Robert Buchanan (Owenite)

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Robert Buchanan

Robert Buchanan (1813โ€“1866) was a Scottish

socialist
writer and lecturer, and journalist.

Early life

Buchanan was born at Ayr. He was successively a weaver-teacher, and then manager of a news-room (a reading room for newspapers) in Huddersfield. He was taken on as an Owenite "social missionary", a lecturer advocating the socialist views of Robert Owen, in 1838.[1][2]

Manchester period

Methodists. One opponent was Joseph Barker, an unorthodox Methodist based in Gateshead from 1839: Barker had a high profile in attacking Owenites.[3][4]

The Manchester Hall of Science, Campfield, after its 1850 conversion to Manchester Free Library

Closer to hand was Rev. William John Kidd, from 1840 of the Didsbury chapel, Manchester, previously the rector of St Matthew's Church, Manchester.[5] St Matthew's was opposite the "Hall of Science" built by the Owenites in 1839. The socialists meeting there were prosecuted for having lectures on Sunday and charging for admission, contrary to a statute of George II. They were prepared to show that the "collection" had been a voluntary one, but when witnesses declined to take the oath there was no legal defence, and they were fined.[1] The context was a claim, in the Owenite New Moral World of 11 April 1840, that the Halls of Science were "churches of the people". The legal implication was that the corresponding "ministers" be prepared to take oaths, under legislation of George III for nonconformists.[6]

The building was registered as the meeting-house of a society of dissenters by the name of "Rational Religionists". Buchanan and another "social missionary", Lloyd Jones, came forward, willing to take oaths under some conditions.[1][6] Kidd, aided by T. P. Bunting, son of the Wesleyan minister Jabez Bunting, had the magistrate put to Buchanan the oaths that by statute were required from dissenting ministers.[1] Buchanan postponed the decision, costing him some derision from the secularist side, but eventually swore. Bunting then managed to draw from him a declaration that he did not believe in the orthodox doctrines of damnation. The matter ended with Buchanan being fined.[3]

Buchanan started the Rational Religionist paper in 1841.[7] In August of that year he attempted to enter the Anti-Corn Law meeting of ministers in Manchester Town Hall, with Lloyd Jones and Alexander Campbell (1796โ€“1870), also an Owenite.[8] He was attacked at Whitehaven in a Methodist chapel in 1842, and gave up lecturing.[3]

Later life

Buchanan moved to

co-operative movement, bringing Buchanan into contact with George Holyoake.[3]

From 1850 to 1860 Buchanan edited the Glasgow Sentinel, owned by

Preston strike of 1853 the Sentinel took the line that the solution was arbitration.[11] On the staff as industrial reporter was Alexander Campbell;[12] Hugh Macdonald was a staff journalist also, though briefly.[13] Another socialist writer in the Sentinel of this period was Lloyd Jones.[14] Buchanan himself was involved in local politics, but became unpopular. He bought the Glasgow Times and Penny Post, but bankrupted himself by these deals in publishing and printing, in 1856.[3][15]

Buchanan died at his son's house at Bexhill, Sussex, on 4 March 1866.[1]

Works

Buchanan wrote:[1]

  • The Religion of the Past and Present Society, founded upon a false fundamental principle inimical to the extension of real knowledge opposed to human happiness, Manchester, 1839.
  • The Origin and Nature of Ghosts, Demons, and Spectral Illusions generally, fully and familiarly explained and illustrated, Manchester, 1840, a pamphlet discussing hallucination.
  • An Exposure of the Falsehoods, Calumnies, and Misrepresentations of a Pamphlet entitled "The Abominations of Socialism Exposed," being a refutation of the charges and statements of the Rev. Joseph Barker, Manchester, 1840; two editions.
  • Concise History of Modern Priestcraft, from the time of Henry VIII until the present period, Manchester, 1840; an attack on the Church of England. A chapter is devoted to the "persecution of the socialists", and another to the "crimes of the clergy".'
  • The Past, the Present, and the Future, Manchester, 1840. In blank verse.
  • Socialism Vindicated was a reply to a sermon preached by the Rev. W. J. Kidd of Didsbury, Manchester, 1840.[1]

Family

Buchanan married Margaret Williams in 1840, at

Ham Common Concordium in 1842, when Buchanan moved south.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1886). "Buchanan, Robert (1813-1866)" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 7. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  2. ISBN 978-1-78076-723-9
    .
  3. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/3842. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  4. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/1406. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  5. ^ 'Townships: Didsbury', in A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 4, ed. William Farrer and J Brownbill (London, 1911), pp. 293-297 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol4/pp293-297 [accessed 18 December 2015].
  6. ^
    ISBN 978-0-415-56431-1
    .
  7. ^ Edward Royle (1974). Victorian Infidels: the origins of the British secularist movement, 1791โ€“1866. University of Manchester Press. p. 75.
  8. ISBN 978-1-78076-723-9
    .
  9. ISBN 978-0-521-89276-6
    .
  10. ISBN 978-90-382-1340-8
    .
  11. ISBN 978-0-521-23620-1
    .
  12. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/47103. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  13. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/17434. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  14. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/15061. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  15. ISBN 978-0-521-89276-6
    .

External links

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1886). "Buchanan, Robert (1813-1866)". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 7. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

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