Ethical Record the Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society
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Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 107 No. 1 £1.50 Jan-Feb, 2002 THE GENOCIDAL PRIMATE - A NOTE ON HOLOCAUST DAY When one sees how violent mankind has been, both to itself and to other species, it appears that, of the contemporary primate species, we have more in common with the spiteful meat-eating chimp than with the placid, vegetarian gorilla or the recently discovered, furiously promiscuous bonobo chimp. Our ancestors probably wiped out the Neanderthals in the course of their territorial disputes and with the final triumph of homo 'sapiens', rationalisations for genocide began to be invented (see the terrible 1 Sam. 15.3). Science tells us that human behaviour is the outcome of influences working throughout life on a plastic, gene-filled embryo. Now humanists are frequently expected, mistakenly in my view, to have faith in the natural goodness and inevitable progress of mankind. It would be more accurate however to believe in neither goodness nor evil as innate, embodied qualities. To be a humanist, it is sufficient to realise that we are each bound to justify our actions ourselves and, in strict logic, cannot defer our morality to any authority, real or imagined. The complicity of religious authorities in permitting agents of the Nazi genocidal machine to bear the 'Gott mit uns' (God is with Us) badge should be seen as an indelible blot on the ecclesiastical record. Death- camp inmates did well to ask 'Where is our God?' as their co-religionists choked in their Zyklon B 'showers'. To preserve the sentimental notion of a just God, some 'holocaust theologians' even stoop to blaming the victims. On 27 January, Holocaust Day, we remember the genocides which have scarred the C20. The three articles in this issue illustrate the vital part brave and committed individuals can play in endeavouring to alleviate the human condition. WILLIAM DAVIDSON: HERO OF CATO STREET Vidya Anand 3 GARIBALDI: HERO OF ITALIAN LIBERATION Jasper Ridley 10 CARL VON OSSIETZKY - FIGHTER AGAINST FASCISM Ian King 17 SPES AND VISUAL ART: THE WORK OF JOHN ROSSER Malcom Rees 22 VIEWPOINTS:Derek • Hill, Roy Silson 23 EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY 24 SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WCIR 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8034 Fax: 020 7242 8036 website: www.ethicalsoe.org.uk email: [email protected] Officers Chairman of the GC: Terry Mullins Hon. Representative: Don Liversedge Vice Chairman: Malcolm Rees Registrar: Edmund McArthur Editor, Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac SPES Staff Administrative Secretary to the Society: Marina Ingham Tel:020 7242 8034 Librarian/Programme Coordinator: Jennifer Jeynes M.Sc. Tel: 020 7242 8037 Lettings Manager: Peter Vlachos M.A. For Hall bookings: Tel: 020 7242 8032 Caretakers' Office: Tel: 020 7242 8033 New Members We are glad to welcome as new members:- Dr. Tanima Dave, London SE21; Dr. Leslie Massey, London SW4; David Osmond, Barnet, Herts and Geoffrey Coulson, Sheffield. VACANCY FOR HON. TREASURER The South Place Ethical Society has a vacancy for the post of Hon. Treasurer. Please contact the Admin. Sec. for further details SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY CONWAY HALL HUMANIST CENTRE 25 Red Lion Square, London WCIR 4RL Reg. Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aims are: the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in relevant fields. We invite to membership those who reject supernatural creeds and are in sympathy with our aims. At Conway Hall the programme includes Sunday lectures, discussions, evening courses and the renowned South Place Sunday Concerts of chamber music. The Society maintains a Humanist Reference Library. The Society's journal, Ethical Record, is issued ten times a year. Funerals and Memorial meetings may be arranged. The annual subscription is £18 (fl2 if a full-time student, unwaged or over 65). The views expressed in this Journal are not necessarily those of the Society. 2 Ethical Record, Jan-Feb, 2002 WILLIAM DAVIDSON - CARIBBEAN HERO OF CATO STREET Vidya Ana nd Lecture to the Ethical Society, 22 April 2001 The last time I addressed you was on the 16Ist anniversary of the emancipation of the slaves. This battle, although its victory was symbolically enshrined in legislation enacted in 1838, was, like all gains of working and oppressed people, the fruit of tenacious and selfless struggles waged by the abolitionists, men like Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce. Granville Sharpe and many others. Like all those who take a stand for liberty and for what is right, they faced and surmounted the ridicule, venom and worse of those who believed, in their perversity, that the most infamous and wicked cruelty represented a natural and God-given state of affairs that on no account was to be tampered with. Slavery had stirred the conscience of a nation by the publication in 1773, anonymously, of 'A Poetical Epistle Of A Dying Negro'. What ultimately rendered slavery inoperable and futile was the courageous struggles of the slaves themselves, whether in the form of the Haitian revolution of Toussaint I'Ouverture, the indomitable Maroons of Jamaica, or those slaves who used every ounce of their strength and intelligence to find a way to escape from their chains. In the words of an Irish rebel song: Those men who would rather have died than live in the cold chains of bondage. The English Themselves Were Not Free Therefore today, I shall take as my subject the outstanding contribution of a noble, learned and revolutionary son of the Caribbean who did something that was quite extraordinary. One of the bitter ironies of the era of which we speak, that of the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, was that the English themselves were not a free people. The other irony is that it was a Caribbean who played a pivotal role in a heroic attempt to strike a crushing blow against the tyrannical ruling class so that it might be replaced with a genuine classless democracy. William Davidson was a Jamaican born in Kingston in 1786. His father was the Attorney General, a man of considerable legal knowledge, talent and wealth, who sent his son to England at an early age to study law and he was articled to a firm of solicitors in Liverpool. However, he did not find the legal profession to his liking. He was then press-ganged into service on a merchant vessel. Press-ganging was a euphemistic term for kidnapping. Unsuspecting young, physically fit men on their way home from a tavern or some other activity would be overpowered by a gang of men, agents of the Admiralty. Generally, little more would be heard of the victims by their families. They were now 'in the service' and subject to its harsh, unremitting and often lethal discipline. Such was the fate that befell the powerfully built William Davidson and his fellow victims who were forced to serve for a period in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars. Following his enforced spell at sea, he again lived for a time in Liverpool, but subsequently moved to Birmingham where he started his own very successful business. Ethica/ Record, Jan-Feb, 2002 3 Following a further move to London. Davidson hired a cottage at 12, Elliot Row, near Lords old cricket ground in Marylebone at an annual rent of £22. A disciple and admirer of Thomas Paine, Davidson joined Marylebone Reading Society, a group of radicals formed in response to the Peterloo massacre, meeting in Davidson's house. According to a contemporary intelligence report, sometimes as many as twenty people were seen entering it. There were such groups all over England. In 1819 in a radical meeting in Smithfield. William Davidson was entrusted to guard the radical banner from capture by the police. It was a black flag with skull and cross bones inscribed with the following words: 'Let us die like men, not be sold like slaves.' Speaking about Davidson, Thislewood recorded that Davidson would have killed right and left if an attempt had been made by the police to seize the banner. It was a time of political ferment and social and political upheaval. A Black Interior Designer While all this was going on, Davidson acquired a decorating business with offices in Haymarket. His skills and his imaginative aesthetic and design sense brought him a lot of work. Just imagine, ladies and gentlemen, a black interior designer being called upon by Lord Harrowby, Lord President of the Council, to decorate his house in Grosvenor Square - another part of our 'hidden history'. This opulent mansion was, by one of those rare coincidences of which history is so fond, the unlikely venue of the famed and revolutionary Cato Street conspiracy. William Davidson was a political visionary whose instinctive revulsion against social cruelty was increasingly influenced by the writings of Thomas Paine and other contemporary radicals. Paine was well known to some of the masterminds of the French Revolution of 1789 and his republican views were much admired by the revolutionaries. It is now widely acknowledged that the anti-monarchical American Revolution also owed much to the teachings of Paine. Davidson also drew liberally from a strong, indigenous revolutionary tradition: the indomitable Maroons and leaders of scores of uprisings which inflicted countless humiliating defeats on the British imperialist armies and the forces of the local plantocracy. The 'new world order', again to borrow a contemporary phrase, of the post- Napoleonic war period was to mark the rise to hegemony of the world's largest and perhaps most ruthless empire.