Ethical Record The Proceedings of the Conway Hall Ethical Society

Vol. 118 No. 6 £1.50 July 2013 BARBARA SMOKER’S 90th BIRTHDAY PARTY

Photo: Andrew Philippou Sunday , 2 June 2013, being Barbara Smoker’ s 90th birthday, and in recognition of her 62 years active membership (during which time she had been elected to all its major posts) of the Ethical Society , it s GC offered to fund a celebration for her in Conway Hall ’s main hall. As a result, a splendid buffet luncheon was prepared by members of the Society and by members of the Shaw Society (which she had joined even earlier – in Shaw’ s own lifetime ). Among the 158 guests there were three former chairmen of SPES — four if we include Barbara herself. Pasted along one wall were two-dozen photographs (selected from our archives by our librarian and enlarged ) of Barbara, with various notables including Michael Foot, Hermann Bondi and Harold Blackham. The display of birthday cards, standing side by side, reached right across the stage, wh ile long strands of glittery letter Bs hung down from the balcony. When Barbara made the first incision in the big iced cake, everyone sang “Happy Birthday”. (see page 17)

WHEN FALL APART - THE FRAGMENTATION OF A SECT David V Barrett 3 SURVIVING CREATIONIST SCHOOLS Jonny Scaramanga 7 THE RISE OF THE LAPTOP LIZARDS: THE NIGHTINGALE COLLABORATION Alan Hennessy 10 ONE LAW FOR ALL – CAMPAIGNING AGAINST SHARIA AND RELIGIOUS LAWS Anne Marie Waters 15 TRIBUTES AT BARBARA SMOKER’S 90TH BIRTHDAY PARTY 17 FORTHCOMING EVENTS 24 CONWAY HALL ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, WC1R 4RL. Main phone for all options: 020 7405 1818 Fax (lettings): 020 7061 6746 www.conwayhall.org.uk G.C. Chairman: Chris Bratcher G.C. Vice-chairman: Giles Enders Editor: Norman Bacrac Please email texts and viewpoints for the Editor to: [email protected] 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 Maintena nce: Zia Hameed Tel: 020 7061 6742 [email protected] New Members We welcome the following new members to the Society: Geoffrey Cantor, London, N4; Elaine Giedrys-Leeper, London, SE21; John Hunt, Isleworth; Helen Keenan, London, SW16; Sean Kennedy, London, N1 0NT; Clair Lester, Watford; Robert Mould, Maidenhead; Terri Murray, London. NW5, Andreea Pirvu, London SE16; John Webb, Southampton; Tom Weston, London, SE26.

CONWAY HALL ETHICAL SOCIETY 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 and 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 Conway Hall Sunday Concerts of chamber music. The Society maintains a Humanist Library and Archives. The Society’s journal, Ethical Record , is issued monthly. Memorial meetings may be arranged. The annual subscription is £35 (£25 if a full-time student, unwaged or over 65)

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2 Ethical Record, July 2013 WHEN RELIGIONS FALL APART - THE FRAGMENTATION OF A SECT David V Barrett Lecture to the Ethical Society, 12 May 2013 In the mid-1930s an unsuccessful American advertising executive, Herbert W Armstrong, founded a millenarian, Sabbatarian Christian sect with a heterodox theology, the Radio , renamed the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) in 1968. Religions rarely spring out of nowhere. WCG’s teachings were drawn largely from the Church of God, Seventh Day, which had common roots with the Seventh-day Adventist Church which was founded in 1860 in the wake of the ‘Great Disappointment’ of 1844 when the expected Second Coming [Of Jesus Christ {Ed.}] didn’t occur. Armstrong was God’s Prophet First and foremost was obedience to God, and this included obeying the fourth Commandment, to worship on the seventh day, the Sabbath, Saturday, not on the first day of the week as most Christians do. It was millenarian, expecting the imminent return of Jesus. It was also British-Israelite, believing that the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel ended up in Britain, that the (and by extension the Americans) are the physical as well as the spiritual descendants of Israel, and that all biblical prophecy about Israel refers to Britain and America today. Many of its other beliefs were different from mainstream Christianity; for example, it taught that the Trinity was a false doctrine. Armstrong was God’s appointed Prophet, his Apostle to the 20th century, restoring the true teachings of Christianity after nearly 2,000 years. For the members, these teachings and the practical impact of them on their lives – such as being unable to work on Saturdays, and strict adherence to the Hebrew rules on ‘unclean’ foods like pork and shellfish – were part of their social construction of reality, the meaningful framework of their lives. Over the next half century, despite a number of setbacks and scandals, and criticisms and attacks from former members and anti-cultists amongst others, Armstrong’s Church grew to around 100,000 baptised members, with a world circulation of over six million for its flagship monthly magazine Plain Truth . In January 1986 Armstrong died in his 94th year. And then everything changed. Armstrong’s successor Joseph W Tkach gradually withdrew all Armstrong’s books and booklets and started changing the Church’s doctrines. In a Church in which strict top-down authority was a fundamental tenet of , Tkach’s doctrinal changes set up a conflict in members: how could they continue to accept the authority of the leadership of the one true Church which God had caused Armstrong to found and had called them to join, now that it had rejected all the truths which the man they believed was God’s Apostle had taught them for half a century? Resolving the Tension These conflicting demands – the authority of the leadership and the authority of Armstrong’s teachings – were cognitively dissonant elements; both were vitally Ethical Record, July 2013 3 important to the members, but how could the tension between them be resolved? One minister found the solution. Gerald Flurry left the Worldwide Church of God in 1989 to found the Philadelphia Church of God, writing, “We are not rebelling – we are taking a stand against those who are!” Other ministers and members joined him. Three or four years later the longest-serving senior evangelist in WCG, Roderick Meredith, left to set up the Global Church of God. The last major group, the , left following Joseph W Tkach’s Christmas Eve sermon in 1994 in which he detailed all the changes in doctrine, including embracing trinitarianism, and announced that Worldwide was now an Evangelical Church.

Hundreds of ministers and tens of thousands of members of WCG who refused to ‘convert’ to conventional Christianity and wanted to hold fast to the beliefs which were central to their lives, left WCG to join these new Churches. Although doctrinally very similar to an outsider’s gaze, they formed a spectrum from hardline (Philadelphia COG) to comparatively liberal (United COG). Over the coming years these three Churches, and others which had split away from WCG, themselves split, forming many new small Churches, which then continued to fragment; by 2009 when I completed my doctoral study the WCG offshoots were estimated to number around 400. My study on the Worldwide Church of God and its offshoots told this story in some detail: the origins, history and doctrines of the Church, its controversies and its troubled decade of the 1970s when Herbert W Armstrong threw out his own son Garner Ted Armstrong for being too liberal (and for not keeping his trousers buttoned); then I described the revolutionary doctrinal changes after Armstrong’s death, and detailed the variety of the schismatic Churches that upheld what they believed was the Truth against, from their viewpoint, the heretical teachings of WCG’s new leaders.

4 Ethical Record, July 2013 The Emic and the Etic Approaches My research was sociological, but also strongly influenced by the phenomenological approach to religious studies promoted by the late Prof Ninian Smart of Lancaster University. He called this ‘informed empathy’ – a combination of epoché (suspension of judgement or belief) and empathy. This involves listening to what believers say about their own beliefs and practices while practising methodological agnosticism, i.e. not judging the spiritual truth of these beliefs. It means treating other people’s worldviews with respect. Whether we are sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers etc, it’s essential that we study people, individually and collectively, as they are , whatever we ourselves might think of their beliefs. We need to take account of the meaningful framework of their lives, otherwise we’re studying an incomplete picture. The phenomenological researcher uses two approaches in tandem, the emic approach, telling the believers’ stories, and the etic approach, standing back as an objective observer to enable an analytical overview. The social sciences, like the physical sciences, can sometimes be caught up in the trap of trying to force reality into predetermined theoretical constructs. This is something I am thoroughly opposed to. Although I have designed theoretical models, ideal types for categorising data, they are simply tools which can be useful, but are not determinative. Reality is a lot messier than theory. My model for examining what might happen to a after the death of its founder is useful for both descriptive categorisation and comparison between different religions. I posited two pairs of factors which, in various combinations, can lead to different outcomes. These are that the religion stays broadly the same (stasis) or it changes, and that it does either of these with stability or instability. Stable stasis simply leads to the religion continuing more or less as before its founder’s death. Unstable stasis is likely to lead, over a period of time, to dissolution: the religion fades and dies. Stable change leads to the religion reforming and developing; depending on one’s stance, some might see this as revolution. Unstable change leads to , fragmentation. Introducing another dimension to the model, the religion can become increasingly convergent with or divergent from more mainstream religion and wider society. This is just one of many factors that can affect what happens to a religion after its founder’s death – perhaps the most important of which is the second leader, whose job it is to turn the movement from a personality cult dependent on the charismatic authority of its founder into a more organised and structured religion with what Weber called rational-legal authority. The personality, interests, skills and strengths of the second leader are crucial to this transformation. Some religions change so markedly under a strong second leader that he is effectively a second founder: Brigham Young with the Mormons, ‘Judge’ Rutherford with the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Ethical Record, July 2013 5 I was also interested in why ministers and members who had left WCG for an offshoot Church would then leave that to join another, and in many cases a third or fourth; what led them to choose one Church over another? Or as I phrased it: amongst these 400 offshoot Churches, who went where and why? In their 2000 book Acts of Faith , two of the foremost theorists of sociology of religion, Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, using rational choice theory, said that people choose to reaffiliate – to leave their current Church to join a new group within the same religious tradition – depending on the balance of two factors; these are social capital, things like whether your family and friends are members of your Church, and religious capital, how important the beliefs and practices of the Church are to you. I found that their theory wasn’t sufficient to explain the reality, the complexity of choices of former Worldwide members. A Third Factor – Moral Capital If theory and reality are at variance, the theory must be changed, even (or especially!) if this means challenging academic authority. I extended Stark and Finke’s use of these two factors, adding a third factor, moral capital – basically the effect of past experience. This could be different things in different cases, but in the case of former Worldwide members it came down to one hugely important factor: how much members liked and trusted their Church leaders, which depended partly on how members had been treated by them as ministers in the past – going right back to the turbulent decade of the 1970s. I asked members to respond to hypothetical scenarios in each of which they had to choose one of two Churches, depending on three factors, social, religious and moral capital. The results were clearcut. When forced to choose between a Church where most of their family and friends were and one where the doctrine was exactly as they wished, only 24% chose family and friends over doctrine; 76% said that doctrine was more important. The separation was even starker when they had to choose between family and friends and a leader who they liked and trusted; only 18% chose the former, a massive 82% saying the leader was more important than being with their family and friends. In contrast, doctrine and leadership were finely balanced: 52% finding doctrine more important and 48% going for the leader. The findings of this study have a wider application than just small religious groups. Examining what happens after the death of the founder of a movement, and what influences people’s choices of affiliation, applies just as well to other social groups such as, for example, small political movements on the Left or Right, which also exhibit schismatic tendencies. The Fragmentation of a Sect by David V Barrett is published by Oxford University Press, $55/£35

If you have any suggestions for speakers or event ideas, or would like to convene a Sunday afternoon informal, get in touch with Sid Rodrigues at [email protected] or 020 7061 6744.

6 Ethical Record, July 2013 SURVIVING CREATIONIST SCHOOLS Jonny Scaramanga Lecture to the Ethical Society, 19 May 2013 In 2008, UK Naric, the government agency responsible for evaluating the comparability of international qualifications, issued a press release which gained little notice at the time. In it, they announced the results of a benchmarking study on the International Certificate of Christian Education (ICCE). They had found that the ICCE General certificate was comparable to Cambridge International O- level standard, and the ICCE Advanced certificate was comparable to Cambridge International A-level standard. I discovered this press release in 2009, and was surprised by its contents. The ICCE is a qualification based on the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum. ACE is a curriculum based on a fundamentalist Christian ideology. The ICCE qualification requires students to complete a limited amount of additional coursework, but the overwhelming majority of the qualification rests on the completion of Packets of Accelerated Christian Education (PACEs). Students take this qualification instead of conventional GCSEs and A-levels. God’s Will Was Revealed To The Pupils I had attended an ACE school as a pre-schooler from 1988-1989, and again as a secondary school pupil from 1996 to 1999. At my ACE school, I learned that it was ‘surely providential’ that England defeated that Spanish Armada, because otherwise America would have become a Catholic country (anathema to ACE’s Protestant author). I learned that it was against God’s will for government to provide healthcare, that it was a moral imperative for parents and teachers to spank disobedient children, and that the existence of the Loch Ness monster was powerful evidence against evolution. My research confirmed that these lessons were still part of the core curriculum in ACE schools. Recovering from my ACE experience was traumatic. I left the school just before I turned 15 to join a GCSE class in an independent school (nominally Methodist, though effectively almost secular). I was not immediately popular at this school, partly because I had no idea how to socialise with non-fundamentalists, and partly because I made it clear that they were all hell-bound idiots for believing in evolution. A few of them tried to reason with me, but I had been trained to ignore them. It didn’t matter if their arguments seemed to make sense; I knew they were wrong. ACE science PACEs teach “If a scientific theory conflicts with the Bible, then the theory is wrong and must be discarded”. Further, they explain “Man should never trust his own reasoning. His reasoning may be incorrect, because man’s reasoning is not God’s reasoning.” With such untouchable protection around my beliefs, nothing anyone could say had any impact on me. Cursed with original sin and vulnerable to Satan’s deception, my unsaved classmates and teachers were not reliable sources of information. Accelerated Christian Education Founded in Texas in 1969, Accelerated Christian Education hit the UK in the Ethical Record, July 2013 7 early 1980s. It drew attention everywhere for its unusual approach. Instead of lessons, students worked individually from a series of workbooks. Each workbook integrated Bible memorisation and Christian morality alongside conventional subjects like English, maths, and science. The students taught themselves from these workbooks, answering fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice questions where all answers could be found explicitly within the PACE text. Students complete these workbooks in isolated cubicles called ‘offices’.

An ACE office. Photo credit: Bill Kennedy, Freemont News-Messenger (OhioLink Digital Resource Commons)

Academic reviews of the curriculum were scathing. In the Australian Journal of Education , an article claimed “Students in the ACE schools… are in a situation of conceptual and cognitive disadvantage. Moreover such students do not complete ACE schooling with the appropriate knowledge, values and skills for participation in Australian society.”(i) In the Phi Delta Kappan , Professors Dan Hunt and Thomas Fleming concluded: If parents want their children to obtain a very limited and sometimes inaccurate view of the world — one that ignores thinking above the level of rote recall — then the ACE materials do the job very well. The world of the ACE materials is quite a different one from that of scholarship and critical thinking.(ii) Christian commentators, including the Lutheran Education journal,(iii) were no friendlier. Defending the curriculum from this onslaught, ACE’s vice president wrote: ACE does not subscribe to academic works simply because they are considered to be scholarly or critical. Sources for a distinctively Christian community must at least be pro-family, pro-life, pro marriage, and pro-church in order to be considered ‘solid’ references.(iv) In other words, the only opinions ACE will consider are from those who already agree with them. The worldview is hermetically sealed against criticism. It is remarkable that UK Naric would endorse of a qualification based on ACE when virtually every scholarly review since 1980 has taken the opposite view.

8 Ethical Record, July 2013 HMI inspections of ACE schools in the 1980s were equally critical, and one school closed following a notice of complaint. The curriculum itself was noted as a cause for concern in these reports.(v) In recent years, however, Ofsted reports have been fair to glowing for ACE schools. Perhaps coincidentally, one inspector involved in recent reports on ACE schools has been Stephen Dennett. Dennett is a former headmaster of an ACE school and the author of A Case for Christian Education (essentially an extended sales pitch for ACE). He has written ACE curriculum and currently serves as adviser to the ICCE board. A Conflict Of Rights Despite the obvious causes for concern with such schools, many people feel it is problematic to suggest they ought to be regulated. Apart from a few ACE pre- schools receiving government funding via the nursery voucher scheme,(vi) the schools are entirely private. To many, restricting the practices in these schools amounts to an unacceptable curb on religious freedom. We may not like these schools, but the alternative is a tyrannical attack on our liberties. To these concerns, we can reasonably ask, ‘whose liberties?’ Certainly not the children, who are educated in a way intended to limit their ability to question and think rationally. What is being defended here is the right of parents to treat their children as property. I cannot think of another case where one human being is allowed to control another in such a way. We have here a conflict of interests: The parent’s right to free exercise of religion opposes the child’s right to education. Which one should prevail? Clearly, rights end where they intrude on the rights of others. In 2005, a group of private Christian schools lost their appeal to be allowed to spank children .( vii) The judges concluded that Parliament has the right to interfere with the rights of parents in order to protect children. The judgement said that the children’s right not to be harmed trumped the parents’ rights to religious practice. The harm caused by an ‘Accelerated’ ‘Christian’ education is no longer physical (since the corporal punishment ban), but it is harm nonetheless. It robs children of the opportunity to think rationally and to pursue intellectual inquiry in subjects including history, archaeology. (i) Speck, C. and Prideaux, D. (1993) Fundamentalist education and creation science. Australian Journal of Education , 37 (3), 279-295. (ii) Fleming, T.C. and Hunt, D. B. (1987) The world as seen by students in Accelerated Christian Education. Phi Delta Kappan, 68 (7), 518-523. (iii) Moser, C. and Mueller, D. (1980). Accelerated or exaggerated? An evaluation of Accelerated Christian Education. Lutheran Education , 116(1), 8- 17. (iv) Johnson, R. (1987) ACE responds. Phi Delta Kappan, 68 (7), 520-521. (v) Walford, G. (1995) Educational Politics: Pressure groups and faith-based schools. Aldershot: Avebury. (vi) See http://www.humanism.org.uk/2013/05/06/public-funds-being-spent-to- send-children-to-creationist-charedi-and-steiner-nurseries/ (vii)http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld200405 /ldjudgmt/jd050224/will-1.htm

Ethical Record, July 2013 9 THE RISE OF THE LAPTOP LIZARDS THE NIGHTINGALE COLLABORATION Alan Hennessy Lecture to the Ethical Society, 2 June 2013 I’ve been making complaints for years. One of my early complaints was to the Advertising Standards Authority (the ASA) about the high street Chinese herb stores, Dr & Herbs. In a leaflet, they were making claims for acne, hair loss, stress, headache, asthma, sciatica, back pain, arthritis, digestive disorders, hay fever, eczema, and the menopause. Now, it is perfectly plausible that the herbal products they sold could have pharmacological effects, but I wasn’t convinced they held the necessary evidence to back up these claims. When challenged, it is the responsibility of the advertiser to supply the ASA with evidence to substantiate any claims being made. And it’s not just any old evidence: the ASA require a high standard of scientific, clinical evidence to back up claims made. Dr & Herbs were unable to provide it. But they also seemed to be giving the clear impression that they were qualified doctors. I argued that this could mislead a member of the public into thinking they would get proper medical advice. It turned out that their doctors had qualifications in Chinese medicine, but were not registered in the UK with the General Medical Council, so members of the public could be misled. The ASA agreed with me. They lost on six out of the seven points so they got some free publicity on the ASA’s website for misleading advertising. I’ve also complained about the advertising of other products and services that have two things in common: claims about them are frequently made to the public and they are not backed by robust evidence. Then Along Came Chiropractors You may be aware of the libel action brought by the British Chiropractic Association against science writer , for an article he wrote in during ‘chiropractic awareness week’ in 2008.(2) Simon was publicising a book, Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial , that had just been published, written by himself and Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter. The article was titled Beware the spinal trap and in it, Simon said: “This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.” The British Chiropractic Association, which is a trade body for chiropractors, didn’t much like what he said and decided to sue Simon personally, not the Guardian . Having just moved to London in late 2008 and between jobs, I had some spare time and decided to have a look at some chiropractors’ websites. I found

10 Ethical Record, July 2013 chiropractors claiming to treat everything from asthma to tourrettes syndrome; from ADHD to emphysema, bed wetting and whiplash. Having read a fair bit about chiropractic, it seemed to me that there was scant evidence that chiropractic was effective for any of these conditions. So, why were they making those claims? If they were the ‘primary health-care profession’(3) many claimed to be and were regulated by the General Chiropractic Council, set up by an Act of Parliament in much the same way as doctors and dentists, surely they would be responsible in their advertising and only claim to treat conditions for which there was good evidence? It seemed not, so I gathered a list of claims from the websites of 524 chiropractors and submitted a complaint that will have landed on the desk of the statutory regulator, the General Chiropractic Council, when they started work on 8 June 2009. At 12 minutes past nine that same morning, an email was sent out by one of the other chiropractic trade bodies, telling its members immediately to take down their websites and withdraw all leaflets!(4) This happened long before I met Simon Singh. It took the GCC two years to deal with my complaints. Essentially, most of them were dismissed because their rules said that while chiropractors had only to make claims backed by evidence, it omitted to say just what level of evidence was required. Laptop Lizards However, the effect has been dramatic: some websites have been taken down; hundreds of claims removed or substantially modified and, as a result, there are far fewer claims out there to mislead the public. The BCA eventually dropped their libel action against Simon Singh in April 2010 after an adverse Appeal Court ruling.

In an article written after all this, the President of the BCA, Richard Brown said: “In using the case as a powerful vehicle to promote his Sense About Science campaign, Singh’s crusade mobilised a dark force of UK sceptics who suddenly found their raison d’etre, shifting their attention from the fairy tales of homeopathy to the cure-all claims of chiropractors. Following a call to action, an army of PC pilots and laptop lizards began a war which was to lead to one in three UK chiropractors facing formal disciplinary proceedings from its regulator, the General Chiropractic Council.”(5) I found it remarkable that he managed to get so much wrong about a situation in which he had been so closely involved. But I just had to steal that phrase for the title of my talk. From all this, it was becoming obvious that anyone can make a real difference in stopping or reducing misleading advertising to the public by using existing rules and regulations. There is little doubt that misleading claims are widespread: just try searching the Internet for any serious medical condition along with your favourite non-evidence based ‘therapy’.

Ethical Record, July 2013 11 Having these rules and regulations in place can certainly act as a deterrent — and I have no doubt they do. But many of those charged with enforcing them must rely on members of the public bringing possible breaches to their attention – the ASA, for example. Most of the complaints they deal with come from concerned members of the public. As the ASA’s slogan goes, adverts should be legal, decent, honest and truthful and the public deserve no less from any advertiser. This has to apply to all advertisers, whether they are selling double- glazing, washing powder or cheap flights: if you make a claim, you should hold good evidence for that claim. With healthcare, it even more important: the public should not be misled by claims that go beyond what the good evidence says. Customers may waste money on useless treatments, but they may also delay or forgo possibly urgently needed medical advice and treatment. That is where this becomes a lot more serious. But there are other regulators as well, both statutory and voluntary. These include numerous trade bodies that represent various healthcare marketers and many of them have their own code of conduct. However, we know from experience that this does not always work(6) — ‘regulation’ by a trade organisation is unlikely to be in the best interests of the public. Simon Singh had similar concerns and was adamant that the groundswell of skeptical activism that the BCA’s libel action had engendered should be encouraged and given focus. We could also see that some larger, coordinated campaigns would be necessary to highlight particular problem areas and to ensure regulators had robust rules, rigorously enforced for the protection of the public. The key is finding questionable claims and bringing them to the attention of the appropriate regulatory organisation. This is what I’d been doing and is the blueprint we wanted to do. The Nightingale Collaboration Thus, the Nightingale Collaboration was set up by Simon to enable my wife, Maria MacLachlan, and I to share our knowledge and experience in challenging misleading claims in healthcare advertising and to encourage anyone who is concerned at protecting the public from misinformation in healthcare promotion to join us in challenging it. We launched our website on 1st March 2011 — the same day the ASA’s remit was extended to cover marketing communications on sellers’ own websites. Up until then, they had covered ads in newspapers, magazines, leaflets, etc and had only covered third-party banner-type ads on websites and ads alongside results returned by search engines. The extension provided an excellent opportunity to challenge what we think might be misleading advertising claims. Our first campaign was against claims made on homeopathy websites. Within a couple of weeks our supporters had complained to the ASA about over 100 homeopathy websites. The ASA chose two ‘master complaints’ to take to adjudication; one of these has been upheld and published so far. The process of dealing with them has taken two years but the end is in sight.

12 Ethical Record, July 2013 In many ways, it doesn’t concern me too much that someone spends a fiver on a bottle of sugar pills in the expectation it’ll cure their cold. They have certainly wasted their money, but it’s important to remember that there are homeopaths out there ‘prescribing’ their sugar pills as malaria preventatives and manufacturers selling homeopathic ‘vaccines’ for MMR, polio, typhoid and meningitis. Like many pseudo scientific ‘therapies’ the risk does not just lie in believing they can be relied on for minor, self-limiting conditions. That is bad enough, but the real danger isn’t far beneath that warm, fuzzy exterior. Another of our campaigns was against the leaflets produced by the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine. We submitted a number of these to the ASA. The first case, about ‘Marigold Therapy’, which they promoted as a foot treatment was informally resolved in our favour. A leaflet on medical and clinical hypnosis went to adjudication and was upheld as was our complaint about acupuncture. There are several still to come. What Doctors Don’t Tell You While the recently launched What Doctors Don’t Tell You (WDDTY) monthly magazine has been roundly criticised for their articles, we can only challenge their advertisements. We complained to the ASA about 26 adverts found in the September and October 2012 issues. In these, the ASA found 54 CAP Code breaches altogether. We have also been putting pressure on the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) which, because of its statutory functions is a very important body. It regulates homeopathic ‘medicines’, some herbal products and medical devices (eg acupuncture needles, diagnostic machines). We’ve submitted many complaints about homeopathy manufacturers selling unlicensed medicines but they seem to work at a snail’s pace!

As a result of one of our complaints to the MHRA about Holland & Barrett stores, the company was directed by the MHRA to remove Nelson’s point-of- sale advertising, which advises consumers on which of its homeopathic products is recommended for which condition. This is prohibited by the medicines regulations. We are currently testing the determination of the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (affectionately known as OfQuack) to protect the public with 100 complaints about their registrants’ websites. We found many making misleading claims, some of which appear to be in breach of the Cancer Act and many more do not comply with the Council’s own therapy descriptors. The CNHC currently covers practitioners of the Alexander Technique, aromatherapy, bowen, craniosacral, healing, hypnotherapy, massage, microsystems acupuncture, naturopathy, nutritional, reflexology, reiki, shiatsu, sports and yoga. These are just some of the campaigns we have been running; please see our website for many more.

Ethical Record, July 2013 13 Conclusion It’s important to emphasise that we are not making any decisions about whether any claim is misleading. In all our complaints, the various regulators have not once asked our opinion of the evidence; nor do we expect them to. They are all perfectly capable of making up their own minds! Nor are we making or imposing any rules. The rules and regulations are already out there — we want to ensure they are enforced and used effectively for the protection of all of us. We know many alternative therapists are only too willing and happy to abide by the rules; they are not charlatans out to fleece an ignorant public. But regardless of their motives, making misleading claims — innocently or otherwise — can have potentially serious consequences and we can all help minimise this by challenging questionable claims. If you’d like to find out more or sign up to our newsletter, please visit our website at www.nightingale-collaboration.org or contact us at [email protected]. 1 http://asa.org.uk/Asa-Action/Adjudications/2003/4/Tian-Tian-(U,-d-,K,-d-,)- Ltd/CS_35844.aspx 2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/19/controversiesinscience-health 3 http://www.chiropractic-uk.co.uk/about-chiropractic-3-mi.aspx 4 http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2009/06/chiropractors-told-to-take-down- their.html 5 http://chiropracticreport.com/portal/images/back_issues/No_%206%20- %20Nov%202011.pdf 6 http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008/10/society-of-homeopaths-failure-of- self.html

THE HUMANIST LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES The Library has an extensive collection of new and historic freethought material. Members are able to borrow books from the Library. Readers will be asked to complete a Reader Registration Form, and must provide photographic ID, proof of address and proof of membership. They will be issued with a Reader’s card, which will enable them to borrow three books at a time. The loan period is one month. Journals, archive material, artworks and other non-book material cannot be borrowed. Full details of the lending service are available from the Librarian The Library is open to the public Sunday to Thursday, 10 am to 5.30 pm. When evening courses are running, the Library will remain open in the evenings until the start of the classes. The Library will be closed on Fridays. Check the website for details or contact the Librarian. Cathy Broad, Librarian Tel: 020 7061 6747. Email: [email protected]

The views expressed in this Journal are not necessarily those of the Society.

14 Ethical Record, July 2013 ONE LAW FOR ALL – CAMPAIGNING AGAINST SHARIA AND RELIGIOUS LAWS Anne Marie Waters Lecture to the Ethical Society, 9 June 2013 The official number of sharia tribunals and councils in the UK is 85; this is a figure reached in a Civitas report in 2009. The real figure is likely to be far higher and it is a figure that should trouble all of us who believe in human rights and secular democracy. This is a controversial issue, and one which must be taken in both a wider national and an international context. The words ‘sharia law’ invoke certain images; images of beheadings and amputations and a monstrous treatment of women and girls. However, as Maryam Namazie writes “the image of sharia is draconian because the reality is draconian”. It is not propaganda or prejudice to describe sharia law as including many human rights violations, that is simply the reality in places where sharia law is practiced. It is important of course to distinguish between Muslim majority countries and those run under sharia law – these are not the same thing. Not all Muslim majority nations are nations under sharia law, but the threat of sharia is spreading; a case in point being the country of Indonesia. Indonesia has long been recognised as a peaceful and ‘moderate’ country where democracy and Islam live in harmony side by side. However, in recent years, sharia law has begun to take hold. Laws have been passed on the island of Aceh for example which prohibit women from riding motorcycles. Stoning has been introduced as a punishment for adultery and women are being forced to veil. Terror in Mali Mali, a previously stable African democracy, has in the past 12 months experienced terror at the hands of sharia–advocating Islamists. According to a Human Rights Watch researcher, “Stonings, amputations and floggings have become the order of the day in an apparent attempt to force the local population to accept their world view. In imposing their brand of Shariah law, they have also meted out a tragically cruel parody of justice and recruited and armed children as young as 12.” Smoking, drinking, mixed-sex socialising – previously entirely acceptable – are now being met with severe punishments in that country. Across the more established sharia-based countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, the picture is just as bleak. In Saudi Arabia, which describes its constitution as sharia-based, blasphemy and apostasy carry the death penalty. Non-Muslims are not allowed to enter certain cities and women are the legal property of men. In Iran, where apostasy and blasphemy also carry the death penalty, women are stoned to death for adultery. Homosexuality is a capital offence and homosexuals have been hanged in public squares. Young women accused of ‘acts incompatible with chastity’ have faced the same fate. In Pakistan, a supposed democracy, Asia Bibi was sentenced to death for blasphemy in 2009. Her sentence was upheld by the Lahore High Court which stated it was implementing sharia law. We cannot ignore these basic truths, no matter how uncomfortable they may be.

Ethical Record, July 2013 15 It is not just sharia law’s criminal codes – outlined above – which should uniquely concern us. Sharia family law is growing in Britain and is being practiced in the 85 (or more) tribunals and councils described in the Civitas report. Sharia family law has been disgracefully defended by Rowan Williams and others and is often described as ‘private’ or defended as ‘only civil matters so what is the problem’? Here is the problem: sharia family law treats a woman as the property of her husband who has no right to divorce and little right over her children. Sharia tribunals are creating a de-facto parallel system of family law and the men who run the institutions admit that they seek jurisdiction over family matters, as well as ‘smaller’ criminal matters. The MAT and the ISC The two main bodies of sharia family law in Britain are the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) and the Islamic Sharia Council (ISC). The ISC has at its helm Suhaib Hasan. Hasan has not only called for the ‘political dominance’ of Islam in Britain, but he advocates stoning and amputations and seeks the introduction of these punishments to the UK’s legal systems. Another senior figure is Haitham al-Haddad who is on record as saying “a man should not be questioned why he hit his wife”. At the MAT, we have Faiz ul-Aqtab Siddiqui who is calling for exclusive jurisdiction over domestic violence cases (“an alternative form of resolution”) and even told the BBC that he was in negotiations with the Crown Prosecution Service with regard to this. The CPS denies any such discussions have taken place. In sharia family law, custody of children goes to fathers at a preset age, regardless of the circumstances or the consequences. The ISC describes this as the end of the ‘period of female custody’ when children no longer need their mothers. From that point onwards, the father can decide a mother may never see her children again.

In sharia family law, a woman’s word is worth half of a man’s. According to the ISC, this is because ‘a man would be fully occupied with the task he is involved with; he may not be distracted by anything else while being engaged in his activity’. Divorce is the right of husbands only. Again, according to the ISC: ‘the right of divorce is vested in the hand of the man while she is allowed to ask for divorce. Why? Women are kind-hearted human beings who are governed by their emotions… On the other hand, man is governed by his mind more than his emotions. He would think twice … before uttering the word ‘talaq’ (divorce).’ A man may divorce his wife by uttering ‘talaq’ three times. She has no right of reply, no property rights, and no child custody rights. Their Vicious Misogyny Perhaps of even greater concern than the vicious misogyny of the men who run sharia in Britain, is the ‘marriage’ of young girls in the name of sharia up and down the country. Haitham al-Haddad, a senior cleric at ISC, has said of a minimum marriage age: there is “no particular age from an Islamic perspective. But, as you know, the earlier the better, especially for girls”. Mohammed Kassamali, an imam in Peterborough who was secretly filmed arranging an

16 Ethical Record, July 2013 underage marriage by a Sunday Times reporter, stated: “under sharia there is no problem. It is said she should see her first sign of puberty at the house of her husband”. This is the truth. The verifiable and objective truth. No amount of denial, apology, or ‘political correctness’ can change it. What is needed is to confront this truth. What is needed is to stop the denial of the truth and instead decide how to respond. What is needed is to stop treating misogyny, rape and violence carried out in the name of sharia as if it is somehow different or more acceptable than misogyny, rape and violence in any other name. It is not different, the girls and women who suffer are not different. One Law for All is calling for the complete abolition of sharia family law in Britain and the outlawing of its practice. Arbitration and mediation are perfectly legitimate forms of legal practice, but they should not be used as an excuse to practice medieval and brutal forms of injustice. This is a serious human rights, gender equality, and race equality issue and we must defend the concept of one law for all without apology or equivocation. A good place to start would be to support the Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill introduced to the House of Lords by the brave Baroness Caroline Cox and currently making its way through Parliament. This Bill will outlaw many of the misogynist practices of sharia tribunals and emphasise the basic principle of human rights – that these belong to all humans, regardless of race or colour or religion. BARBARA SMOKER’S 90th BIRTHDAY PARTY

Photo: Mark Rosen Terry Mullins, one of the Ethical Society trustees , and secretary of the for 17 of the 25 years that Barbara was its president, chaired the panel of ten speakers representing different causes and organisations in which Barbara had been prominent over the years. Their tributes are summarised below. Ethical Record, July 2013 17 Sir Michael Holroyd ’s Keynote Speech : Barbara Smoker, now a young ninety , has seen a good deal of what I call active service. I refer not to her th ree or four years during the early 1940s when she was a wireless telegraphist in the Women ’s Royal Naval Service , mostly in South- East Asia, but to the rest of her life ’s active service. Born into a devout Roman Catholic family and educated in convent sc hools , she thought and fought her way out and, at the age of 26, joined the ranks of the secular humanist army. The vigorous campaigns in which she took part included campaigns against the death penalty, nuclear weapons, and the Vietnam War, and campaigns in favour of embryo research, legal abortion , voluntary euthanasia and prison reform. She was elected to the position of president of the National Secular Society for 25 years and carried out speaking tours of the United States and India, as well as this country, promoting . In 2005, she was presented at the Sorbonne with an award by the International Humanist and Ethical Union for her lifetime’ s distinguished service to humanism. This is a short account of what I call her ‘war record ’. In fact, she is a pacifist who has never ceased fighting. Combining courage and tenacity, she has a clear and precise mind – though her home, I believe, is in utter chaos. She had no regular job, no normal professional career, but, always busy, she made a modest livi ng by winning competitions in magazines and competitions for slogans and jingles on the backs of food packets – and compiling cryptic crosswords. Much of the week would be taken up with her work for the Family Squatting movement and Radical Alternatives to Prison, as well as her roles as secretary of the Phonetic Alphabet Association and assistant secretary (later secretary) of the Shaw Society, and, for six years, editor of The Shavian , as well as speaking to schools and colleges and taking part in univers ity debates. At a later date, she could be heard every Thursday lunch-time on the traditional atheist soapbox at Tower Hill. I came to know Barbara through our joint interest in Bernard Shaw. As his authorised biographer, I take it upon myself to say that there has never been a more genuine, more formidable, more terrific Shavian than Barbara. When I published a s ymposium on Shaw in the late 1970s I called on her to contribute an essay that no -one else could have written with such expert knowledge and passionate commitment. Her contribution , entitled The Man of Letters dealt with Shaw’ s bequest for a new phonetic al phabet and the great legal battle over it. Shaw had wanted the money from his estate for the first twenty-one years after his death to be used for the creation and distribution of this new alphabet. But two of the residuary legatees, the Royal Academy o f Dramatic Art and the British Museum, did not want to wait so long before becoming financial beneficiaries of Shaw ’s Will. So they took a case against the alphabet on the grounds that the trust in its favour was not legally charitable. Six years since Shaw ’s death , the case had reached the Chancery Court , by which time Barbara was a seasoned campaigner , having learnt a lot from another Shavian e nthusiast, Eric Batson, a librarian and actor who was to form the Not

18 Ethical Record, July 2013 Bloody Likely Committee. Like Batson, Barbara was an eccentric, with some brilliant original ideas. Listening from the public gallery of the Chancery Court to the opening speeches of the bewigged barristers, Barbara realised they were pr ofoundly ignorant of phonetics and were mouthing sheer poppycock. It was crucial that she come to the aid of the Attorney - General’ s team before it was too late, so when the case adjourned she approached them — and no one could throw her off. She descended from the public gallery into the body of the court and into the thick of the battle, demolishing the residuary legatees ’ arguments. In a postscript to my biography of Shaw I describe her writing thousands of potent words during the case , with facts about everything relevant from phonetic shorthand systems to the relative frequency of English spe ech sounds and the educational value of a phonetic script. At the end of the week, when she looked into the jaws of Counsel ’s bulging briefcase , she was gratified to see that most of the material there was from her. Shaw ’s team did not win the case, but Barbara had given them enough to justify an appeal. Unfortunately , it never came to court , but led to an out- of-court compromise that allocated £8300 of Shaw’ s money for the prospective alphabet. Barbara was disgusted by this pitiful sum of money, considering the wildly successful opening of My Fair Lady . Over the next half-a-century and more, she wrote innumerable articles and often appeared on radio and television, mostly on these campaigns, as well as writing a book, Humanism , for teenagers and a ‘ string of verses to tie up the deity ’. She produced witty anti-Christmas cards each year. She also conducted non- religious funerals, weddings, gay and lesbian commitment ceremonies and baby namings, and was mobbed by threatening Muslims who snatched her Free Speech banner in support of Salman Rushdie. On Shaw ’s 90th birthday he was interviewed by a young journalist from the local newspaper. At the end , the young man thanked GBS and said he hoped to interview him again on his 100th birthday. “I don’t see why not, ” Shaw replied – “ You look pretty healthy to me.” How many of us here will be able to celebrate Barbara ’s 100th? M y wish is that she will see even more of her campaigns (such as voluntary euthanasia) pass into law before she has travelled far into her nineties. Meanwhile it is a privilege and a pleasure for me to be paying her this birthday tribute, and I ask you all to raise your glasses to the incomparable Barbara Smoker. Norman Bacrac , Ethical Record editor said: In June 1964, Barbara Smoker took over the editorship of South Place Ethical Society ’s magazine, then called The Monthly Record . In June 1965, s he changed its name to the more informative title The Ethical Record (the definite article has since been dropped) but her claim to fame in that job would probably be in what she a nticipated would be her final editorial in July 1970.

Ethical Record, July 2013 19 In this, Barbara declared her opposition to what she believed to be retrograde moves on the part of the more conservative members of the Society for SPES to become accepted as a religious charity rather than aim for its becoming an educational charity. Barbara was dismissed as editor by the GC but her stand was vindicated later in 1980 by the Court judgement granting SPES educational, not religious, status , to the great relief of many in the Society. I’ve always been impressed by Barbara ’s keen instinct for the way forward for humanism in both its practical activities (eg promoting humanist funerals) and its intellectual position (eg avowing atheism). Andrew Copson, Executive Director of the BHA, said: I first met Barbara not in person but in the pages of her book Humanism which I encountered at school in my Religious Education class. It was the first time I had read anything about Humanism and it sparked off an interest in it which led me to SPES and the BHA where I met Barbara for real. Barbara’s contribution to Humanism has been broad - from pioneering humanist funerals (and let’s not forget these now account for one in every seventy funerals in England) to frequent broadcast appearances promoting the non-religious view. As with all authors, though, it is surely her written work that will last longest and continue to have its beneficial effects down the generations. (Just as I was on my way here I tweeted where I was going and a woman immediately replied to say that Barbara’s writing had led her to Humanism just a couple of years ago.) I’d like to read a short part of Barbara’s book that really did it for me: “Humanists say that every responsible human being should be free to make his or her own choices and live in their own life-style, as long as they do not violate the freedom of others. It would be impossible for humanists to force humanism on other people or to persecute non-humanists, for if they did they would no longer be humanist. Humanism stands for the open mind in the open society. Unlike Christians, humanists see no virtue in faith, blind obedience, meekness, unworldliness, chastity, or pointless self-denial. The humanist virtues are: a regard for what is true, personal responsibility, tolerance, consideration, breadth of sympathy, public spirit, co-operative endeavour, and a concern for the future.” Thank you, Barbara. Terry Sanderson , National Secular Society President, said of Barbara Smoker [herself President of the NSS for 25 years]:- I have been greatly influenced by Barbara’s thinking on a number of issues and she clarified for me several points that often had me stumped when facing hostile interviews. For instance, inevitably some will ask ‘We all know what secularism is against, but what is it for? It’s all so negative, isn’t it?’ Barbara had already come up with a succinct riposte to that with her piece about “When we oppose religious schools we are supporting inclusive education” – and turning other issues around in a similar fashion.

20 Ethical Record, July 2013 Barbara’s breadth of interest and her active campaigning to promote those interests is admirable and she provides a great role model for other women to come forward and get actively involved in the movement.

Denis Cobell said: Barbara Smoker in three minutes ! There is so much to say. I am secretary of the South-East London Humanist Group, of which Barbara was a founder member in 1960 and its chair for many years, and now is its president and honorary life- member. She is to give a talk to the group later this month on how to grow old – the secret being, apparently, to stay young. Born in Brockley in 1923, she has since lived in Forest Hill and , and now lives in Downham – all parts of the present borough of . She grew up a devout Catholic, receiving a ‘ good ’ Catholic education, but after her wartime naval service in Ceylon she began some serious reading, which culminated in a sort of road-to-Damascus moment in Lewisham Library in 1949. For 40 years she conducted non-religious funerals (some 2000 in all) and other ceremonies, and became the first funerals tutor for the BHA in 1971; and after a lengthy fight she w as instrumental in getting the big cross in the Lewisham municipal crematorium replaced by an easily removable one. Edna Mathieson , instigator of the conscientious objectors’ memorial in Tavistock Square and its annual ceremony there, as a parallel to all the military memorials and ceremonies, paid a ttrib ute to Barbara ’s tireless support for that cause. Dr. Michael Irwin said: It is a very great pleasure to me to pay tribute to what Barbara has done, over many years, to campaign for legalized voluntary euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide, in this country, for mentally competent adults who are suffering unbearably from an incurable illness. In the previous century, both of us chaired the Voluntary Euthanasia Society. VES was the first right-to-die society in the world. It was established, in 1935. Unfortunately, today, the main opposition to changing the law is from the medical establishment and religious groups - how times have changed. The first public VES meeting was held in BMA House on 10 December 1935. Today, December 10th is observed as the International Human Rights Day - the ‘right-to-die’ is very much a human rights issue. Barbara has spoken and written a great deal about the importance of voluntary euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide. Recently, I read again statements which she had made at an international conference in Nice in 1984 - what she said then is still very true in 2013. In the February issue of The Oldie , there is a two-page interview of Barbara. Here, Barbara stresses her support today for SOARS - the Society for Old Age Rational Suicide (an organization with which I am much involved).

Ethical Record, July 2013 21 In her letter arranging for me to speak today, Barbara wrote: “As the only medico among the speakers, perhaps you would mention that some years ago, I donated my brain and spinal cord (after death, of course!) for Alzheimer’s and other dementia research, for which I undergo annual brain scans, blood tests, and so on”. Barbara’s ninety-year old brain would be a fascinating specimen to examine but I hope that this research examination will be done on her brain when it is at least one hundred years old. Happy Birthday, Barbara. Donald Rooum said: In the 1950s, there was widespread ‘Ban the Bomb’ urgency in this country, with disagreement about how this aim might be achieved. CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, proposed to persuade the Labour Party to put nuclear disarmament on its election manifesto, and vote Labour into power. The Ad Hoc Direct Action Committee, which gave rise to the Committee of 100 led by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, had a programme of direct intervention to disrupt the work of manufacturing nuclear weapons. Those of us who were active at the time remember that Labour was voted into power, with nuclear disarmament on its election manifesto, and kept the bomb anyway. Barbara was not a member of the original Committee of 100, but joined a useful group called the London Committee of 100, some of whose meetings were attended by Bertrand Russell in person. PS. Barbara has asked me to say that it has been said of her that she is not a proper atheist, because she is a royalist. She is not a royalist. She prefers a constitutional monarchy to a republic ruled by a dictator, but that is not royalism. It is democratic pragmatism. Quentin England , representing the former Phonetic Alphabet Association founded by his grandfather, Russell Scott, who had corr esponded with Shaw on the subject, said: Taking it over in the mid-1950s, Barbara ran it for many years but, after publication of the bi-alphabetic edition of Androcles and the Lion to little reaction, she decided to close down the PAA and devote her energy and talents to more hopeful causes. Philip Riley , present editor of The Shavian , which Barbara herself had edited in the 1950s and 60s, said she still writes for it, having recently, at his request, written an article on transcribin g Shaw ’s shorthand, in which all the plays were drafted. “She also proof-reads the journal – a skill she learnt from Kingsley Martin, the great New Statesmen editor.” Then, standing in for poet Margaret Aitchison, who was unable to make the journey, Philip read out Barbara’ s poem Living Relay (below ), which Margaret says she has chosen to be read at her funeral.

22 Ethical Record, July 2013 LIVING RELAY In this, the only world we know, by Barbara Smoker as people come so people go.

Not one alive was living when Charles Dickens held a restless pen, yet, as a child, I met a man who’d known him. Such a living span takes only two: if six we link . . . then Shakespeare dips a quill in ink.

If twenty-one? Mohammed gives to scribes a screed, through which he lives. Choose thirty . . . join the multitude for which Christ Jesus conjures food; on thirty-six, with Plato feast; two more for sages of the East.

Count forty-three . . . hear Homer tell The Trojan tale he’d heard as well. One hundred, say . . . salute the day when writing starts, with signs on clay. Two thousand . . . and we’re face to face with founders of the human race.

Yes, each has been and each has gone; Yet . . . each a torch has handed on.

Responding to the tributes, Barbara said that the poem just read was probably the only poem ever written with the aid of a calculator – used to work out the number of lifetimes to each event, based on a human life-span of 65 years. That, she admitted, is c ertainly too long for the early millennia, but has now been left far behind: “I myself passed that milestone quarter-of-a-century ago.” Though, during forty years, she had officiated at many non-religious funerals, she said she would not be having a funer al herself, and she tells people, tongue- in-cheek, it is because no-one would carry it out as well as she would have done! But she likes the idea of a memorial meeting. She has often been to such gatherings in our hall, and it always seemed a pity that the subjects of the eulogies could not hear them. That was why she had agreed to have this ‘memorial meeting ’, with the ‘ corpse ’ present and able to hear the speeches. (“ At least, I would have been able to hear them had I been willing to tolerate a hearing-aid.” ) She concluded by thanking the Ethical Society for giving her this splendid party, various individuals who had helped to organise it, all the speakers, and the guests for coming. Reporters from the Camden New Journal were present and the 6 June CNJ con tains a full-page report (with photos ) of the event by John Gulliver on p. 16 and a second report ( and photo ) on p.6 of Barbara with Michael Holroyd.

Ethical Record, July 2013 23 FORTHCOMING EVENTS Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1R 4RL. Tel: 020 7405 1818 Registered Charity No. 251396 For programme updates, email: [email protected] Website: www.conwayhall.org.uk Admission to Sunday morning lectures is free for members of CHES and £3 (£2 conc) for non-members. For other events, no charge unless stated. JULY 2013 Sunday 14 DO ATHEISTS HAVE MYSTICAL-TYPE ExPERIENCES? 1100 Alice Herron

Sunday 21 INTERVIEW WITH THE ExPERT 1100 Deborah Hyde

Sunday 28 WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WHEN THE OIL RUNS OUT? 1100 Chris Rhodes, John Edwards

Ethical Society trip to the CHARLES BRADLAUGH SOCIETY’S 12TH ANNUAL COMMEMORATION visiting Leicester and Northampton 29 September 2013 Coach pick up from Conway Hall at 9am and return at 6pm. Free for members and £10 for non-members – first come first served basis. This website address is where to buy tickets: http://charlesbradlaugh.eventbrite.co.uk

HELP SPREAD HUMANISM IN AFRICA Leo Igwe of Nigeria will distribute copies of Barbara Smoker’s Humanism to schools and groups in Africa which are desperately short of text books expounding the history and concepts of humanism. The British Humanist Association has kindly offered to donate to CHES some of its remaining stock of the 5th edition for us to post to Africa. We have spare copies but need help with the postal charges. Send £10 to Conway Hall Ethical Society to send 10 copies or £20 for 20 copies (marked ‘Africa’). We thank all those 5th Edition members who have already sent us donations. SPREAD ENLIGHTENMENT!

Published by the Conway Hall Ethical Society, 25 Red Lion Square, WC1R 4RL Printed by J.G. Bryson (Printer). 156-162 High Road, London N2 9AS. ISSN 0014 - 1690