Humanists contributed immeasurably to ethical debates in Britain in the mid-twentieth century. Relatively small in number, yet often vocal and articulate, the humanists made their voices heard in a land where moral politics remained dominated by Christianity. There is much to be said about the rise and fall and rise again of one of the movement’s major organisations, Humanists UK, which emerged from the soup of 19^th century counterculture to be constituted as the Union of Ethical Societies in 1898.

But the focus here is upon some of the thinkers and activists whose humanist views informed and contributed to progressive political campaigning in Britain from the 1940s to the 1960s. Most of these people were familiar figures in British humanist and secularist organisations, but some spent most of their time in campaigning for their particular ethical causes. A brief introduction to the activities and concerns of a selection of these people can serve to illustrate the reach of humanist ideas, as well as how these ideas were able with varying degrees of success to influence social policy, moral sensibilities, and even international law.

Sexualities  

A concern with the politics of sexual morality has been a staple of the humanist movement since the 19^th century, with humanists and rationalists frequently locked in combat with religious conservatives. Humanists contributed immeasurably to the struggle to reform laws and attitudes surrounding sex in the 1950s and 1960s, making the medical and legal case for liberalism in sexual culture and in the process providing a younger generation with ammunition to craft social change.

Humanist intellectuals were vocal in support of gay law reform from its earliest beginnings. They provided some of the least equivocal evidence to the Wolfenden Committee in 1954, generally favouring decriminalisation over the age of eighteen and the social acceptance of gay men. Humanists including the philosopher A.J Ayer, the author E.M Forster, the archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes (wife of playwright J.B. Priestley) and the sociologist Barbara Wootton, were vocal in their support of the Homosexual Law Reform Society upon its foundation in 1958. By contrast, only a handful of liberal clergy joined and they often expressed reservations.

One of the most intriguing personalities in the liberal intellectual vanguard of the fifties was the Ulster Unionist MP, Harford Montgomery Hyde, who repeatedly spoke in favour of reform in the House of Commons, and for his efforts was deselected by his local party. Hyde, whose political career in an establishment political party with a socially conservative electorate required him to remain discreet about his religious views, described himself in his autobiography as having been both a humanist and a rationalist since the 1920s. Although himself heterosexual, Hyde was a staunch ally to the gay movement and in 1968 published one of the first histories of homosexuality written from a sympathetic perspective.

Humanists were active, too, in early sorties against the oppressive moral codes which surrounded heterosexuality prior to the liberalisations of the later 1960s. Eustace Chesser was a humanist and progressive as well as a psychiatrist and researcher who penned a stream of popular advice manuals on aspects of sexualities from the 1940s onwards, along with works on medical sociology. In 1959, Getting Married, a booklet which Chesser published witn the British Medical Association, resulted in a wave of reactionary opposition. The pamphlet, which suggested that pre- and non-marital sex should be the result of individual choices, was withdrawn and a television appearance by Chesser blocked. Undeterred, Chesser then penned a polemical defence of his arguments which aimed to demolish the ‘outmoded’ theological prohibition of sex before marriage.

Nuclear disarmament

One of the most strenuous contributions of humanist intellectuals to the politics of morality in post-war Britain was, unfortunately, the least successful. The case for unilateral nuclear disarmament was, in my view, morally unanswerable, yet advancing it relied on attempts to influence transnational politics which would in turn prove futile in the face of the Cold War. A network of elite scientists, including the humanist Jacob Bronowski (who had been one of those dispatched by the British government to assess the impact of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and the nuclear scientist Joseph Rotblat, mobilised in the mid-1950s to oppose nuclear weapons. The majority of signatories of the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto – which opposed nuclear weapons – were humanists. Humanists were well-represented too amongst the membership of the founding executive committee of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in 1957. The CND is perhaps most closely associated with the philosopher Bertrand Russell, a luminary who was widely admired by the public for his unshakable moral convictions and whose bestselling 1927 exposition, Why I am not a Christian, remains in print today.

Barbara Smoker, the campaigner, author and former president of the National Secular Society, formed a link between CND and the leadership of humanist and secularist organisations. She had joined Russell’s short-lived ‘Committee of 100’, a non-violent group campaigning against nuclear weapons, which deployed direct action tactics such as mass demonstrations at locations including American air bases. The idea of the ‘Committee’ was that there would be safety in numbers, as the government would be unwilling to convict so many people at once. Russell’s scheme failed, observed Smoker, when the authorities simply arrested random people, demonstrating that the government was less concerned with justice than he had imagined. When Russell was convicted for his protest activities and obliged to spend two weeks behind bars at the age of ninety, Smoker was amongst his supporters in court. She was also closely involved in the clandestine ‘Spies for Peace’ movement, which worked to reveal and publicise egregious plans by the British state to shelter their elites in secret bunkers while the rest of the population were to be abandoned to perish in the nuclear holocaust.

Human rights

Another committed humanist was H.G Wells, who in 1931 inspired the foundation of the Progressive League, an organisation which aimed to bring together campaigners and thinkers dedicated to social and ethical reform. Motivated by the catastrophic failure of the League of Nations, by the early 1940s, Wells was very concerned with the development of the concept of universal human rights, with their implicit shift from the rights of nations to those of individuals. His efforts stimulated the formation of the Sankey Commission, chaired by the lawyer John Sankey. This resulted in the Sankey Declaration of the Rights of Man (1940), which was issued for a wide readership in paperback and serialised in the Daily Herald by the journalist and humanist campaigner, Peter Richie Calder, under the succinct title: ‘What are We Fighting For?’

Wells’s and Sankey’s endeavours in turn influenced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) – particularly in terms of vocabulary. Wells appears to have been the originator of the phrase ‘freedom of thought, conscience and religion’ which was inherited by the 1950 European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), which carried the underlying idea of the plurality of secular and religious ideologies, the freedom of worship, and the freedom to change and not to have a religion. Noteworthy, too, was the absence in these documents of the notion of enforcing a state religion and the absence of mention of god or gods. The latter was a source of controversy, and religious interests at the 1948 Congress of Europe insisted on the addition of a reference to ‘common heritage of Christian and other spiritual and cultural values.’

The Sankey Commission’s eleven clauses created paradigms for the thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the eighteen articles of the European Convention, and thence to the development of further international agreements. The contribution of humanists to the creation of the human rights movement requires further research, but it seems clear that the chain of innovation can be traced back to the visionary thinking of H.G Wells, who, as bombs rained down on Britain in the early 1940s, foresaw that the concept of the equality of rights for every human being might be the foundation upon which international co-operation between nations could rest.

These individuals were but a few of the leading figures in Britain who campaigned for real-life change to the ethical basis of national and international laws in the mid-twentieth century, leading the charge for progressive reform. Our book explores their efforts and shared humanist outlook.

The Humanist Movement in Modern Britain: A History of Ethicists, Rationalists and Humanists, by Callum Brown, David Nash and Charlie Lynch (2023), is published by Bloomsbury.

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Nearly three years ago, Humanists UK launched the Humanist Heritage project, with the aim of commemorating its 125th anniversary in 2021. The Union of Ethical Societies, as Humanists UK was first known, was formed in 1896 by a federation of societies whose culture was rooted in living well without reference to supernatural ideas. These societies, part of what became known as the ‘Ethical movement’, had first appeared in England in the 1880s. They emerged from a melting pot of 19th-century freethought which itself was born from an intellectual tradition spanning over two millennia.

The ethical societies had their roots in the American Ethical Culture movement, which had begun in 1876 with Felix Adler’s New York Society for Ethical Culture. This society’s ethos had been encapsulated by its motto of ‘deed not creed’: an active morality which did not require its members to subscribe to any theological doctrine. In America, this first New York Society, along with the wider Ethical Culture movement that it spawned, still exist, and are linked to but distinct from the American Humanist Association and other atheist bodies. In the UK, however, the Ethical movement became the humanist one, and the sibilant ‘ethicists’ encompassed by the term ‘humanists’. The Union of Ethical Societies became the Ethical Union (1920), the British Humanist Association (1967), and has been known since 2017 as Humanists UK.

The word ‘freethinker’ emerged in the 1700s to describe someone who, quite simply, thought for themselves. The freethinker accepted nothing, particularly religious dogma, on authority, or perhaps was one of those ‘Atheists, Libertines, Despisers of Religion and Revelation,’ as Jonathan Swift put it in 1708. As his words suggest, the term ‘atheist’ had by then been around for close to two centuries, and was used to define someone who did not believe in a god, or who lived as though they owed no obligation to one.

The concept of the ‘secular’, as opposed to the sacred, had also long existed by the time George Jacob Holyoake coined the word ‘secularist’ in 1851. In so doing, he associated the term with action and a wider philosophy, the ‘secularist’ being one whose ‘province of human duty … belongs to this life’ – with emphasis on ‘duty’. Holyoake was well aware of the stigma attached to ‘atheism’; this was clear in his own elaboration of the secularist philosophy, and in the defences of him by others. He had begun his career as a lecturer for the socialist Owenite movement, many members of which subscribed to Robert Owen’s secular ‘rational religion’. This was, as Holyoake’s secularism would be, rooted in achieving happiness through purely human means. In the same decade as Holyoake’s coining of ‘secularist’, the word ‘positivist’ first began to be used in English to describe the secular philosophies of Auguste Comte, translated and popularised by Harriet Martineau in 1853.

In the next decade, the scientist T.H. Huxley – perhaps best known as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ – would invent the term ‘agnostic’ to describe the position of not claiming to know anything which one does not have evidence to support. Stalwarts of evolutionary theory, including Charles Darwin himself and physicist John Tyndall, went on to adopt ‘agnostic’ to describe their own position with regard to religion. Today, humanists would typically describe their own stance as one of atheism or agnosticism.

Throughout the 19th century, thinkers like Holyoake and Huxley offered a new vocabulary for a radically transformed landscape of belief, in a Britain that was in the process of assimilating an ever-increasing volume of scientific knowledge. Today, a fresh focus on the humanist tradition can draw together anew the many contributions made by ‘free thinkers’ to human progress through thinking for themselves and acting for others. In doing so, our picture of the past becomes a more diverse and a more accurate one, and the claim that atheists were necessarily immoral or amoral can be firmly refuted.

In addition to celebrating the history of Humanists UK, the Humanist Heritage project also aims to unearth, explore and map a tradition of thought and deed that can arguably be described as ‘humanist’ and which had existed in the UK long before the 19th century’s rational religionists, secularists, positivists, and ethicists appeared on the scene. Indeed, a ‘humanist’ tradition of non-religious ethical thinking long predates Christianity. Throughout history, there have been people asking questions about where we came from and why we are here, what is right and wrong, and how we might best be able to live with each other. And throughout history, across the globe, many have arrived at answers which reflect aspects of a worldview that we could now describe as ‘humanist’. Whether they have rejected gods or ignored them, where their decisions have been rooted in earthly action, based on human reason and compassion for other people, they are, we would argue, part of the humanist tradition.

All of this is why we have decided to include figures in the Humanist Heritage project who did not, or could not, identify as humanists, in many cases because the word in this modern sense did not exist. These include ancient philosophers such as Epicurus, who grounded their philosophies in the one world they could be sure of; heretics like Thomas Aikenhead, who risked their lives to challenge doctrine they could not accept; 18th-century freethinkers who sought to bring reason to bear on so-called revelation, including those, like the deists, who did not dispense with god altogether; and Owenites and ‘Rational Religionists’, such as Frances Wright, who sought radical societal reconstruction for the benefit of everyone. All of these people, we would argue, have helped to pave the way for the flourishing of humanist ideals, or exemplified them.

This long and rich history has been explored in a number of key texts. Many of these emerged from the 1950s onwards, when the organised humanist movement, by then self-identifying as such, was working to define itself. From 1957–1960, The Humanist magazine (now the New Humanist) ran a series of articles charting ‘The Humanist Tradition’. This series was perhaps inspired by their own renaming in the previous year to The Humanist from The Literary Guide. As Julian Huxley wrote, in support of the name change:

‘Humanism seems to me to express better than any other single term the attitude of the numerous group of people who are unable to accept irrational theories and authoritarian dogmas. It implies attaching importance to all essential human attributes and values— morality as well as science, art as well as reason.’

The first article in ‘The Humanist Tradition’ was written by H.J. Blackham, known today as the architect of the modern humanist movement. He presented an overview of humanist history which he intended to inform the movement’s next steps. ‘Humanism has a future,’ he wrote, ‘not merely because it has a past but solely in so far as humanists care for their tradition enough to learn from it what they want to do always and what they want to do next.’ Those raised in a religious faith may be under the impression that no alternative exists, or has such an established tradition, but this was a misconception easily challenged. ‘It is possible,’ Blackham argued, ‘to reject the tradition in which one is brought up and to look back and pick up, so to speak, a tradition which one has not yet received, which one chooses for oneself because it offers roots and a home.’

Challenging misconceptions and illuminating the rich history of humanist thought would also underpin the creation of psychologist and humanist Margaret Knight’s Humanist Anthology in 1961. Anticipating it in 1960, Hector Hawton wrote of his hope that ‘if our more vocal opponents consult a sourcebook of this kind they will refrain from making silly statements about us … I am tired of being told that humanism – the goal of which is the development of the whole man – is indifferent to emotion and imagination. The charge that we have no basis for morals also crops up with monotonous regularity … History,’ he added, ‘plainly shows that humanists have been in the forefront of social reform.’ Margaret Knight’s introduction to the anthology, first published in 1961, is worth quoting from at length, covering as it does not only the broad sweep of humanist thought but a consideration of the word itself:

‘ “The meaning of a word,” said Wittgenstein, “is the way in which it is used”: and the meaning, thus defined, of the word ‘Humanist’ has changed appreciably since the turn of the century. Today, to describe someone as a Humanist does not usually imply that he has been educated in Literae Humaniores. Rather, it implies that he sees no reason for believing in a supernatural God, or in a life after death; that he holds that man must face his problems with his own intellectual and moral resources, without invoking supernatural aid; and that authority, supernatural or otherwise, should not be allowed to obstruct inquiry in any field of thought …

‘Though the terminology has altered, there is of course nothing new in these doctrines. Humanism derives from a far older tradition than Christianity. The great classical civilisations of China, Greece and Rome were rooted in Humanist values; and though these values were obscured in Europe during the long night of the Dark Ages, they shone forth with renewed brilliance at the Renaissance, and have gathered fresh strength today in alliance with the mighty power of Science.’

Another humanist anthologist, Bet Cherrington, would put it more simply still in Facing the World: an Anthology of Poetry for Humanists (1989): ‘humanism as a philosophy for living is as old as human thought and as widespread as the human race.’

The year the Humanist Anthology was published also saw The Humanist Frame, edited by Julian Huxley and with contributors including Bertrand Russell, Barbara Wootton, and Stephen Spender. While his grandfather, T.H. Huxley, had coined ‘agnostic’, Julian Huxley settled on ‘evolutionary humanism’ to describe his own philosophy: one in which ‘human knowledge worked over by human imagination is seen as the basis of human understanding and belief, and the ultimate guide to human progress.’ As well as being founding Director General of UNESCO, Huxley would also become the first President of the umbrella organisation, the British Humanist Association, formed from the Rationalist Press Association and the Ethical Union in 1963. The 1960s also produced Hector Hawton’s The Humanist Revolution; The Humanist Outlook, edited by the philosopher A.J. Ayer; and the British Humanist Association’s Towards an Open Society. All of these works contained an exposition of the humanist approach and examined its implications for living.

But it had not taken works like these, and the many others which followed, to prompt centuries of earlier ‘humanists’ to work unstintingly for progressive social and political change. Indeed, the very definitions of those earlier terms contained within themselves an impetus to activity: whether it was the secularists with their emphasis on political reform, the ethicists with their focus on ‘well-doing’ alongside ‘well-being’, or even those self-identified ‘heretics’, whose heresy classicist Jane Ellen Harrison had described as a ‘reaching out to grasp … a studious, zealous pursuit’ of something better. George Jacob Holyoake’s activist daughter Emilie described her father’s belief in the ‘piety of usefulness rather than the usefulness of piety’ – a characterisation which, as a trade unionist and humanist organiser, might just as easily have been applied to her. The Union of Ethical Societies, which both father and daughter actively supported, were rooted in Adler’s ideal of ‘deed not creed’. The casting aside of gods had always placed the responsibility for a better world squarely on the shoulders of humankind. Where there was negation, there was forward movement too. As American anarchist and humanist Lucy Parsons had put it in 1889: ‘We have heard enough about a paradise behind the moon. We want something now.’

The Humanist Heritage website seeks to chart the way that convictions like these have contributed to a freer and more tolerant world. Such contributions are too often assumed to have been the sole preserve of the religious, but this notion is all the more galling in view of the fact that, throughout history, undue religious influence has frequently had to be countered for progress to be achieved. This was certainly the case in the centuries of activism by humanists or their intellectual predecessors against the blasphemy laws, for press freedom, and for the right to affirm rather than swear an oath; in the tireless campaigning by individuals like May Seaton-Tiedeman, Dora Russell, and Dorothy Thurtle for the right to self-determination in matters of marriage, divorce, and reproduction; or across well over 100 years of campaigning for a more inclusive education system. Frequently, humanist activists of this kind have fought a double battle, challenging the status quo while at the same time being derided for their atheism.

Some humanists or those with arguably humanist values, motivated by nothing beyond their own reason and humanity, have played leading roles in efforts to counter racist ideologies, for women’s rights and suffrage, for international cooperation, for LGBT+ rights, for universal healthcare, for higher education, and for peace and nuclear disarmament. Such individuals, and the organisations they have supported, have long worked to meet the needs of those of all religions or beliefs, as well as pioneering services for the non-religious in those instances where they were underserved. For two centuries, for example, some humanists, secularists, and freethinkers have been providing non-religious ceremonies to mark major moments in people’s lives and their ending in ways which are meaningful to them. The Humanist Housing Association, the Agnostics Adoption Society, and the Humanist Counselling Service (a forerunner of today’s Non-Religious Pastoral Support Network), were all spearheaded by humanists during the 1950s and 1960s.

There are many things that such individuals and organisations have done to change the world for the better. As Hector Hawton wrote in his editorial for the newly renamed Humanist magazine: 

‘A thing is what it does. Humanists, rationalists, freethinkers, do not differ because they wear different labels. They are members of a movement that is influencing society in a certain way. As individuals, of course, they do not always come to the same conclusions. Yet, despite this diversity, the general effect of combining is to create a current of opinion in a very definite direction.’

Historically, humanists, secularists, rationalists, and freethinkers have played leading roles in campaigns for civil liberties, for internationalist ideals, and for the rights of women and minorities. All of which is to say nothing of the immeasurable contribution of individuals with humanist values to the arts, science and popular culture. Today, in the spirit of their intellectual predecessors, some humanists continue to work for a society which better represents everyone, of all faiths and beliefs: one which sees the non-religious justly acknowledged, but no one privileged or discriminated against. Even now, non-religious people still face severe persecution in many countries. In the UK, state-funded schools can still select children on religious grounds and teach a religiously skewed curriculum; bishops still sit in the House of Lords; blasphemy remains a crime in Northern Ireland; and the government has failed to protect LGBT+ people from so-called ‘conversion therapy’. At this point in our history, efforts to counter religious privilege and create a kinder, more tolerant society remain as vital as ever.

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