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Download PDF Version of Vol. 118 No. 11 Ethical Record The Proceedings of the Conway Hall Ethical Society Vol. 118 No. 11 £1.50 December 2013 EDITORIAL - A CONVENIENT TIME TO ‘FIRE’ TRIDENT? The recent publication of a document outlining the plans for an independent Scotland raised the question of how such a state would defend itself. The document suggested that the process of shutting down the UK’s submarine base in Faslane should be started. Naturally, that would not please the British Government, which would have the difficult job of building another base somewhere else. So the UK began presenting spurious arguments against this possibility, such as that Scotland would be excluded from NATO. But having nuclear weapons is not a condition of membership of NATO; the USA, the UK and (when it feels like it) France, are the only nuclear powers in NATO. In any case, Scotland can offer other military assets to NATO involving much less risk to itself. The real point is that Faslane is a strategic weakness in the Trident system because it’s a fixed target of major importance. The advantage of being able to launch one’s missiles from submarines when at sea is their (alleged) untraceability and hence invulnerability – but the base represents a quite unnecessary danger to Scotland. I hope its days are numbered. Public pressure famously forced the UK to remove those US missiles which could be launched from England. It’s time, therefore, to cancel the costly proposals for new subs and mothball the existing ones. The UK is treaty-bound to oppose nuclear proliferation, a deadly threat to the world, which it won’t achieve unless it demonstrates the will to lead the world’s ‘2nd eleven’ nuclear powers (ie, ALL except the big two, USA and Russia) in a scheme for multilateral nuclear disarmament. Now that would be cricket. ‘INFIDEL FEMINISM’ IN VICTORIAN FREETHOUGHT Laura Schwartz 3 MATHS ON TRIAL: HOW NUMBERS GET USED AND ABUSED IN THE COURTROOM Coralie Colmez 8 NEW ADDITIONS TO THE HUMANIST LIBRARY Cathy Broad 12 SCIENCE AND THE RISE OF ATHEISM Russell Blackford 13 BOOk REvIEW: HUMANISM FOR INQUIRING MINDS by Barbara Smoker Christopher Tofallis 17 VIEWPOINTS M McCarthy, D Rooum, B Smoker, D Langdown 18 BOOk REvIEW: DANGEROUS LIAISONS: THE CLASH BETWEEN ISLAMISM AND ZIONISM by Rumy Hasan Mazin Zeki 21 ONE DEATH ON THE SOMME Jennifer R Jeynes 22 FORTHCOMING EVENTS 24 CONWAY HALL ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. www.conwayhall.org.uk CONWAY HALL ETHICAL SOCIETY General Committee 13 November 2013 At this meeting the following were elected: Chairman: Liz Lutgendorff; Vice-Chair: Giles Enders Treasurer: Carl Harrison; Editor: Norman Bacrac {Please email texts and viewpoints for the Editor to: [email protected] } The following appointments were made by the GC on 13 November 2013: Finance & Audit Sub-committee Carl Harrison (Chair), Chris Bratcher, Giles Enders, Jay Ginn, Liz Lutgendorff, James O’Malley. Education & Arts Advisory Group James O’Malley (Chair), Norman Bacrac, Chris Bratcher, Simon Callaghan, Susan Curtis-Kojakovic. Andrew Copson would be invited to be a member of this group. Library Advisory Group Jim Walsh (Chair), Norman Bacrac, Carl Harrison, Liz Lutgendorff. AGM OF CONWAY HALL ETHICAL SOCIETY, 10 NOVEMBER 2013 The following were elected to the General Committee for 3 year terms: Chris Bratcher, Susan Curtis-Kojakovic, James O’Malley and Evan Parker and for the 1 year term, Stewart Ware. Existing members are Norman Bacrac, Simon Callaghan, Giles Enders, Jay Ginn, Carl Harrison, Liz Lutgendorff and Terry Mullins. Re-elected as Holding Trustees at the AGM were Norman Bacrac, Terry Mullins and Fiona Weir. Existing Holding Trustees are: Chris Bratcher, John Edwards, Giles Enders, Jay Ginn, Jim Herrick, Stephen Norley and Stewart Ware. The AGM made the following Resolution (in part): That in all publicity for the Society and its activities, the words ‘Ethical Society’ appear at least as prominently as the words ‘Conway Hall’. New Members We welcome the following to the Society: Tom Beaton, Isleworth, Twickenham ; P J Corrigan, Hackney, London ; Deborah Waters, Wapping, London Obituary We regret to report the death of member Graham Kemish of Orpington. Graham died on the 16th November 2013, after having contracted pneumonia which did not respond to antibiotics. Staff Chief Executive Officer: Jim Walsh Tel: 020 7061 6745 [email protected] Administrator: Martha Lee Tel: 020 7061 6741 [email protected] Finance Officer: Linda Lamnica Tel: 020 7061 6740 [email protected] Librarian: Catherine Broad Tel: 020 7061 6747 [email protected] Hon. Archivist Carl Harrison carl @ethicalsoc.org.uk Programme Co-ordinator: Sid Rodrigues Tel: 020 7061 6744 [email protected] Lettings Officer: Carina Dvorak Tel: 020 7061 6750 [email protected] Caretakers: Eva Aubrechtova (i/c) Tel: 020 7061 6743 [email protected] together with: Brian Biagioni, Sean Foley, Tony Fraser, Rogerio Retuerma Maintenance: Zia Hameed Tel: 020 7061 6742 [email protected] 2 Ethical Record, December 2013 ‘INFIDEL FEMINISM’ IN VICTORIAN FREETHOUGHT Laura Schwartz, Warwick University Lecture at Conway Hall, 29 October 2013, organised by the Freethought History Research Group, the Socialist History Society and Conway Hall Ethical Society as part of its ‘Alternatives to Religion’ series The nineteenth-century Secularist movement is generally perceived as a largely masculine affair. Secularism did boast a small but active number of prominent female advocates and, even more strikingly, the movement also generated a distinctive brand of Freethinking or ‘Infidel Feminism’. How are we to understand the emergence of such strong support for women’s rights within a male-dominated, and potentially ‘macho’, movement? Harriet Law I will focus on the figure of Harriet Law -- the infamous Secularist lecturer and journalist who began her career in the 1850s when the Secular societies were newly emerging, and retired in 1879 when the movement was nearing the height of its powers. Women made up only about 12% of membership of the Secular societies. And yet, formally at least, Secularist structures were uncommonly open to female participation. Both men and women were permitted to run for executive positions in the National Secular Society, the British Secular Union and the Freethought League. For example, Harriet Law was president of the Freethought League in 1869 and was repeatedly elected to (but declined) the position of vice president of the National Secular Society. Annie Besant was elected to this position in 1875. At a local level, Secular societies were relatively unusual in that their meetings, lectures and branch membership were open to women. My book, Infidel Feminism , looks at women who gained prominence within nineteenth and early twentieth-century Secularism as journalists, authors, and, perhaps most interestingly, as public lecturers. Freethought had been home to a current of radical thinking on women’s position in society since the early 1800s. The Freethinker and radical bookseller Richard Carlile published Every Woman’s Book, Or What is Love? in 1826, which provided information about birth control and gave a positive portrayal of female sexuality. In the 1830s and 40s, Owenite Freethought condemned the institution of marriage and the oppression of women in the capitalist system. These pro- woman arguments continued in the newly formed Secularist societies from the 1850s onwards. By the 1880s all but one of the Secularist leaders (William Stuart Ross) supported the enfranchisement of women and the main Freethought journals, such as The Reasoner , The National Reformer and the Secular Chronicle , often contained calls for an end to women’s oppression the cause of which they, unsurprisingly, attributed to religion… In 1877 Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant deliberately engineered their own prosecution for the publication of a birth control pamphlet, in order to highlight the need for free access to such information. Ethical Record, December 2013 3 Harriet Law, before her conversion to an atheist brand of Freethought, had been a pious member of the Baptist church. Harriet Law was born in Ongar, Essex in 1831, the daughter of a farmer. She was moderately educated but impecunious. On arriving in London she began teaching in a Sunday school. As a pious member of the Baptist Church, she attended the Philpot Street Secularist Hall where the leading Freethinker, George Jacob Holyoake, was giving his new vision for a national network of Secular societies. As usual, the speaker’s remarks were followed by open discussion amongst the audience, during which the young Harriet Law rose from her seat and forcibly challenged Holyoake with ‘Christian arguments’. Holyoake, impressed by her rhetorical skill, argued back. Over the next few months Law attended many meetings of this kind, where she debated with the speaker and tried to defend Christianity in the face of Secularist criticism. She became increasingly persuaded, however, of the arguments put forward by the Freethinkers and, in 1855, she converted to their cause. Harriet Law’s ‘path to atheism’ may have been dramatic, but it was not all that unusual. Almost all the women who appear in my book Infidel Feminism had, prior to their conversion to Freethought, been devoted adherents of various Christian churches. (In fact, Harriet Law often modelled herself on an earlier Freethinking feminist who had been involved in the Owenite Socialist movement. Emma Martin had been a strict Baptist and pillar of her chapel in Bristol before converting to atheism and socialism, leaving her dreary husband and running off to London with her four daughters to join the struggle. This fusion of a rejection of a religion with a rejection of patriarchal authority in one’s personal life is a common motif in the lives of many of these ‘infidel feminists’. Annie Besant, for example, also left her husband (a vicar) when she threw off her religious faith.
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