The first of the modern Congresses was held in London. It was attended by a variety of British and foreign delegates, with co-operative activist (and author of "Tom Brown's School Days") Thomas Hughes MP acting as its first president. Messages of support were read out from John Ruskin, John Stuart Mill and Florence Nightingale, who offered "any aid in my power to your Co-operative Congress, in whose objects I am deeply interested". It was the only one of the modern series not to be organised by Co-operatives UK: this was because one of the orders of business for the first Congress was the creation of the organisation, then called the Co-operative Central Board. Co-operatives UK was founded out of concerns that the success of the Co-operative Movement might lead to a loss of identity and its original vision, and was intended to be a national organisation to bind the Movement together and emphasise the role of co-operatives in wider society.