Welcome and Topic Introduction

Andrew Copson 0:01

Welcome to Unholy Histories, the Humanist Heritage Podcast brought to you by Humanist UK. I'm Andrew Cobson, Chief Executive of Humanist UK.

Madeleine Goodall 0:09

And I'm Madeline Goodall, head of the Humanist Heritage Project.

Andrew Copson 0:13

We're the hosts of this new podcast series where we will be speaking with experts about Britain's humanist history.

Madeleine Goodall 0:18

Uncovering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped both humanist thought and our national life. For much of Britain's history, public life and political power were shaped by religion. To hold office or give testimony, you were expected to swear an oath to God. For non-believers and religious minorities alike, conscience could come at a cost. In the 19th century, one politician's fight brought that question to the heart of Parliament. A radical MP and outspoken secularist refused to take a religious oath, arguing for his right to affirm instead. His struggle led to the Oaths Act of 1888, a landmark moment for freedom of conscience and the recognition of non-religious belief in British law.

Andrew Copson 1:20

This episode of Unholy Histories explores that turning point and its legacy. How have humanist politicians and policies shaped progress throughout the last century? What does today's majority secular Westminster tell us about our political past and future? And how, even now, does religious privilege continue to influence power and public life? To discuss these topics and more, we're joined by Professor David Nash, historian and author of many books, including The Humanist Movement in Modern Britain, published by Bruinsby, and Lizzie Collins MP, the MP for Morcam and Lunesdale, and the current chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group. Welcome both of you.

Madeleine Goodall 1:56

So there's been a really long history of secularist activism for secularism within Parliament by humanists and by religious minorities and nonconformists of all kinds. So it is quite closely interlinked with the tradition of humanism and free thought. I think really it makes sense to start with some introductions so we can think about where this history comes from and then where we are now.

David Nash - Why Study Secularism

Madeleine Goodall 2:21

So, David, maybe you could start off by telling us a bit more about the work that you do and have done and maybe how you came to be interested in this history as well.

David Nash 2:31

Yes, thank you, Maddy. It's a great pleasure. I came to this history because I was just lucky enough to go to university and catch the very tale of the sort of social history boom that went with the university expansion of the early 1960s. So I got to read a great number of radical historians and follow their ideas. I was interested in the different groups that were involved in the English Civil War and the English Republic, became very interested in 19th century radicalism, and I was lucky enough at uh the University of East Anglia to be taught by uh Patricia Hollis, who was a great doyen of radical history. So when I went beyond that, I looked for something to study and discovered that the secular movement, as a sort of umbrella term, was something that really hadn't been researched at all. The only person who'd ever really done any serious work on it was Edward Royal, and he would quite regularly say that his big book on it, each chapter was just the opening salvo, and that you could have explored all of these areas of research by just following up these leads. And I've almost had a sort of entire career doing precisely that, following up a whole host of ideas. What I'm working on right now is an attempt to look at all the different reasons that 19th century atheists and secularists gave for deciding they disbelieved in God. And what I'm trying to do is to separate these out between those that could be described as ones that are products of the Enlightenment, the archaeological discoveries, historical discoveries, the reinvention of Christianity in a much more symbolic and metaphorical form. Those are products of the 19th century, but there are older ones, the problem of evil, disbelief in certain Christian doctrines that doesn't depend on criticism from the 19th century. I'm getting more interested in the possibility of how those might go further back, deeper into history.

Andrew Copson 4:43

And

Lizzi Collinge MP - How Beliefs Shape Politics

Andrew Copson 4:44

Lizzie, can you tell us something about how you came to enter politics and how your humanism connects with that? Was there anything of the tradition that David has talked about it in your mind as you entered into this career?

Lizzi Collinge MP 4:54

Well, I think my humanism has very much influenced my politics. I think that belief in humans and the value of humans, the belief that this is our one life and this is our only chance, and we need to make a good go of it. And I think we have a moral responsibility that is greater because we only have one life. And that influences a lot of my thinking. I kind of ended up in parliament, and I know that sounds weird, but I feel like I followed a path through the Labour Party, through serving as a local councillor, and sort of ended up here rather than I certainly didn't set my sights on parliament years ago and work towards it. But I think people's beliefs do influence their political beliefs, their political strategies, and what they focus on as a parliamentarian. And I think that's as true for me as it is for anyone else. I think my beliefs in personal autonomy and freedom, what I consider to be humanist beliefs, feminism of individual liberty do influence my thinking. But I think also kindness is a core humanist quality. And I think kindness is something we need as much as possible of in the world. And I think that drives a lot of my politics as well. How can we make a world that is kind and looks after people because people are valuable?

Madeleine Goodall 6:15

I think that's a really lovely way to start off, actually, with that kind of history and thinking about what might have motivated some of the free thinkers and secularists who entered parliament in the 19th century and what their experience might have been. And I suppose how similar or different that might be to now, and looking at what's similar, what's different about both the causes that they were fighting for, and also, as I say, what motivated them to do it. So, in

Introducing Charles Bradlaugh

Madeleine Goodall 6:40

terms of setting the scene of the some of the these big changes, we mentioned the Oaths Act, of course, of the 19th century. David, I wonder if you could maybe introduce Charles Bradlaugh to anyone who hasn't yet met him.

David Nash 6:55

Well, he was born in 1833 in Hoxton in London. And it's interesting that 1833 marks him out very much as a new generation radical, as opposed to the ones who've been active in the 1820s and 1830s. And one of the things that's different about him is those people who were operating in the 1820s and 1830s found their sort of way to human expression and expression of their various beliefs, which were sort of deist, some were atheist. They found them blocked by the establishment. And so what they tried to do, people like Richard Carlyle, people like Robert Owen, they tried to go around the establishment. They tried to do things that weren't involved with it, things that were new and different. Robert Owen, for example, called everything the old immoral world because he was going to establish a new moral world entirely different. And he was so convinced that it was a better world that he asked the king to abdicate and parliament to dissolve itself. So they were trying to go around the establishment. And Bradlaw, as a later generation who hadn't been through Owenism or the Chartist movement, found himself in movements that tried to use the establishment against itself. He was obsessed with the law, he was obsessed with finding legal loopholes. And on many, many occasions, he found legal loopholes to basically stop dangerous prosecutions against him that would have ruined him financially. And so he was interested in the republican movement. So he was using critique, moral critiques of the monarchy that were established middle class ideas against the excesses of the monarchy. So in doing this, he starts to see that you can use the establishment against itself and for causes that we want to push forward. He was quite charismatic. He was known as a great speaker. Lots of people said he wasn't a terribly good writer, but he certainly had the power of speech. He was physically very imposing, he had a strong voice, which some of the earlier Free Thought leaders didn't have. So he attracted a considerable following. And this popular following was something that helped him throughout his attempt to enter parliament. He had admirers far and wide in both the literary world and radical world of London, but also further afield in France and Italy. So he was very much part of that mid-19th century broad Bohemian's the wrong word, but sort of pan-European liberalism. And certainly he would have always seen himself as something of a liberal. And it's interesting that he stepped out and away from the first internationale because he actually attended it and would have conceivably been pulled into socialism. Except he disliked the fact that it didn't protect property properly. But I also think that he didn't himself, he didn't actually like systems, as it were. He saw the socialism as preached by someone like Heinemann as a sort of ridiculously overconstructed superstructure that was against the wishes and benefits of an individual low-level human being. But also, I think he saw Christianity as a system in a similar way. It was a system of checks and balances, it was a system of rewards and punishments, which to someone with a big moral sense, he found it immensely distasteful.

Andrew Copson 10:49

I think that comes along in some of if you read some of his dialogues, doesn't it? That comes across quite clearly. Like his dialogues are like individuals picking holes in the representative of a system. What was the system like at the time? I mean, you know, that he was acting in, because the political system of the time, the justice system of the time, was drenched in Christianity as a sort of framework system above both.

David Nash 11:09

The interesting thing that many people who write in the secularist press of that period do is they try and describe Christianity as a sort of extended hangover. That there are all sorts of bits of performance, bits of symbolic, and in many ways, the whole Bradlaw case is quite symbolic because it's an assault upon the symbolic use of the oath. It's symbolic in the sense that Bradlaw, as the person trying to get the oath removed, is the biggest anti-Christian pariah in that society. He's almost the worst person you can imagine doing it if you are on the other side of the argument. So he is symbolic in many ways as well. But certainly up to this point, the secular movement of the 19th century does a lot of work to try and gain individual rights for secularists. For example, it's impossible for the evidence of an unbeliever to be taken seriously in court till the Oaths Act of 1888. But also, anyone speaking on a platform is potentially in danger of being accused of blasphemy. And this actually certainly happened to the earlier leader of the Second Movement, George Jacob Holyoke, who at a lecture in Cheltenham actually got tricked by two clergymen into blaspheming and spent some time in Cheltenham jail. But blasphemy is still an offence at this time, although it's starting to get discredited because one high-profile case in the 1850s was the exceptionally poor treatment of an individual who's visibly insane who'd been caught writing graffiti on fences in Cornwall. But the big case that changes it is in 1883 when Foote, Ramsey, and Kemp, who published the first issues of The Freethinker, were prosecuted for cartoons and certain articles that appeared in the Christmas number of 1883 in The Freethinker. That case is quite landmarked because it changes the law. It says that it's possible to criticize Christianity, it becomes the manner in which you do it. So there are all these things keeping secularists, deists, atheists out of sections of polite society. Although, as the 1880s go on, with the foot case and Bradle being elected, it's very clear that the knocking on the door is getting louder and louder.

Andrew Copson 13:41

So we have these sort of civil disabilities that non-religious people, or honest non-religious people, maybe we should say, are facing. And this is a time in the early 19th century when the civil disabilities of other minority groups, like Jews, like Catholics, are beginning to be removed or have been removed. You've spoken a little bit about the blasphemy law continuing to bite down on non-religious

The Oaths Act and Its Fallout

Andrew Copson 14:03

people. Tell us now something about the Oaths Act and the actual events surrounding that and Bradlaw's campaign. Because of course there were non-believing people who we would today call humanist MPs before Bradlaw. John Stuart Mill, we know from his own private writings as well as heavily inferring it from his public writings that he was not a God believer, presumably history doesn't record, but he must have taken the oath, mustn't he, and done it on the Bible when he became an MP. So what's exactly at stake, and how did it happen that Bradlaugh ends up being the progenitor of this reform of oaths?

David Nash 14:35

Bradlaw establishes a power base in Northampton and he wins over some key local liberals and wider members of the Liberal Party and gets himself elected. And what happens then is that's quite useful because thereafter he regularly argues that he is being excluded from doing the wishes of his constituents as an duly elected MP. Now he thinks that he can take an affirmation because 10 years earlier there is an act which the Evidence Amendment Act which allows believers in Judeo-Christianity to affirm in court, if they basically were believers, but they didn't want to take the oath. So you've got groups like Jews, Quakers, the sect known as the Moravians, all did not want to take oath for religious reasons, but unbelievers are excluded from that act of 1869-1870. But Bradlaw tries to argue that he can affirm. Now, when he attempts to do so, the sergeant at arms in parliament basically says you are not eligible to affirm. Now, following the ins and outs of the Bradlaw case is very confusing. And I don't propose to do that. But one of the highlights is the fact that at certain points within it, Bradlaw is prepared to take the religious oath. And if we think about what's at stake, that might be one of the most important things. Because some of the secular movement in the country said, hang on, he wanted to affirm. Now he's saying he's going to take their religious oath. That's a sort of betrayal of humanism and secularism, isn't it? But actually there are some other very subtle arguments going on because what Bradlaw was doing was trying to say that the actual religious oath was something of a formality, and it didn't really actually mean anything. And it's interesting that some contemporary writings in the secular press that basically say it's just murmuring. People are brought up with it and they murmur it at various points in their lives, so it doesn't actually mean anything. Therefore, as a good secularist, what you should be wanting is people to affirm their own individual honour. And again, that is something that would have massively pleased a liberal individualist like Charles Bradlaught. And one of the things that ostensibly he's doing, he goes to take the oath. And ostensibly he's saying this is as meaningless to me as many of you sat round in these parliamentary benches. You just went through it as a formality. Why do you think I am necessarily more bound to it than you would be? But of course, the wider politics here is that this is a stick with which to beat the Liberal Party and certainly some parts of the Conservative Party gang of four, who all had previous quarrels with Bradlaugh. They basically do their best to hound Gladstone and the Liberals all over this. But eventually, Bradlaugh does manage to enter parliament, and eventually, just before he dies, the legislation against him and the attacks upon him in Parliament were expunged from the parliamentary record. Although unfortunately, he had lapsed into a coma and never actually heard that this had happened. But the thing about this is the formality of it as an issue was really highlighted by the fact that the that following Parliament, elected in 1892, had over 40 individual MPs took the affirmation. Previously, they would simply have taken the oath without it meaning anything. The oath was discredited before, and it was kicked slightly into touch by the affirmation act. And that act also enabled secularists, atheists, deists to affirm in court so their evidence could be heard. Although, even then, after that, many magistrates actually ignored this and actually ruled their evidence out of court. And vario secular organizations took magistrates to court for doing this.

Andrew Copson 19:06

So, what do you think then was at stake for the opponents of the Oaths Act? Because that's just as interesting a question in a way. If it must be generally acknowledged that people who it was a fact that there were people who were taking the oath and not meaning it, and maybe they were just murmuring, it reminds me what someone asked AJ Eyre once in a different century in the 20th century, why he was happy to say grace at an Oxford College. And he said, Well, I'll never tell a lie, but I don't mind talking nonsense.

David Nash 19:38

One thing that can't be forgotten is that Bradlaw was immensely useful to his p opponents, arguably more useful to his opponents than the people on his own side, because he was at turns an embarrassment. At terms, someone to be lauded and cheered.

Andrew Copson 19:55

Why was he an embarrassment? Because of his bombastic character, the way that he behaved, his anti-anti-Christian activity.

David Nash 20:02

The thing is, he was also an issue that took up a lot of government time. And there were more important things to be done. But there was all sorts of trouble in Ireland, and he was seen as something of a distraction. And some people thought that it should be resolved, or is there any way he could potentially go away as another form of resolution? But this is one of the lessons that if we think about what we could learn from these people, is utter persistence was fundamentally important here. And the opposition eventually couldn't stop him. But Bradle did get his own back because it's worth looking at his parliamentary career once he enters parliament, because he spent a lot of time arguing against British imperialism and indicted some of the people who had gone after him from the opposition benches in earlier times.

Madeleine Goodall 20:56

Was something like this, the OSACs, their efforts to move towards it, Bradlaugh trying to take his seat for six years, having been elected four times? Was it something that was widely discussed and talked about by general people and things like that? Because I'm just thinking something like not too many years before he's elected, Bradlaw and Besant have made a big public storm because of the publication of The Fruits of Philosophy, a birth control tract. And that was something again that made him quite distasteful to lots of people and other kind of parliamentarians. And that certainly was something where actually, you know, that being in the newspapers meant that people were discussing birth control and things around the dinner table, and perhaps in some cases for the first time in the home. Would it have been similar for something like the Oaths Act, or was it something that was really taking place in a slightly different realm of life?

David Nash 21:52

I think as as far as the popularity and influence of the secular movement of its period, it it heyday is. The 1880s and it rides on the back of the Bradlaw case. In some respects, as you said, Maddie, it drags on for six years. To an extent, that's an advantage because it does seem that the establishment is intractable and will deny the democratic rights of Charles Bradlaw's Northampton electors. And it's one of the things he kept going back to that, you know, I am the duly elected MP. And he continued to be elected on this basis. And it was an immensely popular movement at the time, which drew in a great number of working men and women who supported this crusade against what were seen as conservative forces. And one of the things it does do is it really does show the appeal of radicals using democracy as a tool to unlock parts of access to the establishment and what it meant to be a member of parliament. And you'll see this replicated later on with other movements. If we think of the first woman elected to parliament, Konstance Markovitz. This was very obviously a symbolic idea of electing someone to parliament who couldn't take their seat, but it increased visibility and gave much needed publicity to the cause.

Andrew Copson 23:25

Well,

Religious Privilege In Today’s Commons

Andrew Copson 23:26

Lizzie, time moves on, and then we find in the newest parliament, the current parliament, the one that was returned in 2024, for the first time, most Labour MPs used the secular affirmation, and a huge number of MPs in general affirmed, including the Prime Minister, who, although previous Prime Ministers have also affirmed, is the first one for quite a few decades to have done so. Would you have made the sort of fuss the Bradlaw made if you'd still have had to murmur a religious oath?

Lizzi Collinge MP 23:58

Do you know what? I'm not sure. Because I used to take the approach of, oh, it's just murmuring. I'd be at civic events and there'd be the Lord's Prayer. And I'd go, all right, our father are in heaven. But now I've become a bit more staunch. And so during prayers, so in Parliament, the day always starts with prayers, and you are not guaranteed a seat unless you are in for prayers. So I will go into prayers and I will sit down. I won't take part. I'll be very respectful. I'll be quiet. I won't be on my phone, but I won't take part. But also I refuse to wait outside because that is if it starts with prayers and that's the only way to get a seat, then I'm going to be in there.

Andrew Copson 24:38

And they just let you do that, haven't they, the parliamentary authorities? It used to be they would not let you do that, but I think now quite a few of you are doing it.

Lizzi Collinge MP 24:46

Quite a few of us do sit down, and I think that's mostly people like me who are non-religious, but that also includes Muslim MPs who, for obvious reasons, don't wish to take part in Christian worship. And so I'm not really sure what I would have done in that situation. I think I would have wanted my seat and to be in Parliament and doing things. I'm not quite so much of a symbolist. I'm very much a pragmatist. But the way that religion still, and specifically Church of England, still dominates the parliamentary process is, I think, quite shocking to some people because prayers are not broadcast, so they're private. But every time I do a school visit or I talk to people, I talk about this ritual and standing up and having to turn and face the wall and then turn back around again. And people are really shocked and horrified that this is actually part of our everyday work. People are also quite shocked that you know bishops still sit as a right in the House of Lords, not as one of people of many in no faiths who are there for reasons due to their expertise, but as a right. And I think the interesting thing about that I think is less controversial with the public, but has struck me far more is the way that Anglicanism in particular, but religion in general, it is a core part of our civic life. And it's very difficult to take part in civic rituals without them involving religion. So I used to mutter the Lord's Prayer. Now I won't, and I won't close my eyes and bow my head whilst prayers are ongoing. I will sing the hymns, but that's mainly because I like singing and Jerusalem's a banger. But that's just me enjoying myself. And I think it especially if you're brought up in a Christian household, which I was, it doesn't necessarily strike you until you're doing it a lot. And I often feel how exclusionary it must feel for people who either have no faith or have a different faith. It certainly feels exclusionary for me as someone with no faith. And you know, in other areas that are maybe slightly more diverse in my constituency, they might have faith leaders of different faith. But again, it is still excluding a huge proportion of the population who do not adhere to that religion or any religion.

Westminster Traditions That Exclude People

Andrew Copson 27:12

And the Westminster Parliament really is a victim of history in this sense, because if you look at something like the Seneth in Wales or the Scottish Parliament, when they were established, the Seneth is a completely secular body, they don't have any sort of religious aspect to any of their proceedings. The Scottish Parliament has time for reflection before its proceedings. So in the equivalent moment where in the Westminster Parliament there are prayers, Christian Church of England prayers, the Scottish Parliament has one day humanist, one day Buddhist, one day a Church of Scotland minister to talk about is to give some inspiring reflection, as many of our local councils do now as well, although many of them also have prayers still in in England. Whereas the Westminster Parliament, it is history, isn't it? Looking at the Westminster Parliament and the way you conduct your proceedings there, it is quite history.

Lizzi Collinge MP 27:57

All of Parliament is a victim of history. The way we operate is absolutely ridiculous. I had a pile on police guy the other week because I explained to a journalist a convention about something or other. And that's literally all I was doing. But of course, it provokes wider questions. And w we have a system that is not understandable by most people. We do have a modernisation committee, but a lot of people are very reluctant to modernise. I think it's ridiculous that we pass votes by walking round in circles for hours. So it takes 15 minutes to do a vote and we physically walk through the lobby. If we have multiple votes, we just go round and round and round. Passing a budget takes about two and a half hours. And I like to think that I was elected for the use of my brain, not the use of my legs. As well as it being genuinely exclusionary to colleagues who have disabilities who can't do that for two and a half hours. So the whole of parliament is a victim of history and needs a good shaking, to be honest. Now I'm not against having a moment of reflection. I would rather just that be in silence. I don't really want to hear other people rabbiting on, or you know, a few minutes to sit quietly and reflect on the gravity of what you do as a parliamentarian, because it's a very, very serious thing that we do. I think the religious nature of parliamentary rituals is just one pillar of the fact that the UK Parliament operates in a way that is in no way modern, is no way understandable, and is no way sensible for our era. But to be honest, for the last 200 years, it's not made a lot of sense.

Andrew Copson 29:36

Well, David,

Fear Of Change And Anglican Glue

Andrew Copson 29:37

I mean, when the defenders of the religious oath were making their case, as it were, against Bradlaw and the and other people who took his approach, did they see it as a matter of history and tradition, or did they believe that Parliament really should be Christian and that people should have to make Christian oaths? Were there actually people seriously arguing that even at the time in the 1880s?

David Nash 29:55

They were arguing, but I suppose what we need to think about is what's behind their arguments. And a lot of it is quite like the same arguments against the retention of the blasphemy law. That's it's quite interesting when you get popular opinion writing to the Home Office about things associated with the law liberalizing in favour of free thinkers and secularists. Because you get a lot of people who think that things are inextricably linked. The monarch's oath is linked to parliament and parliament oaths. And you do get people saying if you pick at any of this, it's a big tall edifice. If you pick at any of this, it will become crashing down. And what they mean by crashing down is England, and we remember we as we said earlier when we were talking about this, we are talking about England, and people do talk about England and not Britain when they say this. England is the country that spared all the revolutions of the 19th century that happened throughout the rest of Europe. Therefore, God is obviously looking down on England and blessing it. Therefore, if we tamper with the establishment, then it will sort of be providential that we will be judged for doing this. And bad things will happen to England and the English. But people were saying that people were saying this, and you can read letters going ending up in the Home Office. You can read them from the 1890s, from the 1920s, 1930s. And what did really surprise me was when I gave evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Religious Offences in 2002, you were getting these same letters out there in England. There is a belief that the edifice of Crown, Parliament, is all held together by this sort of Anglican religious glue. It's a shame, isn't it?

Andrew Copson 31:59

Because I mean I attended the coronation and I remember thinking halfway through, gosh, this, and I'm not a monarchist personally, but uh there were aspects of the coronation that seemed meaningful. If you are going to have a constitutional monarchy, there were bits of it that seemed meaningful. But then there were the Christian bits that were profoundly alienating. So you thought, okay, yeah, I can understand this this person is the constitutional monarch. Maybe I would prefer another system, but he's taking this promise that he's going to abide by the constitution, that he's going to defend democracy and the rule of law and that the system that we have. And then suddenly the Anglican bits came in, and you thought, oh, now I've now it's lost me. Now it's become a very particular and peculiar and niche ceremony all of a sudden. Whereas it could be more universal. So I think these things there's an opposite argument that can be made that we need a new glue that could stick us together. And I guess, Maddie, that brings us to some of the humanists who are more active in the parliamentary humanist group and in parliament as humanists in the 20th century. I know you've done a lot of research and uncovering a lot of their stories, and they were responsible, weren't they, for some of the significant social progress that was made in the 20th century.

Madeleine Goodall 33:04

Yeah,

Humanist MPs And Social Reform

Madeleine Goodall 33:05

absolutely. And I think that's something there's kind of two things to it that and uh comes back a bit to what Lizzie was saying earlier about the incredibly meaningful, important work that is is taking place, and you don't want to be excluded from that. You had uh these people, Leo Absey, Barbara Wootton, people who were really championing and successful in getting past all sorts of reforms from decriminalisation of homosexuality, abortion laws, divorce law reform, all these things that were were really major and also brought lots and lots of people together, both within the humanist movement and more broadly, these causes that that do unite people across across religion and belief as as much as political lines as well. So, yeah, absolutely, there's this huge impact in this huge the these big changes that that were able to take place and have been able to take place sometimes and often, in fact, very much under the banner of of humanism by those people.

Andrew Copson 34:09

And is there a way in which this is a single story? I mean, can you sketch as a historian of humanism the story from the Oaths Act to the progress in the mid-20th century?

David Nash 34:17

One can always draw direct lines between things. But it's how tenuous you think that link, isn't it? I would certainly prefer to think of this as a range of episodes. But particularly if one thinks about the blasphemy laws, because what seems to always happen is that there is some sort of flurry of small cases, and then the issue goes away. And then a subsequent generation always thinks it's just discovered this law for itself. And the latest latest real important episode of that was the gay news case of the late 1970s, which really came out of nowhere, and lawyers had to go and scrabble around and find out what the law actually was, which caused a lot of amusement and a lot of valuable time was spent doing this. So yeah, I always tend to think of these as episodes. There are reasons that they come back.

Madeleine Goodall 35:20

No, I think there is something occurred to me as you were talking there as well about that. We've talked about, I guess, kind of the bars to non-religious participation in parliament. But then also there's the and there's the kind of challenging of that. And then there's the challenging of the ways that in which kind of religious privilege and religious influence exists in some of those causes that have been fought and you know are still being fought in in certain areas that need reform or that have been reformed. The Christian arguments, or particularly the Catholic arguments against abortion, for example, that, you know, had to be battled in the lead up to the passage of that act and then constantly defended afterwards as well. And these kind of those arguments from a religious standpoint that aren't just, or maybe they are partly you're immoral, you're not thinking about this in the right way because you're not led by God, you're not inspired by or following a holy text.

Lizzi Collinge MP 36:17

That argument is still being made today, even in Parliament, that morality comes from an underpinning religious belief. But even if you don't have faith that morality is based on religion, that argument is still being made in parliament. And it's one that I don't think a majority ascribe to now, but it's still being made. And it's and I still think that vague idea in the back of people's head that faith equals morality or religion equals morality, I think is quite strong.

Andrew Copson 36:48

And the atmosphere of parliament doesn't help.

Madeleine Goodall 36:51

And I was just thinking as well, in terms of that, you know, that's the that's the idea that underpins this, the notion behind something like the Oaths Act. You can't trust somebody to give evidence in court if they don't believe in God, because what are they, what's that rooted in? Can you trust them? Same with can't trust somebody to uphold the law or do those things if they're not, if they're not guided by that. So that assumption, in that sense, it does, I guess you can that's a thread you can perhaps pull through uh through all of these things and these changes and the efforts of all the people that have been involved trying to tackle that, whether it's said out loud or whether, like you say, Lizzie, it's just this almost subconscious, not quite acknowledged notion that that underlies these things.

David Nash 37:37

Perhaps that is one of these long-term threats, the quest, the quest to detach morality from religious belief.

Andrew Copson 37:46

So much could be said about the last 150 years of explicitly humanist activism in Parliament and beyond in the political world. We've only begun to say it here today, a bit like your historians that you started with, David, who every chapter could be a book in itself, and every thread of this conversation could be followed up for hours and hours and hours. But we haven't got all the time in the world, so it's been great to have you both today.

Favourite Atheists Plus Where To Learn More

Andrew Copson 38:07

We've been asking all of our guests one last killer question, which is out of the people that we've mentioned, or other people from humanist history, who is your favourite, who is your favourite character? And so we're going to ask that question to you. You both look slightly panicked by us because you've got so many things.

Lizzi Collinge MP 38:23

I think for me, I don't like heroes because I think people are very fallible. So I like to pick things that different people have done and think about that. And I'm a generalist, I'm a dabbler. I was thinking the other day about Emma Goldman, the anarchist, who, whilst I'm not, I'm not an anarchist and I don't hold with anarchism, she did great stuff around promoting birth control and queer rights as well. She was extremely unusual for her day. And in the history of socialism, we have not always been very good at feminism and queer rights at all. I was thinking about all the other day and the way that he saw through the USSR and had no time for my enemy's enemy is my friend. I think that was really important at a time when a lot on the left and a lot of humanists and secularists were taken in by what was a brutal regime. And I do like Mill. I'm very fond of Mill, not least because he writes well. And to be honest, that's half the battle. I remember trying to read Burke many years ago and giving up because it was dull as ditch water. Never mind being wrong, David.

David Nash 39:24

I suppose when I think about it, one of the people Patricia Hollis introduced me to was a man called Henry Heatherington, who crossed he he crossed over from being a straight political radical into also being an infidel, as they were called then. And he was the owner and did a lot of editing of the big unstamped newspaper called The Poor Man's Guardian of the 1830s. And what would happen is he would when sales of his newspaper plummeted, he would get himself arrested so that it'd be a court case and you know a show trial and people to start buying the paper again. And I remember there was one occasion he was brought to basically the committal hearing to see whether they would take him, take it on to a further court case. And they they asked him in court various things, and he said, they said, We are going to commit you for trial. The time to turn up and the place to turn up is such and such. And Henry Heatington says, Very nice of you to invite me to that, but I'm afraid I can't come to that particular case. I can't come to that hearing. And they said, Why not? And he said, Because I'm too busy selling radical newspapers.

Madeleine Goodall 40:39

He's a nice one to round off with, actually, because he had when he uh died on his the hearse travelling to Kensal Green Cemetery, and the words that were were on the hearse were we ought to endeavor to leave the world better than we found it, which feels very appropriate for the themes of today and the the work of humanist politicians now, I suppose.

Andrew Copson 41:01

And if listeners want to find out more about our guests' work, then Lizzie Collinge has her own website, LizzieCollinge.com. And David, where can listeners find out more about your work?

David Nash 41:10

The uh Jesus College website, Jesus College Oxford.

Andrew Copson 41:14

Very good. And do buy some of David's many books, every single one of them, full of the sort of treats that we've been experiencing in this episode today. So thank you both. Thank you for listening to Unholy Histories, the Humanist Heritage Podcast, brought to you by Humanists UK. To join, support, or find out more about Humanist UK's campaigns and services, visit humanists.uk or you can follow us on social media at Humanists.uk. This podcast was produced by Humanize Live. Find out more about creating content for compassionate communities at www.humanize.live.

Madeleine Goodall 41:47

You can find out more about the rich history and influence of humanism on the Humanist Heritage website at heritage.humanist.uk