Richmond Postgate’s detailed field study reveals that the practice of working from home is now widespread. Yet this new practice (or old practice become new again) runs hard against rules reflecting the dominant, if declining, expectation that people ‘go out’ to work. In arrangements for taxation, for pensions and other benefits, for zoning and planning consents, for employment legislation, union practice and business funding, and in a myriad of other regulations, the recognition of wealth-creation from the home finds little place.

Those who try to escape from total dependency, whether on a spouse or on welfare payments, find their initiative baulked by a jungle of complications and restraints. For this reason, the Foundation wants to bring together some of those who, through their positions, professions and skills are able to facilitate wealth-creation form the home. It has therefore decided to print Richmond Postgate’s study as a basis for further discussion and inquiry.

Richmond Postgate was a journalist, teacher and local education authority administrator before joining the RAF. In 1945 he became part of the BBC’s educational services and for nearly 30 years was involved in all their radio and television developments including the partnership with the Open University. He was also Director-General of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation over the period of its attaining independence. When he retired in 1972, he worked with UNESCO, the British Council, the Ford Foundation and ITDG, as consultant/assessor on various educational communication and development projects. With John Scupham and Norman Mackenzie he made the first world study of adult Open Learning (UNESCO 1975). He died in 1991.