Ernest Bader and his wife, Dora Scott, founded a chemical company, Scott Bader, and gave it to the employees, under terms of Common ownership

Common ownership

Common ownership is a principle according to which the assets of an enterprise or other organization are held indivisibly rather than in the names of the individual members or by a public institution such as a governmental body. It is therefore in contrast to public ownership...

, forming the Scott Bader Commonwealth, in 1951.

Scott Bader Ltd. was founded in 1921 in and moved to Wollaston, Northamptonshire

Wollaston, Northamptonshire

Wollaston is a large village in the borough of Wellingborough. in Eastern Northamptonshire, England. The name is derived from the Saxon "Wulfaf's Town" - named after a Saxon chief of that name.-Wollaston Today:...

 in 1943. It is now international. It makes advanced resins and composite materials.

For a full history see The Man Who Gave His Company Away: A Biography of Ernest Bader, Founder of the Scott Bader Commonwealth by Susanna Hoe (foreword E. F. Schumacher

E. F. Schumacher

Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher was an internationally influential economic thinker, statistician and economist in Britain, serving as Chief Economic Advisor to the UK National Coal Board for two decades. His ideas became popularized in much of the English-speaking world during the 1970s...

); London, William Heinemann (1978) ISBN 0434340235.

Originally of Swiss nationality, Ernest Bader had been a conscientious objector

Conscientious objector

A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....

 in his home country. He was a Quaker and a member of the Committee of 100 (United Kingdom).

He died in 1982, aged 91.