This small group of working- class atheists started the Oracle in response to the perceived failure of working-class movements to address the rising tide of working-class poverty; and disgust at the apparent appeasement of the authorities by the version of Owenite socialism then prevalent.

The publication promised to be radically democratic, atheistic and secular in its criticism and recommendations.

Charles Southwell

The first editor of the Oracle was Charles Southwell. The fourth issue included an antisemitic article “The Jew Book”, which described the Bible as “This revoltingly odious Jew production…” As a consequence, Charles Southwell was arrested for blasphemy on 27 November 1841 and imprisoned for twelve months in January 1842.

George Jacob Holyoake

George Jacob Holyoake, the Owenite lecturer for Sheffield, defended Southwell in December 1841, in a lecture and took over the editorship of the Oracle.

Holyoake’s approach was more moderate than Southwell’s. However, on 24 May 1842, he delivered a lecture in Cheltenham, during which he answered a question from a local preacher in the the audience about God’s place in a socialist community. He said ’for my part I don’t believe there is such a thing as a God’….’If I could have my way I would place the Deity on half-pay as the Government of this Country did the subaltern officers’

Holyoake was arrested for blasphemy on 2 June and eventually sentenced to six months imprisonment in Gloucester gaol.

Thomas Paterson

Thomas Paterson took over as editor and was himself imprisoned for one month in January 1843 for “displaying obscene and blasphemous literature in the window of the Oracle office in Holywell Street; and for fifteen months in November 1843 for selling blasphemous publications in Edinburgh.”

The last edition was published in 1843.

Southwell was released from prison in February 1843, but refused to resume the editorship of the Oracle mainly because he had changed his mind about the value of the tone which he had originally given to the paper and which Paterson had maintained.

On the closure of the Oracle, Holyoake founded the moderate Movement, and anti-persecution gazette, to which Chilton was a contributor. It lasted until 1845.

Also see…

• Wikipedia article on the Oracle
• Darwin’s Ancestors: The Evolution of Evolution

Conway Hall. By Willem van B

The South Place Ethical Society, based in London is thought to be the oldest surviving freethought organisation in the world, and is the only remaining Ethical Society in the United Kingdom.

From Christian nonconformists to humanist secularists

The Society began in 1787 as a congregation of nonconformists known as Philadelphians or Universalists who opposed the Christian doctrine of eternal hell.

By 1793 it had its first premises in Bishopsgate and in 1824 (under the minister William Johnson Fox) the congregation built a chapel at South Place, Finsbury, London. The Society occupied the chapel for 102 years. The name is still commemorated in the title of the Society, although it moved from South Place in 1926 to build Conway Hall, its present home in Red Lion Square which was opened in 1929.

Until the opening of Conway Hall, the Society had 200-300 members. But, since then, the Society has gradually grown in size.

The Hall was named after Moncure Conway, an American who adopted an uncompromising anti-slavery position at home and came to England in 1863 on a speaking tour. He settled at the South Place Chapel from 1864 until 1897, except for a break of seven years (from 1885 to 1892) during which he returned to America and wrote his famous biography of Thomas Paine. During that interval, in 1888, under the leadership of Stanton Coit, the name South Place Religious Society was changed to the South Place Ethical Society.

South Place Sunday Concerts

The year 1887 saw the birth of the South Place Sunday Concerts of chamber music?–?at a time when it was very daring to hold any kind of secular entertainment on Sundays. This series was destined to reach such a high standing in the musical world and has now numbered more than two thousand concerts, its 2000th concert being held in March 1969.

The Ethical Record

The first official organ of the Society was the South Place Magazine which flourished from 1895 to 1909, and, like the present journal, consisted largely of summaries of the Sunday discourses. On the magazine‘s demise for lack of funds, its place was taken by a less ambitious publication called simply the Monthly Listswhich gradually gained sufficiently in size and importance to justify a change of title in 1920 to Monthly Record. The latest change, to Ethical Record, was made at the beginning of 1965.

A modern educational charity

Today, the Society is an educational charity whose aims are the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism and freethought, the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in all relevant fields.

The Society is a member of the Humanist Liaison Group, along with the British Humanist Association, Camp Quest UK, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies, and the Rationalist Association.

See also…

• South Place Ethical Society
• Wikipedia article on the Society

At the time, bequests of donations to free thought organizations were confiscated because of the widely held assumption that a morally sound person would not want to donate to freethought organizations.   It was preceeded by a host of diverse publishing ventures from other freethinkers such as his father Charles Watts, Charles Bradlaugh and G. W. Foote but while those organizations diverged or closed altogether, the RPA became the most significant publishing organization for rationalist and freethought organizations.

The RPA included such members as Frederick James Gould and the vociferously anti-religion, ex-monk Joseph McCabe.    The RPA also was in part a response to the more radical elements of free thought.  While it had less defined set of practices and goals as other ethical and rationalist organizations of the period, the RPA was important in that it tried to increase the profile and publications of information that would lead to lead to the belief in a rationalist worldview.

Membership

Annual Reports of the RPA show how membership grew from 94 in 1899 to a high of 6,603 in 1965. Since 1964 the memberships of the RPA and British Humanist Association (BHA) have partly overlapped.

In 1964-5 RPA membership was included in membership of the BHA, thereafter BHA members were required to apply separately for membership of the RPA. Those who did not apply were treated as non-member subscribers. Few BHA members have applied separately for RPA membership, but that a larger number have become non-member subscribers of the RPA

The actual membership of the RPA fell to 2,076 in 1970, partly reflecting an advertising policy which was aimed at subscriptions to periodicals rather than at recruitment of new members.

Source: R. Currie et al., Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles since 1700 (1977)

Also See…

• A brief history of the Rationalist Association
• New Humanist

Leicester Secular Society sign in the window of Leicester Secular Hall. Photograph by George Jelliss

By tradition the Leicester Secular Society dates its formation to 1851, although an earlier “Rational Society” branch is mentioned in No.9 of The Movement edited by G. J. Holyoake dated February 10th 1844.

Beginnings

A small group of activists probably met regularly but formal meetings, advertised in The Reasoner and The National reformer in 1853, 1861, 1862 and 1867, appeared irregularly. In 1861 it had 22 members with W. H. Holyoak (1818-1907), the local radical bookseller, as organiser.

From 1867 there is no break in the continuity of the records. Meetings were then held in the Russell Tavern, Colton Street.

By May 1869, the Leicester Secular Institute and Club was established at 43 Humberstone Gate, described by F. J. Gould, as ‘a modest lodging’.

Later it moved to 77 Humberstone Gate, a house which stood on the front line of the site of the present hall. Sunday meetings were held in a large room over some stables at the rear. For larger meetings the Society hired rooms at the Temperance Hall.

A hall of their own

Leicester Secular Hall. Photograph by Robert Ashby

The refusal of a public room to G. J. Holyoake for a lecture at the ”Three Crowns” was the stimulus for members to plan the building of their own hall. Most of the finance for the Hall came from two local Owenite industrialists, Josiah Gimson and Michael Wright.

The Secular Hall was opened on 6th March 1881. The anniversary is still marked by a special lecture each year. Wright died six months after the opening of the Hall and Gimson in 1883, after which their sons ran the Society.

Apart from one year, Sydney Gimson was President of the Society from 1889 until shortly before his death in 1938. Joseph McCabe was appointed organising officer for the Society in 1898 but lasted only one year. He was succeeded by F. J. Gould who remained until 1908.

Sunday opening

During the 1870s and ’80s, there was controversy concerning the Sunday opening of places of entertainment, museums, and so on. When the Secular Society tried to put on Sunday concerts it at first came up against the law, but perseverance finally won a licence. On Sundays, too, the Secularists played cricket in defiance of local Sabbatarian opinion, which led to some physical conflict.

Lectures and activities

In addition to cricket, the Society provided a reading room, a skittle alley, a sick club, a Benevolent Fund, a dramatic society and a swimming club among other activities.

In January 1884 a series of lectures on various brands of the new politics of Socialism were arranged, the first on the 16th by H. M. Hyndman on “Constructive Socialism” then on the 23rd one by William Morris on “Art and Socialism”, and on the 28th a lecture in opposition by the Rev. J. Page Hopps of the Unitarian Great Meeting on “Sensible Socialism”.

It was Morris who made the greatest impact. He also met the young Ernest Gimson who soon became a follower of his Arts and Crafts movement.

Notable speakers

Speakers at the hall during the early days included, among many others now little known:

• Josiah Gimson
• G. J. Holyoake
• Charles Bradlaugh
• Annie Besant
• Harriet Law
• G. W. Foote
• Joseph Symes
• J. M. Robertson
• Moncure Conway
• Auberon Herbert
• Charles Watts
• Peter Kropotkin
• George Bernard Shaw (1885)
• Chapman Cohen (1893)
• Eleanor Aveling (daughter of Karl Marx)

When Charles Bradlaugh came to speak in 1885 the Hall, which seated 600 was not large enough so the Society hired the Floral Hall and attracted 3000.

The controversy of clergy speakers

Regular speakers also included a group of clergymen known as the Guild of St Matthew led by Stewart Headlam, but they were not universally popular and Ernest Gimson reportedly heard one member say “Sydney’s getting too fond of these damned parsons!”

G. J. Holyoake wrote that “What may be called the Leicester principle of controversy is to question and try all assertions.” Gillian Hawtin who wrote a brief History of the Society in 1972 could confirm that this was still true then.

Secular hymns

A hymn book specially designed for the use of the Society was compiled in 1882, and a new selection “Hymns of Modern Thought” was issued in 1899, edited by Miss E. J. Troup. However the practice of singing hymns before meetings seems to have ceased by the time of the first world war. The Hall is still regular venue for musical performances, including the Red Leicester Choir and Grass Roots Ceilidh Band.

On 26 June 2007 Leicester Secular Society became a Company Limited by Guarantee, Reg.No.06292639, with its registered office at Secular Hall.

See also…

• Leicester Secular Society today
• Hymns of Modern Thought
• History by F. J. Gould 1900
• History by Gillian Hawtin 1972

The Chartists sought political and social reform in the UK during the mid-19th century, between 1838 and 1850. They took their name from the People’s Charter of 1838, which stated the six main aims of the movement as:

1. A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for crime.
2. The secret ballot. – To protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
3. No property qualification for members of Parliament – thus enabling the constituencies to return the man of their choice, be he rich or poor.
4. Payment of members, thus enabling an honest tradesman, working man, or other person, to serve a constituency, when taken from his business to attend to the interests of the Country.
5. Equal Constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing small constituencies to swamp the votes of large ones.
6. Annual parliaments, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since though a constituency might be bought once in seven years (even with the ballot), no purse could buy a constituency (under a system of universal suffrage) in each ensuing twelve-month; and since members, when elected for a year only, would not be able to defy and betray their constituents as now.

Chartism, Christianity and secularism

During this period the Christian churches in Britain believed that Christians should not interfere with politics.

However many Christian Chartists saw Christianity as something that should be applied practically to life including politics. To further this idea some Christian Chartist Churches were formed.

The Chartist where especially harsh on the Church of England for unequal distribution of the state funds it received. This state of affairs led some Chartists to question the very idea of a state sponsored church, leading them to call for an absolute separation of church and state – that is a secular state.

Facing severe prosecution in 1839 Chartists took to attending services at churches they held in contempt.

This allowed them to display their large numbers and to make direct challenges. Often they would demand that preachers read from texts they believed supported their cause.

Humanist Chartists

Prominent Chartists included a number of humanists:

• Henry Hethrington
• George Holyoake

See also…

• chartists.net
• Audio lecture – The Leading Question in Chartist Historiography
• Spartacus Educational articles on the Chartists
• Wikipedia article on the Chartists

Royal Society Coat of Arms. Photograph by Shuma Rani

The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, known also as The Royal Society, is a learned society for science that was founded in 1660 and is the oldest society of its kind still in existence.

A number of notable humanists have been members of The Royal Society including:

• T.H. Huxley (president from 1883-1885)
• Charles Darwin
• Alan Turing
• Julian Huxley

Also see…

• The Royal Society

Foundation

The BHA was founded in 1896 by American Stanton Coit as the Union of Ethical Societies, which brought together existing ethical societies in Britain.

It became the British Humanist Association in 1967, during the Presidency of philosopher A.J. Ayer.

This transition followed a decade of discussions which nearly prompted a merger of the Union of Ethical Societies with the Rationalist Press Association and the South Place Ethical Society.

In 1963 the discussions went as far as creating an umbrella Humanist Association of which Harold Blackham (later to become a President of the BHA) was the Executive Director. However, the BHA, the Rationalist Association and the South Place Ethical Society remain separate entities today and in 1967 the Union of Ethical Societies alone became the British Humanist Association.

Campaigning

The 1960s the BHA campaigned on the repeal of Sunday Observance Laws and the reform of the 1944 Education Act’s clauses on religion in schools. More generally the BHA aimed to defend freedom of speech, support the elimination of world poverty and remove the privileges given to religious groups. Ambitiously, it was claimed in 1977 that the BHA aimed ‘to make humanism available and meaningful to the millions who have no alternative belief.’

Today the BHA’s public affairs work is a powerful secular voice on issues of human rights and equality, ethical issues, freedom of speech and in education where it campaigns against ‘faith’ schools and for the reform of Religious Education.

The BHA has been active in arguing for voluntary euthanasia and the right to obtain an abortion. It has always sought an ‘open society’.

Local groups and Humanist Ceremonies

The BHA has long supported a number of local communities, continuing today as a network of affiliated local humanist groups.

A network of celebrants able to conduct non-religious funerals, weddings, naming ceremonies and same sex affirmations (before the law allowing gay civil partnerships) was also developed and continues today as Humanist Ceremonies.

Education

Educational issues have always featured prominently in BHA campaigns activities, including efforts to abolish daily worship in schools and to reform Religious Education so that it is objective, fair and balanced and includes learning about humanism as an alternative life stance. Gaining recognition for humanism as a lifestance has been a constant theme.

The BHA was a co-founder of the Social Morality Council (now transmuted into the Norham Foundation), which brought together believers and unbelievers concerned with moral education and with finding agreed solutions to moral problems in society.

Opening ‘public’ services to the non-religious

The Humanist Housing Association (now the St Pancras & Humanist Housing Association) attempted to provide accommodation for needy, elderly humanists, the Agnostics Adoption Society worked to gain adoption rights for the non-religious and the Humanist Counselling Group pioneered in non-directive counselling.

The BHA headquarters is located on Gower Street, London.

Also see…

• British Humanist Association website
• Administrative History by Bishopsgate Institute

The NSS was founded in 1866 with Charles Bradlaugh as President and Charles Watts as secretary.

There were a number of secularist groups around the UK and they joined up to coordinate and strengthen their campaigns. The word secularism was coined by George Holyoake in 1851.

In 1877 Bradlaugh and Annie Besant were prosecuted for publishing a book containing birth control information, The Fruits of Philosophy by the American doctor, Charles Knowlton. They were convicted, but acquitted on appeal. The issue of contraception divided secularists and a breakaway group, the British Secular Union, was formed. It closed after a few years.

Bradlaugh, who died in 1891, was succeeded as President by G. W. Foote, editor of The Freethinker. Foote noted that the death of Bradlaugh brought the ‘heroic period’ of freethought to an end, and he never succeeded in galvanising NSS members as Bradlaugh had done.

Foote’s successor was Chapman Cohen (president from 1915-1949), a prolific pamphleteer and author of books on religion and philosophy for a popular audience.

In the first half of the twentieth century the NSS campaigned against the BBC’s religious broadcasting policy, for disestablishment and for secular education.

Notable presidents in the second half of the twentieth century were David Tribe and Barbara Smoker, who did much to increase the use of the media to put across secularist views.

And in the twenty-first century the NSS continues as an organisation campaigning in the UK and the EU against what it regards as religious privilege in public life.

Also see…

• National Secular Society website
• National Secular Society on Wikipedia

The Freethinker

The Freethinker magazine was launched in Britain in 1881 and has continued publishing without a break ever since.

As a result mainly of irreligious cartoons published in the Christmas, 1882, edition, the courts declared the issue “blasphemous” and its founder and first editor G.W. Foote was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

The magazine, under caretaker editor Edward E Aveling, kept rolling off the presses, to the chagrin of the Home Office and the police, and to the delight of a growing number of readers who could hardly believe that any magazine in respectable, Victorian England, would dare attack religion in such an aggressive manner.

“relentless war” against religious superstition

In issue 1 of the Freethinker (May, 1881) Foote wrote:

The Freethinker is an anti-Christian organ, and must therefore be chiefly aggressive. It will wage relentless war against Superstition in general, and against Christian Superstition in particular. It will do its best to employ the resources of Science, Scholarship, Philosophy and Ethics against the claims of the Bible as a Divine Revelation; and it will not scruple to employ for the same purpose any weapons of ridicule or sarcasm that may be borrowed from the armoury of Common Sense.

Ever since, the Freethinker has remained faithful to Foote’s founding principles, and has never wavered in its opposition to religion.

Over the years the magazine has vigorously campaigned against all forms of censorship, and pushed hard for the abolition of the law of blasphemy.

The magazine provides in-depth articles, reviews and lively commentary from a rationalist viewpoint. It played a key role in pioneering the birth control movement, and has vigorously campaigned – and still campaigns – alongside the closely-associated National Secular Society, on a wide range of important issues.

See also…

• The Freethinker
• Wikipedia article on The Freethinker

In the 1850s the Owenites adopted secularism. Notable secularist Owenites included:

• Josiah Gimson
• Henry Hetherington
• George Jacob Holyoake
• Charles Southwell who was an Owenite ’socialist missionary’