Anatomy of a Movement

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195 The year 1829 marked a turning point in the history of the Owenite movement. All the American communities of the 1820s had come to an end and a similar fate had befallen the British communitarian experiments. Owen himself after his widely publicised debate on religion with the Rev. Alexander Campbell in Cincinnati, returned to England, and did not visit the United States again until 1844; though his sons remained at New Harmony. The Owenites at this stage did not abandon their communitarian goals, but there was, not surprisingly, some disillusionment with the methods which had been employed to realise the new moral world. A fresh approach, using new institutions and agencies, seemed to be called for, and the initiative did not need to be confined to the benevolent Mr Owen—whose fortune was in any case no longer available for philanthropic enterprises after the investment in New Harmony. Until 1829 Owen had largely dominated the movement on both sides of the Atlantic, but thereafter his pecuniary influence was reduced and orthodox Owenism had to meet the challenge of alternative interpretations of doctrine and practice. Owen was by no means insensitive to these changes, and for the next five years (1829–34) his thinking was more radical than either before or later. ¹

The change in tack after 1829 was not due solely to the failure of the communities and Owens straightened financial situation. Even more was it due to changes in the balance of social forces, particularly the emergence in Britain and the eastern United States of working mens organisations. Hitherto Owen had not seriously considered the working classes as a possible 196 instrument of social change. His hopes had been centred on ‘the most experienced and intelligent’ men of the age and ‘the leading governments of the civilised world’, and he had ‘studiously avoided connecting myself with any sect or class or party’. ¹ But the enthusiastic reception of his views in working-class circles and the rapid growth of working-class institutions opened up new possibilities, and suggested that perhaps here was the agency by which the change to the new moral world might be effected. In its attempt to capture the working-class movement Owenism developed along new lines, adapting itself to the demands and interests of artisan leaders.

In America this process did not get very far. Robert Dale Owen, Frances Wright and Robert L. Jennings transferred their Free Enquirer from New Harmony to New York, and in 1829 purchased an old church near the Bowery which they converted into a Hall of Science. They launched a campaign for the promotion of secularism, women’s rights and, especially, ‘national, rational, republican education; free for all… under the guardianship of the state. An Association for the Protection of Industry and for the Promotion of National Education was organised, and the Owenites aligned themselves with the newly formed New York Working Men’s Party led by Thomas Skidmore and George Henry Evans. ² The resulting mixture of agrarianism, the ten hours question, secularism and education, however, proved unstable, and the party soon split into three factions. Although the Owenites were successful in capturing sections of the Working Mens Party for their scheme of state guardianship education, the victory was pyrrhic, for after the election of 1830 this first working-class political movement dissolved. The attempt to achieve Owenite goals by winning working meris political support for a system of state boarding schools was thus frustrated, and it was not followed by a more broadly based organization. The American Owenites were left without any effective institutions or means of leverage until the general communitarian revival in 1843.

In Britain, by contrast, the flirtation with the working-class movement was more sustained and its impact was deeper. Here the approach was not through working-class political power, since the British workers {unlike their American contemporaries) did not have the vote, but through consumers cooperation and trade unionism. For five years the British working-class movement was saturated with Owenism. When this phase came to an end in the summer of 1834 the Owenites reverted to their earlier classless approach:, but they had learned the value of popular organisation at the national and local levels. Until 1829 Owenism in Britain, as in America, was sustained by small groups of disciples, more or less isolated, and dependent on personal relationships or a few periodicals for news of how the new view of society was progressing. But for the next decade and a half British Owenism was a visible social movement with its distinctive institutions, known leaders and widespread publications. To the anatomy of this movement in Britain we must now turn.

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