Robert Owen: The Greatest Welshman?

I first heard about Robert Owen when trying to focus on the complex and rather dry topic of the industrial revolution during O-level History in the early 1980s. During a rare moment of clarity I found myself latching on to the story of the Welsh owner of a Scottish factory who’d told his workers he was cutting their hours – but not their pay - and that he was going to take their children out of the factory to educate them in the world’s first primary school. Fearing loss of productivity and, therefore, profits, pay and ultimately their jobs, the workers were sceptical. So, we were asked, what happened next?  

The answer was that the fitter, healthier, happier workers saw productivity go up and profits soar. Maybe he was on to something.

And that, for us, was the end of Robert Owen. No sooner had he appeared on the curriculum than he was gone: an anecdote lasting around three minutes in a one-hundred-and-eighty-two hour syllabus - yes, I worked it out.

It’s baffling as to why, Scotland apart, people in the UK – and Wales in particular - know so little about this extraordinary man, particularly when he’s lauded in so many countries around the world (the USA, Spain, Russia, Argentina, Malaysia, Italy, to name just a few).

Held up as the founder of the co-operative movement and inspiration for the trade unions movement, Owen’s status as one of the world’s most important philanthropists and social reformers is unquestionable. So why the lack of presence on the national curriculum? As one of our contributors points out, with co-operatives around the world consisting of around 1 billion members, he spearheaded a movement that comprises around an eighth of the world’s population - that’s up there with the world’s biggest religions. His advocacy for workers’ rights, and particularly for the rights of children and women, showed a man not just years ahead of popular thinking but, in most cases, some way in advance of other liberal thinkers of the time, as well.

I made this documentary to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Owen’s birth in Newtown in 1771. The above excerpt comes from the second part of the programme and picks up after Owen had introduced the new measures at the mill in New Lanark which I’ve referenced above. Bearing in mind the questions currently circulating in the wake of the emergence of new AI technologies, there are some salient points made regarding Owen’s beliefs and the current thinking around the role of human beings in the world of work.

The programme was made during lockdown so some of the sound is compromised, though certainly not the quality of the contributions which come from (in order of appearance):

Professor Gregory Claeys, Professor Chris Williams, Jane Masters, David Smith, and Associate Professor of the Sorbonne University, Ophelie Simeon.