Robert Noel Waddington Oakeshott (26 July 1933 – 21 June 2011) was an English journalist, economist and social reformer who championed a form of workers' co-operation called Employee Ownership.
He participated in two landmark events: the publication of the Transitional Development Plan and the takeover of the country's mineral rights from the British South Africa Company, a holdover from the colonial era.
His election manifesto [6] called both for the UK's accession to the European Common Market and for effective measures against the [white-supremacist] "rebellion in Southern Rhodesia".
Pursuing an invitation, he visited Swaneng Hill School, a pioneering experiment in self-help education in Serowe, Bechuanaland, an impoverished British protectorate nearing its independence as Botswana.
[8][9] In November 1966 he joined the staff as a teacher, planner, and author of a textbook in Development Studies, an attempt to explain economics from the point of view of aspiring third-world readers.
During this period he wrote two further books on the subject: The Case for Workers' Cooperatives and Jobs and Fairness: The Logic and Experience of Employee Ownership.
[4][13] In 1979 Oakeshott founded Job Ownership Limited (JOL), a consultancy to advise on industrial co-ops and conversion to the employee-owned model.
[14] In the 1990s, as businesses throughout Eastern Europe reorganised along market lines, Oakeshott persuaded the UK Foreign Office to give grants to JOL to promote employee ownership in several ex-communist countries.
Its principles had obvious appeal, and Oakeshott enjoyed a number of successes, particularly with a wine co-operative in Bulgaria into which he poured personal funds.
He took up a wide range of causes, including girls’ education in Africa (Camfed), prisoners' embroidery in Britain (Fine Cell Work), youth unemployment, refugees in Cairo, the facilitation of organ transplants (Give a Kidney), and multiple acts of private charity.
His family and friends have created scholarships for African students in his name, and together with the Employee Ownership Association, have underwritten an annual Robert Oakeshott Memorial Lecture.
In March 2013 the then Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg gave the inaugural memorial lecture, in which he emphasised his government's commitment to employee ownership.