Robert Oakeshott

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 also had a deep passion for Africa and worked in Zambia and Botswana in the early years of their independence. Early life Robert Oakeshott, together with his twin brother Evelyn, was born in 1933 in Winchester, Hampshire, the son of Walter Oakeshott and Noel Oakeshott. His father was headmaster of Winchester College, his mother an expert on Greek antiquities. Robert attended Tonbridge School and completed his studies at Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied classics and political economy. His early life was marked by two overseas adventures. After leaving school he was conscripted into the National Service and posted to the British forces fighting an anticolonial rebellion in Malaya. Oakeshott became, very briefly, a cavalry officer in charge of armoured cars. During his Oxford years, in 1956, an anti-Soviet uprising broke out in Hungary. Oakeshott and a fellow student made a goodwill visit to Budapest, taking a consignment of medical supplies. Afterwards, he and group at Balliol raised substantial funds for refugee relief. Fifty years later the Hungarian government made him a Hero of the Revolution.