Early pioneers of co-operation

As someone who fought for the preservation of New Lanark when it was threatened with destruction almost 40 years ago, I was delighted to read of your support for the proposal to commemorate its visionary manager, Robert Owen, on a Scottish banknote ( In praise of... , 5 June). Actually New Lanark was featured on a note issued by the Clydesdale Bank last year and Owen's father-in-law and the owner of the mills and the village, David Dale (an unjustly neglected figure), was portrayed on the £1 and £5 notes issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland in the 1970s. (Dale was an agent for the RBS in the 1780s.) Owen issued his own notes denominated in hours of work in an early attempt to save working people from the clutches of financial institutions. What he and Dale would have made of RBS in its recent history would be an interesting speculation. Professor Iain Stevenson Centre for Publishing , University College London • While Robert Owen indeed deserves praise as a utopian socialist , it was his contemporary Dr William King of Brighton , in his many practical newsletters, who showed how working people could start from their existing conditions to develop co-operative enterprise and so evolve to a co-operative community. Owen had little confidence in working people unless they had gone through his process of character formation. King believed working people had the capacity to do this through their own efforts. Just as Owen features on Scottish bank notes to celebrate the UN's Year of Co-operatives in 2012, perhaps Dr King should be on English notes. David Smith Newport, Gwent