After three years, every print issue of the Freethinker published between 1881 and 2014 is now available to read, free of charge, in our digital archive. So it seems justified to do a little navel-gazing: our image of the week is the very first page of the very first issue of the Freethinker from 1 May 1881. You can read a stirring introduction to the archive from Bob Forder here and the archive itself can be found here. Enjoy!

The post Image of the week: the first issue of the ‘Freethinker’—to mark the opening of our digital archive appeared first on The Freethinker.

The above image is of page 190 of the Freethinker, vol. 102, no. 12, December 1982. It includes a letter by Albert E. Standley, which led to the formation of Republic, the anti-monarchy campaign group. The current CEO of Republic, Graham Smith, was arrested for protesting against the coronation on 6th May 2023.

Standley’s letter was one of several published in the Freethinker on the abolition question. The meeting which it inspired is described by Smith in Abolish the Monarchy, p. 194, as follows:

‘It was on the Queen’s birthday, 21 April 1983, that a small band of republicans met in London in response to a letter in the Freethinker magazine from librarian Albert Standley. The letter proposed the formation of a society that would advocate republican ideals and promote the alternative to the monarchy.’

The text of Standley’s original letter is reproduced below:

‘ALTERNATIVES TO MONARCHY

‘Philip Harding, commenting (October) on Julia Atkinson’s article on the monarchy (August) admits that the British so-called constitutional monarchy (we don’t have a constitution!) is imperfect, but falls back upon two well-worn and unsupported assertions: “it works well enough” and “there’s nothing better to replace it”.

‘I should like to see a Republican Association formed, among whose members would surely be such rationalists as those who support the NSS and even pragmatists of Mr Harding’s mould, which would work to put forward logical and viable alternatives. It would also publicise the view that the Head of any truly democratic State must be chosen by, accountable to and removable by its people. Would anyone like to join me in launching such a body?

A. E. STANLEY

55A Netley Road, Barkingside, Ilford, Essex’

Note: Standley’s surname is printed as ‘Stanley’ in the above issue of the Freethinker. However, this appears to be an error: he is referred to as ‘Standley’ both by Smith and elsewhere, including in an article by Roy Greenslade in the Guardian, published on 28 March 1994 (‘Down the Royals! Up the Republic!’). Greenslade discusses a recent pro-republican dinner in the Cholmondeley Room in the House of Lords that was

‘organised by Republic, a little-known pressure group founded 11 years ago by Albert Standley, a librarian from Colchester, and Terry Liddle, then a second-hand book salesman from south London. Like-minded Labour party supporters and humanists, both found they also agreed that the British monarchy was not only an anachronism but a barrier to a genuinely classless and egalitarian society. So, one foggy night at London Bridge station, they decided to set up Republic.’

See also:

• Bring on the British republic – Graham Smith’s ‘Abolish the Monarchy’, reviewed by Daniel James Sharp.
• Graham Smith (not that type of republican), interview on the National Secular Society podcast.

With thanks to Dan Bye for research into Standley’s name.

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In March 1883, George William Foote, the first editor of the Freethinker, was convicted for blasphemous libel at the Old Bailey and sentenced to twelve months’ hard labour. Shorter sentences were given to two colleagues, the proprietor, William Ramsey, and the printer, Henry Kemp.

The edition of the Freethinker for which Foote was imprisoned was the Christmas Number 1882. It featured satirical cartoons, including ‘A Merry Christmas, Inside and Outside’ (above) and ‘Moses Getting a Back View’, which showed the seat of God’s trousers (in reference to Exodus 33, 23). It also featured a satirical ‘Trial for Blasphemy’ by Joseph Mazzini Wheeler, in which, as Foote later described it, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John appeared on trial for blasphemy in the Court of Common Sense, ‘charged with publishing all the absurdities in the four gospels.’ The judge, Lord North, was a Catholic. In pronouncing sentence, he regretted that Foote ‘should have chosen to prostitute his talents to the service of the Devil.’

The article below is by the interim editor, Dr Edward Aveling, a freethinker, lecturer in anatomy and biology, and unfaithful lover of Eleanor Marx. It describes the conditions which the prisoners faced. Although somewhat melodramatic in tone, the article reveals details of their treatment which are still shocking, given that their only crime was to have mocked religion. In particular, at the time of Aveling’s report, they were in solitary confinement for twenty-three hours a day. For the first month the only book they were allowed to read was the Bible.

The reference to the hearing before John Duke Coleridge, the Lord Chief Justice, is to a separate prosecution for blasphemous material published in an earlier edition of the magazine. This charge was eventually dropped.

All in all, it was a difficult decade for freethinkers. At the same time as Foote was in prison for blasphemy, Charles Bradlaugh, President of the National Secular Society, was fighting to be allowed to take his seat in the House of Commons, despite his declared atheism.

It is remarkable to think that, only 140 years ago, citizens of a supposedly liberal country like Britain could have been so vindictively punished for offending against an idea. The Freethinker hopes that in 2022, the rhetoric of outrage and offence will not lead to a renewed criminalisation of satire and dissenting views in the UK, whether about religion or anything else.

The post From the archive: imprisoned for blasphemy appeared first on The Freethinker.

In Cohen’s view, ‘freedom of conscience’, as advocated by the Archbishop, ‘ought to mean that in matters of opinion there should be at least equal freedom of expression, with the understanding that with some questions that freedom cannot be absolute.’ But in fact the Church’s understanding of ‘freedom of conscience’ extended to religious privileges, such as enforcing blasphemy laws on non-believers, keeping bishops in the House of Lords, and requiring the King to swear a coronation oath in which he had to ‘avow his belief in a special form of religious belief.’

This article was written at a time when the ideas and values of civilised society were being threatened on all sides. The abuses of the War would eventually lead to the drafting of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the European Convention on Human Rights (1950). In both of these documents, ‘freedom of thought, conscience and religion’ is a separate right from ‘freedom of expression’. In contrast, Cohen here analyses freedom of conscience as effectively a form of freedom of expression. He notes the extent to which religious organisations can use ‘freedom of conscience’ as an excuse for imposing their views on others, thereby restricting freedom of expression for them. The clash between the two rights continues today.

The post From the archive: What is freedom? appeared first on The Freethinker.