Robert Buchanan (Owenite)

Robert Buchanan (1813–1866) was a Scottish socialist writer and lecturer, and journalist.

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.

Manchester was an important centre of Owenism, and Buchanan settled there, producing publications. A contributor to Northern Star, the organ of the Chartist movement, Buchanan was never a "physical force" militant. He did become involved in public controversies with Methodists. One opponent was Joseph Barker, an unorthodox Methodist based in Gateshead from 1839: Barker had a high profile in attacking Owenites.

Closer to hand was Rev. William John Kidd, from 1840 of the Didsbury chapel, Manchester, previously the rector of St Matthew's Church, Manchester. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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