Robert Owen’s Impact: Learning lessons for Co-operation and Education
Register for this free event:-
Saturday July 2nd 09.55 – 10.00 – 11.10 am
Welcome: Mick Antoniw Labour & Co-operative MS for Pontypridd, Counsel General for Wales https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Mick Antoniw
Speaker: Professor Chris Williams, Head of College, College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, University College Cork, Cork http://research.ucc.ie/profiles/A019/chris.williams@ucc.ie
‘Robert Owen and co-operation’ – Among the many movements and ideas that Robert Owen inspired and influenced, co-operation has a claim to be the longest-lasting and most important. The co-operative movement in Britain pre-dated Owen but, from the 1820s, it was infused with his optimism that a better world could be organised around, as he put it, ‘principles of union and co-operation’. Such principles took many forms: communitarian experiments, producer associations, the ‘labour exchange’ movement, and ultimately, the foundation stone of British co-operation, the co-operative store. Although Owen, in this as in so many other cases, moved on rapidly to other enthusiasms after the mid-1830s, his ideas continued to function as a touchstone for co-operators for generations to come. More than a quarter of a millennium after his birth, Owen continues to offer much food for thought for twenty-first century co-operators.
Chair: Chris Hall, Chairperson Co-ops & Mutuals Wales