street, Mikron are giving a performance of their historical play Fair Trade, which looks at the foundation and success of The Co-op from its stormy beginnings in 1844.

As the divide between rich and poor continues to widen fair trade is a subject that many of us are paying more and more attention to in these times of growing awareness of ‘Third World’ poverty and the credit crunch.

But Marsden-based Mikron Theatre Company has been reflecting on a time when fair trade in this country was an even more explosive issue than it is today.

The show looks at the foundation of a movement which (arguably) had its roots in a small shop on Toad Lane in Rochdale in 1844. That’s where the Rochdale Pioneers Society, as they were then known, based their trading.

This was an enduring example of fair trade, based on what became the famous eight Rochdale Rules, one of them being the distribution of a share of all profits to members known universally as ‘the divi’.

Today the Co-op remains an international organisation with an annual turnover approaching £10bn and almost 90,000 staff worldwide.

But just as trading today is tough, so the early days were marked out by hardship.

Mikron captures the struggle of those early days in a show which has all the usual hallmarks of historical fact blended with live music and comedy.

Mikron will then set sail on their narrowboat Tyseley, on Britain’s inland waterways and by road presenting Fair Trade and Tales of the Thames. Their 38th Waterways Tour begins at Welford, through to Milton Keynes and takes in London Canal Museum, a Thames tour, Thrupp, Oxfordshire, the Midlands and the Vale of Evesham.

Tickets for next Saturday’s Mechanics show (start 7.30pm) are £9 (£7 concessions), available from Mikron on 01484 843 701 and Marsden Information Point (01484-845595).

The show is sponsored by Camlin Lonsdale, Landscape Architects.