During my recent visit to John Smedley’s historic Lea Mills in Derbyshire, one moment affected me more than any machinery, production process, sustainability initiative or business achievement. It was a staircase. Known as the Queen’s Stairs, it was built after a visit by Queen Elizabeth II in 1968. At the top sits what the company calls its Hall of Fame, where large black-and-white portraits of long-serving employees line the walls.
“Men and women. Ordinary people. Workers. Craftspeople. People who dedicated decades of their lives to the company and its wider mission. Standing there, I felt unexpectedly emotional”.
I had spent the previous ninety minutes observing advanced knitting machinery, quality-control systems, traceability technology, environmental initiatives and a manufacturing process refined over more than two centuries. All of it was fascinating. Yet none of it moved me in the same way as those portraits, perhaps because they communicated something modern society often struggles to express. They seemed to say:
“You mattered. Not because you generated profit. Not because you increased productivity. Not because you improved quarterly performance.” But because your contribution mattered. The company remembered”.
In an age obsessed with measurement, efficiency and output, that simple act of remembrance felt quietly radical.
What the portraits reveal
Modern society measures almost everything: growth, productivity, economic output, consumption, market performance and shareholder returns. Yet many of our institutions seem increasingly unable to recognise the human beings whose lives make those achievements possible. Workers become labour units. Citizens become demographics. Consumers become market segments. Students become statistics. The elderly become costs. Human beings become abstractions, and once people are reduced to abstractions, it becomes easier to forget their dignity.
The Hall of Fame represented a refusal to do that. The faces looking back from those portraits embodied something increasingly rare: recognition. Recognition that meaningful work has value beyond economics. Recognition that skills accumulated over decades are worth preserving. Recognition that institutions are built not by strategies, technologies or management theories alone, but by people.
As I stood there, I found myself reflecting on one of the greatest weaknesses of contemporary economic thinking. We have become highly sophisticated at measuring financial capital, but far less attention is paid to social capital, institutional trust, community cohesion, cultural continuity and human dignity. Yet these are often the foundations on which long-term prosperity rests. John Smedley has survived for more than 240 years. It has endured industrial revolutions, economic depressions, world wars, technological transformation, globalisation, fast fashion and changing consumer behaviour.
Many explanations could be offered for that longevity. Yet, standing in that corridor, I found myself wondering whether part of the answer was surprisingly simple: the institution cares. It cares about quality. It cares about craftsmanship. It cares about environmental stewardship. It cares about the local community. Most importantly, it cares about its people and, because the institution cares, the people care too.
Throughout my visit, I encountered employees who had spent forty and fifty years with the company. Some came from families that had worked there across multiple generations. Skills were being transferred from experienced workers to younger colleagues. Knowledge was treated as an asset rather than an inconvenience.
The dignity of experience
In many sectors today, experience is often overlooked. One of the most persistent forms of discrimination in modern society is ageism. Older workers frequently find themselves excluded from opportunities despite possessing decades of accumulated knowledge and expertise. At John Smedley, I observed something very different. Older workers were not hidden away; they were visible, respected and valued. Their contribution was celebrated. That distinction matters. A civilisation reveals its values through the people it chooses to honour.
Many institutions display awards, executives, celebrities, sales figures and financial achievements on their walls. John Smedley chose to display workers. The people who quietly devoted years, sometimes decades, to building something larger than themselves. That decision says a great deal about the culture of the organisation. It also raises a wider question.
Beyond growth and output
For decades, public debate has focused overwhelmingly on growth, consumption and economic performance. These things matter. Prosperity matters. Business matters. Innovation matters. But a healthy civilisation requires more than economic success. Human beings need more than income; they need purpose. They need community and recognition. They need belonging. They need to feel that their efforts contribute to something enduring.
A nation can become wealthier while simultaneously becoming more fragmented, more isolated and less connected. Economic indicators can improve even as social bonds deteriorate. The Secretary-General of the United Nations has repeatedly warned of growing social fragmentation, declining trust and weakening institutional legitimacy across many parts of the world. Those concerns cannot be addressed through economic policy alone. They require us to reconsider what prosperity actually means. A regenerative civilisation is not simply one that produces wealth. It is one that produces flourishing. It creates institutions that strengthen rather than deplete the social, environmental and cultural foundations on which future prosperity depends. It values stewardship over extraction, long-term thinking over short-term gain, and contribution over disposability. Perhaps most importantly, it remembers that every economic system ultimately exists to serve human beings.
What a civilisation values
As I descended the Queen’s Stairs, I realised that what I had witnessed was not simply a company celebrating its history. It was a living demonstration of a principle at the heart of regenerative civilisation: human beings should never be treated as disposable—not workers, not communities, not future generations, not the natural world.
“The measure of a civilisation is not simply what it produces. It is what it chooses to value. At the top of the Queen’s Stairs, I expected to find a celebration of power. Instead, I found a celebration of service”.
In a world searching for new models of prosperity, renewal and human flourishing, that lesson may be more important than we realise.
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