The ISSN 0014-1690 Ethical Record

Vol. 93 No. 5 MAY 1988

Some Questions of Historical, Philosophical, Practical and "Future" Ethics EDITORIAL were many Ethical questions: con- Or Why the Editor nected with human rights (who or Could Not Sleep what "state" has the right to "dis- The Night of the 17th appear" people?); land tenure; en- titlement to power and riches; con- ACTIVITYat The South Place Ethical cerning some of the psycho-mentali- Society has recently been increasing. ties often dominant in society? The range of matters under considera- Again, how are we to sort out the tion expands. Sometimes it seems human ability to dodge issues by the there are too many Ethical concerns "clever" use of language? (eg Ralph confronting us! But perhaps that fact Wood suggested there had to be a reflects a need in society and gives us basic "symbiosis" between Humanism an excellent reason for what we are and christianity). Does he thereby doing: claim, by implication, the right to in- Study and Disseminate Ethical culcate that nonsense of dependence Principles; Cultivate a Rationai on an invisible, mythical and impos- Way of Life; and, Advance sible "being" (who, in particular, looks Education in Fields Relevant to after those who believe in "his" these Objects. existence! ). This issue has Historical material Neither the good explanations he and analyses on HOBBES,BYRON and gave of the unacceptability of the Fox, as well as on the 1930's period. "science" and other glaring miscon- These studies also cover many Philo- ceptions in the bible, nor his "praise" sophical and Practical issues. for Humanists makes the "double- On Sunday, April 17 JAMESPAINTER takes" of language used by those "tabled" struggles, dilemmas, and in- proselytising for religion acceptable. humanities in Central America, par- As well as these "practical" aspects ticularly in Guatemala. In the after- of Ethics—most of which, of course, noon some 50 people came to a SPES require serial discussions and ex- Forum to hear about and discuss changes in addition to individual lec- Fundamentalism in the USA with tures — two weekly courses were RALPHW000—a Baptist—(summaries started at Conway Hall in the previous of both these lectures will be published week : on Tuesdays PETER HEALES in the Ethical Record in due course). elucidates the thoughts and meanings From those two sessions alone there [Continued on page 2 CONTENTS Page Coming to Conway Hall...... 21, 22 Thomas Hobbes 400th Anniversary: PETERHEALES . 3 A Note on Byron-1788 to 1824: T. F. EVANS . 5 The Achievement of the "Thirties": JIM FYRTH . 8 The Political Radicalism of W. 1. Fox: MILESTAYLOR . 11 Viewpoints: ConceptlWord Definitions: BOB AWBERY,DAVID IBRY 18 The views expressed in this journal are not necessarily those of the Society.

Published by the South Place Ethical Society Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, Londom SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Humanist Centre9Conway Hall 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R4RL. Telephone: 01-831 7723 Hall Lettings: 01-242 8032. Lobby: 01-405 4125

Appointed Lecturers: Harold Blackham, Fenner Brockway, Richard Clements, OBE, T. F. Evans, Peter Heales, Richard Scorer Barbara Smoker, Harry Stopes-Roe, Nicholas Walter. Trustees: Harold Blackham, Sam Beer, Christine Bondi, Louise Booker, John Brown, Anthony Chapman, Frank Hawkins, Peter Heales, George Hutchinson, Ray Lovecy, Ian MacKillop, Victor Rose, Barbara Smoker, Harry Stopes-Roe. Honorary Representative: Barbara Smoker. Chairman General Committee: Norman Bacrac. Deputy Chairman: Louise Booker. Honorary Registrar: Alice Marshall. Honorary Treasurer: Don Liversedge. Secretary: Nicholas Hyman. Hall Manager: Geoffrey Austin. Honorary Librarian: Sam Beer. Editor, The Ethical Record Peter Hunot. General Committee: The Officers and Jim Addison, Richard Benjamin, Eda Collins, Govind Deodhekar, Lionel Elton (Concerts Committee Chairman), Joan Freedman, Martin Harris, Terry Mullins, Les Warren, David Wright. The Ethical Record is posted free to members. The annual charge to Subscribers is £4. Matter for publication shmild reach the Editor, Peter Hunot, 17 Anson Road, London N7 ORB (01-609 2677) no later than the first of the month for publication in the following month's issue.

Continued from page 1] DORIS LESSING, in her latest novel* now turning to a kind of Science of philosophers and others under the Fiction, suggested to her interviewer title From Hobbes to Humanism; and, On television, BRIAN ALDISS (April on Thursday evenings, the Society's 17), that there must be an evolution- Secretary, NICHOLAS HYMAN covers ary "purpose" (or, rather, a reason questions on views of the Future on for its existence) in our ability to Utopias, Science Fiction, Catastrophes. "dream-up" how things might evolve: At the first meeting of this latter of the future. class, he drew our attention in par- Then there is that little matter of ticular to the chapter in News From human intelligence (our brains are Nowhere (WILLIAM MoRats) dealing so large that a great part of our meta- with an analysis of the ways the bolism is needed to keep them going). "changes" in Morris' depicted society Recent, evolving theory suggests the came about—a chapter many might large size perhaps arose from the com- ignore. plexity of dealing with each other. Books from those supplied on loan That quality will surely be in much by the London University Extra Mural demand as contacts amongst us multi- Department (with whom SPES co- ply and the complexity of our society operates to run the classes) help to increases. But how is "intelligence" highlight many ideas down the centu- to be both defined and assessed? What ries. You may have heard of PLATO, are the Ethical implications of some MORE, BACON, BELLAMY, MORRIS, of the more autocratic and hierarchi- WELLS HUXLEY, but how about cal theories (would MENSA members CAMPANELLA, ANDREAE, HARRINGTON,be more able to solve Ethical issues?). MALLOCK, HUDSON, CADET, PEMBER- Utopias often involve science; and TON, HOWELLS, KENDALL and many scientists themselves have to use im- others, past and present? Are any of the ideas suitable for our present • Conipus in Argos. condition? [Continued on page 21 2 Ethical Record, May 1988 THOMAS HOBBES—BORN 1588 The 400th Anniversary

PETER HEALES, an Appointed Lecturer and Trustee contributes this appreciation of Hobbes for the occasion. Peter Heales Lectured on Hobbes on Sunday February 13, 1983—a summary of which was published in the November/December 1983 issue, page 7. "In fifteen hundred eighty eight, Old Style, When the Armada did invade our Islc, Call 'd Invincible; whose freight was then, Nothing but Murd'ring Steel, and Murd'ring Men; Most of which Navy was disperst, or lost, And had the Fate to Perish on our Coast: April the fifth (though now with age outworn) I, th'early Spring, I a poor worm, was born."

Thus begins a translation of the Latin verse Life which THOMAS HOBBES wrote when he was 84 years old. It is four hundred years this April since Hobbes' mother gave premature birth to her second son after hearing news of the threatened invasion. Hobbes often said that he had been "born of fear" His father was rector of Westport, over the river from Malmesbury JOHN AUBREY described him as an ignorant priest who had to escape into obscurity after punching a fellow clergyman in a quarrel. Fortunately, young Thomas had an uncle who, as a successful glover in Malmesbury, could afford to pay for a good education. After obtaining his degree at Oxford, Hobbes entered the service of the young Earl of Devonshire. His role was that of companion-tutor. He was to share the vigorous and youthful pursuits of his master and provide intellectual stimulus at appropriate times. That he should not lose his learning, he made a point of always carrying a book with him so that he could use profitably the many idle hours he spent waiting on the pleasure of the Earl. He was not, however, a prodigious reader. He preferred to read a little and think deeply about what he had read, for as he was wont to say: "Had I read as much as other men, I should have known no more than other men". Hobbes was Bacon's Secretary

As a young man, Hobbes knew Sir FRANCIS BACON. Bacon particularly liked to have him working as his secretary because he always seemed to understand the ideas he wrote at dictation. Hobbes was therefore present at the birth of the ideas which set the English scientific revolution in motion. They were the starting point of his own philosophy. As time went on, he found more time to study and to write. His published works attracted much attention and also much hostility. Even after the Restora- tion, when as an old man he had the respect of the King, his position was by no means secure. His later books were published in Amsterdam as a precaution against public backlash. He felt that he deserved membership of the Royal Society. Although he had much support, his opponents thwarted him. Until he finally had to retire from London, he was frequently at court, but appears to have been an object of fun among the younger courtiers, who treated him as a "bear to be baited". Throughout this time he appears to have been suffering from Parkinson's disease; he could not write legibly and needed an amanuensis. He spent his last years in the Devonshire household, and died in his ninety-second year at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire. The work by which he is best known is Leviathan. Hobbes opposed CROMWELL'S revolution but his arguments displeased the king. He had to retire to Paris where he became well known to the future Charles II. Leviathan is much greater than the political cause which gave it birth. Neither king nor Protector could find comfort in it :

Ethical Record, May 1988 3 And did confirms't the more; Hop'd by me,

"This Book Contended withall Kings, and they By any Title, who bear Royal sway. • • • • . . The Clergy at Leviathan repines, : gainst my Leviathcm They rail, which made it read by many a man, That it will last to all Eternity. It has certainly lasted well for 350 years. Many philosophers since his time have agreed with Hobbes own assessment : "Man's inward motions and his Thoughts to know, The good of Government, and Justice too, These were my Studies then, and in these three Consists the whole Course of Philosophy. Although thought, science and technology have leapt ahead, many of Hobbes' themes, such as scientific determinism and the material basis of •life are advanced as passionately today as they were in Leviathan. Our television screens lend weight to Hobbes' most famous remark, that in a state of war there can be none of the benefits of civilisation ". . . and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of .violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short". John Aubrey claims that Thomas Hobbes was a Christian: ". .. in his confession to Dr Jows COSINS, on his (as he thought) death bed, declared that he liked the Religion of the Church of England best of all other" In fact his reputation was quite otherwise. When he was ill in France and he warned off clergy of all denominations, threatening to "detect all your Cheates from Aaron to yourselves". His books assent to Christian belief in a conventional way; to do otherwise at the time could have been catastrophic. The main thrust of all he wrote, however, is towards atheism and rationality. Hobbes may fairly be regarded as the founder of the secular tradition in English philosophy. All of us who work for humanism owe him a great debt.

Ernest Renan (1823-92) "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is well known to typists as a sentence giving all the letters of the alphabet. A similar problem arises when you need a sentence in a foreign language illustrating all the difficult points of it. It was customary to use the Lord's Prayer (Our Father) in encyclopaedias but this is not really suitable. A satisfactory answer has not been found. The Prayer on the Acropolis by ERNEST RENAN (1823-92) has been suggested. Renan is chiefly famous for his Life of Jesus (1863) which was eventually published in the Thinker's Library. Because of Renan's deep knowledge of Semitic languages and his ecclesiastical upbringing in Brittany this book shocked the faithful. The Prayer occurs in his Recollections of My Youth (1883) and expresses his wonder at the beauty of the pre-Christian Greek world. After an invocation to Perfect Beauty it continues: "I was born, 0 blue-eyed goddess, of barbarian parents among good and honest CIMMERIANS who live on the shore of a sea dark, bounded with rocks, always beaten by storms" It also contrasts solid Greek temples with ramshackle cathedrals. S B

Short Report A Successful Social At the Social on Sunday afternoon February 21, the programme (People, Places and Contretemps) of poetry and prose presented by Eda Collins, with music by DVORAK, Gin and songs from the Auvergne, was well attended and will be presented again with a different selection of poets and prose writers. 4 Ethical Record, May 1988 A NOTE ON BYRON (1788-1824) T F. EVANS A Lecture delivered to the South Place Ethical Society on Sunday February 28, 1988. Byronic—possessing the characteristics of Lord Byron, or of his poetry, overstrained in sentiment or passion, cynical and libertine.

"And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 'Tis that I may not weep; and if I weep 'Tis that our nature cannot always bring Itself to apathy, for we must steep Our hearts first in the depths of Lethe's spring Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep: Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx; A mortal mother would on Lethe fix. "Some have accused me of a strange design Against the creed and morals of the land, And trace it in this poem every line; I don't pretend that I quite understand My own meaning when I would be very fine; But the fact is that I have nothing plann'd, Unless it were to be a moment merry, A novel word in my vocabulary." Don Juan A LEADING ENGLISH DICTIONARY CONTAINS ENTRIES for the words "Shakespearean" and "Miltonic". The definitions explain that the words relate to the poetry of the writer concerned or his manner. With Byron, as is clear from the first words quoted above, the definition goes further. The word "Byronic" is shown to have meanings beyond a straightforward reference to the poet and his writing. The name of Byron has come to stand not simply for that of a poet but for a way of life, almost a philosophy. It has to be said, however, that whereas few would seek to deny that Byron was a libertine, the word "cynical" is misplaced. "Cynical" is, admittedly, one of the most frequently misused words in the language. Even allowing for a shift in meaning during the years, "cynical" implies at least a tendency to sneer at good. There was nothing of this in Byron. His great enemy was hypocrisy or, to use a favourite word of his, cant, but any superficial bitterness was more likely that of disappoint- ment or disillusion rather than deep-seated pessimism or misanthropy. Neverthe- less, his wife did feel obliged to say that he was fundamentally melancholy even when on the surface, at his gayest. It is hardly necessary to give many details of Byron's tempestuous life and personality. He was born in 1788, at the beginning of that great period of revolu- tion in thought, politics, literature and art, the bi-centenary of which we are now celebrating. The marriage of his parents was not a happy one and an accident at birth, which endowed him with a club-foot, gave him an outward cause on which to attach his tendencies to self-pity and melodramatic speculation. It is true, of course, that many poets have written good, or great, verse without a club-foot or other deformity to drive them on but it is improbable that Byron without his club-foot would have been exactly the kind of poet that he became. The only other thing that might be said on this particular feature is that it does not appear to have been a handicap to Byron in any way. He was a successful athlete and player of games: he is known to have swum the Hellespont and to Ethical Record, May 1988 5 have been an excellent cricketer at school; he had, moreover, very great success in his many, and various, sexual exploits. Byron has lived throughout two centuries almost as much for his person as for his poetry. The lexicographer, when writing the word "libertine" was thinking, no doubt of the handsome, sometimes sneering lordship, showing, or affecting to show a contempt for the world and yet incapable of being a solitary and, by all accounts, always proving wonderful company to friends and lovers alike. Even such a writer as T. S. ELIOT who could hardly be expected to admire anyone who wore, however loosely, the label of "romantic poet" found himself drawn to write of Byron's personality and appearance when seeking to justify his dislike for his work. (It is right to say that Eliot did admire Byron's very best poem). This is Eliot on Byron: . that pudgy face suggesting a tendency to corpulence, that weakly sensualmouth, that restless triviality of expression, and worst of all that blind look of the self- conscious beauty; the bust of Byron is that of a man who was every inch the touring tragedian. To be fair to Eliot, he felt that by being something of an actor, Byron came to know the outside world and thus learned how best to play his part in it. Byron wrote a very great deal. He had an extraordinary facility and fluency and said that "all convulsions end with me in rhyme". Love lyrics, some of them among the best in the language, longer poems, whether adventure stories or satires, verse dramas, very rarely performed but by no means devoid of merit, and two very long poems make up a total output which, in the volume of collected poetry, runs to 900 pages in double columns. With such prodigality, there is, of course, varying merit, but it is an unusual page that does not contain something good and Byron established in his own day a very great popularity which has remained, if not quite at the same level, to our own times, when poetry is certainly not the most widely read form of literary production. A further fact of great importance is that Byron is among the small number of poets in English who are greatly esteemed in other countries, especially in Europe. There are several reasons for this. Together with OSCAR WILDE, Byron has enjoyed a greater reputation in other countries than at home. With Wilde, the reason was that he was thought to have been a victim of British hypocrisy. To some extent this was true of Byron also but, during the xixth century, Byron was the pre-eminent English poet to write in the style of the "romantics" in Europe, especially France and Germany. Apart from the purely literary attraction of his work (if this doubtful term may be used) he appealed to the love of freedom, political and otherwise that was more marked in some continental countries than at home. For an Englishman (he sometimes thought himself a Scot), Byron was almost unique in believing in both private and public freedom. As is clear in our own day, the most passionate advocate of political or economic freedom may be at the same time, the most determined in his resolve to place restrictions on the sexual behaviour of others or their taste in literature and art. This attitude, rather more common on the political right than on ,the left, is balanced on the other side of the political divide by a fierce determination to maintain individual and personal freedom, which goes hand in hand with a firm belief in the need to restrict some political and economic activity in the interests of the wider public good. Byron was not in the strictest sense a very political person. Yet, he was undoubtedly on the side of freedom against excessive authority and repression. Thus, one of the facts known about him by almost all who have heard his name, is that he gave generously of time, trouble and money in the cause of Greek independence and though he did not die in battle, he would have been ready to have done so, if sickness had not carried him off. His distaste for much of English life kept him from political activity at home but he did raise his voice eloquently in the House of Lords against those who persecuted and ill treated the Luddites. Although inheriting a title, Byron was not greatly concerned about rank and 6 Ethical Record, May 1988 position, even though his friends sometimes called him a snob. When it came to the pinnacle of the British accumulation of position and prejudices, he was forthright and spoke out boldly about the idiocies of the monarchy. Some of his best satiric lines occur in "The Vision of Judgment" when he writes of King George III: "In the first year of freedom's second dawn Died George the Third; although no tyrant, one Who shielded tyrants, till each sense withdrawn . Left him nor mental nor external sun: A better farmer ne'er brush'd dew from lawn, A worse king never left a realm undone! He died—but left his subjects still behind, One half as mad—and t'other no less blind. Later in the same poem, he adds, in the words of a cherub telling Saint Peter of the death of the King: "He ever warr'd with freedom and the free : Nations as men, home subjects, foreign foes, So that they utter'd the word "Liberty! " Found George the Third their first opponent Whose History was ever stain'd as his will be With national and individual woes? I grant his household abstinence; I grant His neutral virtues, which most monarchs want". Finally King George slips into heaven where the poet leaves him "practising the hundredth psalm". When he wrote of religion, which was not very often, Byron moved from indifference to contempt. Now and again, he took part in diabolism but, whether this was mainly to shock the orthodox or not, he had little time for conventional worship. Thus, in a letter to a friend in 1811, he wrote: I will have nothing to do with your immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity of speculating upon another. ... As to revealed religion, Christ came to save men; but a good Pagan will go to heaven, and a bad Nazarene to hell, . It is a little hard to send a man preaching to Judaea, and leave the rest of the world—Negers and what not—dark as their complexions, without a ray of light for so many years to lead them on high; and who will believe that God will damn men for not knowing what they were never taught? ... I am no Platonist, 1 am nothing at all, but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Soinozist, Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the 72 villainous sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and hatred of each other Talk of Galileeism? . . . is there a Talapoin, or a Bonze who is not superior to a fox-hunting curate? Later, in 1822, in a preface, he remarked that Socrates and Christ had been put to death as blasphemers and that this would be the fate of many who dared "to oppose the most notorious abuses of the name of God and the mind of man". Byron's greatest fame, of course, depends on his poetry but it is worth noting that he wrote a remarkably lively and readable prose in journals, letters and some other pieces. He wrote at great speed, as always and one consequence is that, while he often posed for effect, he was not a pretender and what he wrote, which often included half-a-dozen letters scribbled in an hour, almost always revealed at least a side of the true self. It was so, too, with his greatest work, the long poem, Don Juan, the best production of its kind in the language. Byron had shown as a young man, when he wrote Childe Harold that he was capable of sustained work, but Don Juan, begun in 1818 and left unfinished at his death, although by then much longer than many novels, is greatly superior. Paradoxically, by being in Don Juan more light-hearted and superficially, at least, less earnest than in Childe Harold, he revealed more of his true self and the bantering style, in a loose and light but very witty verse rthical Record, May 198$ 7 form enabled him to present, not simply a story of amatory adventure, but a pointed picture of the age. It comes as something of a surprise to find that there is a chapter on Byron in BERTRAND RUSSELL'SHistory of Western Philosophy. This is not because the poet was in any sense a systematic thinker. It is because there may be found in his work some less attractive tendencies or implications, of which he may not have been fully aware himself. The poet of freedom might have been an unconscious precursor of ways of thought that could lead, a century later, to authoritarianism and Fascism. As Russell suggests: nationalism, Satanism, and hero-worship, the legacy of Byron, became part of the complex soul of Germany. This cannot be ignored—some have found incipient Fascism in Shakespeare— but it does not detract from his greatness as a poet. Thus, other things in Byron may be forgotten for a moment as he describes Juan's view of London on his visit to England in the closing stanzas of Don Juan: "The sun went down, the smoke rose up, as from A half-unquenched volcano, o'er a space Which well beseem'd the 'Devil's drawing-room?' As some have qualified that wondrous place: But Juan felt, though not approaching home • . As one who, though he were not of the race, Revered the soil, of those two sons the mother, Who butcher'd half the earth, and bullied t'other. "A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping, Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping In sight, then lost amidst the forestry Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy; A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown On a fool's head—and there is London Town". The literary critic, HELEN GARDNER, wrote of these last stanzas ofDon Juan that "there is something for us to learn from the courage and buoyancy with which Byron came to terms with a world as shabby and confused as ours". THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE 'THIRTIES' JIM FYRTH Summary of his Lecture to the Society on Sunday, January 28, 1988 BETWEEN THE WARS CONSERVATIVE IDEAS (with both a large and small 'c') dominated British society. After STANLEY BALDWIN'S "National Government" had won the 1935 general election with a majority of 247 seats, the Liberal News Chronicle advised the Labour Party that, since it could never hope to hold office again, it should resign itself to becoming a pressure group. Ten years later there were 180 more Labour than Tory MPs. In the factories and the forces the swing was even more decisive. A mock election in the unit in which I was serving in India gave Labour 84 votes, Communist 21, Liberal 11 and Conservative 7. (Officers voted as well as other ranks! ) The decisiveness of the change was measured also by the extent to which all major parties accepted what has since been called "the post-war settlement",— full employment, a "welfare state" with a National Health Service, and the nationalisation of basic industries and services at home, with support for the UN and gradual loosening of Empire ties abroad. Why had this "hegemony" of social-democratic ideas replaced that of conserva- tive ideas? It had certainly not been the work of the Labour Party, which had 8 Ethical Record, May 1988 been hesitant before the war and moribund during it. It is the received wisdom that the war changed things. Of course it did so. But my thesis is that what happened in 1935 was the result of a process which began in the 'thirties and culminated in the intensity of the war years. I speak of three inter-related devolopments: a series of widespread political campaigns which came to a peak in 1937-8, a popular cultural "renaissance", and the drafting by minority groups of plans and blue prints which presented an alternative to existing society. The first and longest lasting of the campaigns was that of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement (NUWM). Something like a million unemployed people passed through its ranks between 1922 and 1939. Many took part in its five national Hunger Marches on London between 1922 and 1936, to be welcomed by huge crowds—but not by Governments—when they arrived. (The Jarrow March, which is often thought of as the unemployed march, was the last and smallest, and was organised by the community of Jarrow not by the NUWM). Thousands of unemployed took part in local marches and demonstrations, some of which, as in Birkenhead and Sheffield, led to prolonged rioting. It is a myth of our time that "the unemployed did not riot before the war". The NUWM also fought thousands of individual cases to obtain benefits of which unemployed people were being deprived. Its campaigns kept unemployment in the public eye and gave many unemployed people a sense of their own worth and power in place of demoralisation. They did more than anything else to create the wartime consensus that mass unemployment should never again be acceptable. - Similarly the anti-fascist movement of the 'thirties began a change in people's minds which culminated during the war. It began in a small way with the Reichstag Fire Inquiry of 1933, which produced evidence that the Nazis had themselves set fire to the Reichstag to provide an excuse for suppressing the "left", and with investigations into the activities of the Gestapo in Britain. It became a mass movement from 1934, when a number of brave individuals, backed by large crowds outside, interrupted MOSLEY'S blackshirt rallies in the Albert Hall and Olympia, so exposing the brutality of his movement, which was. being presented - as a patriotic and respectable part of British politics. When, in that September, he held a rally in Hyde Park it was drowned in a sea of 150,000 Londoners who surrounded it. So strong did the opposition to fascism become in East London that, when the blackshirts would hold a street meeting, it was possible for an announcement in a nearby cinema to bring out the whole audience in opposition. And when, in October 1936, hundreds of thousands blocked the roads into East London to prevent fascist entry, Mosley's political decline was ensured. It is one of the most insidious myths of our time that the "left" was somehow responsible for the appeasement policy and that only Churchill saw the danger of the fascist dictators. But the most widespread of the campaigns was that to raise aid for the Spanish Republic when it was attacked by mutinous generals, supported by German and Italian arms and men. The equivalent, in modern terms, of some £60 million was collected in medical, food and other aid, most of it in small amounts. Two thousand Britons went to fight in the International Brigades; some 200 medical workers were maintained in the field; more than 40 shiploads of food were collected and sent; 4,000 Basque children were received and cared for; thousands of refugees were fed and their children looked after in Spain, and later in France. Whole communitiies took part in these efforts. When the Basque children came to Southampton virtually every organisation, workplace and school helped with volunteers and money. In Horwich, in Lancashire, the food campaign was organised by the local authority, and a dep6t was run jointly by the Conservative and Labour Party Women's Sections. The campaign created a new kind of politics. You did not have to sit on committees or sell newspapers, though very many did so. Anyone could give a tin of milk or collect food. The impetus Ethical Record, May 1988 9 might be humanitarian, but such actions helped to change minds because they were in a left-wing cause, which was opposed by a Conservative government and the right-wing press. There were other campaigns, against war and appeasement, in support of China when attacked by Japan, for Indian Independence, for civil liberties and women's rights. In these many campaigns socialists, liberal democratics, Tory patriots, Jewish anti-fascists, humanitarians and peace campaigners often worked together. Their alliance grew during the war. Only afterwards, with the Cold War, did they separate, and Britain move again to the "right". The campaigns were the training ground for those who, in the wartime factories and forces, worked to create a new mood of political thinking. At the same time there were cultural developments with a mind-enlarging effect. Some were of the "left", most importantly the Left Book Club with, by late 1937, 57,000 members and 750 discussion groups. But much of what was new was a popular liberal culture—the local film societies showing foreign films and documentaries, Penguin books, Picture Post, the BBC music and drama depart- ments, new ventures in popular theatre. Wartime dissemination of. this culture spread the idea that culture was for all, not just for the elite. Even with the reinforcement of the war these currents of change might not have created the post-war settlement, without the blueprints and ideas which became embodied in the BEVERIDGE and other wartime reports. Little of this came from those on the left who had led the mass-movements without which the blueprints might have remained in pigeonholes. The official Labour Movement contributed ideas on nationalisation and housing, the Socialist Medical Association on the health service. New ideas came from the Cambridge school of economics led by KEYNES. But much of the detail came from small Liberal, Fabian and women's groups, such as the Next Five Years Group, to which MACMILLAN belonged, the Maternity Mortality Committee, the Mother and Child Health Campaign and the Committee Against Malnutrition of Sir JOHN BOYD ORR. The decade of the 'thirties seemed marked by milestones of defeat, while the wicked flourished. But the ideas of the '30s triumphed in the '40s because minds had been changed. This lesson should not be untaught when the "right" has again achieved hegemony of ideas and is proceeding to destroy the post-war settlement. It must be added that the failures of the post-war era also have roots in The 'thirties—in the willingness of our rulers to appease any anti-communist power, in the bureaucratic and paternalistic approach of the architects of the welfare state, in the sectarianism and social illusions of the Labour Movement and in the idealisation of the Stalin regime by the left. But that is another story. Friends of Uneseo Following the Forum talk by MARGARET QUASS onBritain and UNESCO last December (Sunday the 13th), at which she described the origins, evolution and present position of UNESCO and the withdrawal at the end of 1985 from it of the United Kingdom, the General Committee decided that the South Place Ethical Society should become a member of The Friends of UNESCO. There will be a report back from the Society's representative at the Friends. - NICHOLAS HYMAN writes: —TheNewsletter (of the Friends) will be sent to any member of SPES who sends them a stamped, addressed envelope. We presume few members share the misapprehension of a Texan politico who once welcomed Julian Huxley in gushing and UNESCO-loving terms: "I understand you are from UNESCO. UNESCO's a gallant little country, and we appreciate your war record". It is hoped to bring Britain back into UNESCO, and meanwhile to keep alive the candle of reason on a shared planet. The address of the Friends of UNESCO is: Seymour Mews House, Seymour Mews, London W1H 9PE. 10 Ethical Record, May 1988 THE POLITICAL RADICALISM OF W. J. FOX — Part I MILES TAYLOR A lecture delivered to the South Place Ethical Society, Sunday February 21, 1988 The second part will appear in the June 1988 issue EVER S:NCE HIS DEATH IN JUNE, 1864 WILLIAM JOHNSON FOX has proved an exemp- lary figure in the history of English radicalism. His obituarists remembered him chiefly for the part he played in the Anti - Corn Law League in the mid-1840s, depicting him as a miniature version of JOHN BRIGH1 —"a sturdy but truncated Puritan" as one newspaper described him.1 By way of contrast, the aims of the editors of the memorial edition of Fox's collected works, published between 1865 and 1868, were quite different. They laid emphasis on Fox's "invaluable services to . . . freedom of inquiry in religion" and compiled a twelve-volume collection which included virtually all Fox's Parliament Court Chapel and South Place sermons delivered between 1817 and 1852 Mit a good deal less than half of the political journalism which he contributed to a Variety of newspapers and quarterlies from the early 1820s until 1862.2 There has been a similar variety of interpretation of Fox's life within South Place Ethical Society itself. During his ministry at South Place in the last third of the xixth century MONCURE D. CONWAY revered Fox for his contribution to freethought. Conway admired both Fox's theory and his practice, finding in The Religious Ideas, published in 1849, a systematic rationalist account of world religion, and in his National Education Bill, introduced into the House of Com- mons in 1850, an early attempt to loosen the grip of the Anglican clergy in matters of education.3 In the early years of the xxth century, however, Fox's reputation underwent considerable modernisation. Much of this was due to the full-scale biography of Fox begun by RIC:ARD GARNETT and completed after his death in 1906 by his son EDWARD. By making use of Fox's correspondence and papers pused on by his daughter, Mrs BR1DELL Fox, the Garnetts were able to demonstrate the extent to which Fox was deeply involved not merely in the struggles of the Anti - Corn Law League, but in the whole reform movement of the half-century after 1815 —an involvement which, in some respects, parallelled that of FRANCIS PLACE, whose own biography had recently been written by a South Place member, GRAHAM WALLAS.4 Of perhaps equal importance in the updating of Fox's reputation was a long series of extracts taken from lectures Fox originally gave for the London Working Men's Association in the second half of the 1840s, which were reprinted in the South Place Magazine between 1903 and 1908, having been edited by JAMES. HALLAM. Hallam drew attention to the critique of militarism which, in his view, was contained in Fox's lectures. Fox was, in the words of Hallam, an "ardent idealist-realist" who denounced war as the sport of kings and aristocracies which were, in turn, fuelled by "the then equivalent of our own Jingo or Yellow Press" and by the war-cries of the populace—an -epidemic of unreason", as Hallam put it.5 Hallam's characterisation of Fox as a pacifist fitted in neatly with what was becoming, in the Edwardian period, an orthodox version of the mid-xixth century radical response to war and imperialism. It was a version of events to be found in JOHN MORLEY'S biography of RICHARD COBDEN and, later, in GEORGE MACAULAY TREVELYAN'SLife of John Bright. These and other studies amounted to a chronicle of the liberal conscience of the xixth century in which a reasoned pacifism found itself constantly at odds with an irrational and jingoistic patriotism. With hindsight some of this interpretation appears too simplistic. As we shall Ethical Record, May 1988 11 see, in Fox's case it overlooked his views on the militia—a sort of people's army —of which he was generally in favour, and, more importantly, it completely ignored his actual support for the Crimean war. Nevertheless, it was as a pacifist and an internationalist that Fox was being commended to South Place members in the 1900s. Apart from Hallam's contribution, material in support of this new angle on Fox's reputation was to be found in the second half of the Garnetts' biography— that is, the half written by Edward Garnett. The two Garnetts held quite different views on the problems raised by war and empire. Edward, the son, supported the Boers during the war of 1899-1901, much to his father's disapproval, and went on to write regularly for J. L. HAMMOND'S liberal paper, The,Speaker and towards the end of the first world war contributed a series of bitingly satirical anti-war sketches to the Nation, the Labour Leader and other periodicals.6 To a certain extent these differences between father and son were reflected in their respective verdicts on Fox..The elder Garnett, who carried the narrative of Fox's life up to 1840, found in his subject a statement of the essential middle-class optimism and enlightenment of the years around the first Reform Act; whereas the younger Garnett saw in the older Fox a more complicated figure—a radical overtaken by free-trade liberalism, an opponent of war compromised by the reaction on the European continent after 1848. Whilst not ignoring Fox's position on the Crimean war Edward Garnett was at pains to point out how his support for war against Russia was reconcilable with his call for the recognition of the principle of national self-determination! It was probably Edward Garnett's account of Fox which proved more influential than that of his father. It tallied substantially with J. A. HOBSON'S study of COBDEN which was published in 1918. Hobson, who spoke regularly at South Place as an appointed lecturer from 1909 onwards, collected together for publica- tion Cobden's major letters on foreign policy, pointing out the contemporary relevance of Cobden's advocacy of non-intervention and respect for the rights of nationalities. Several years later, in his Conway Memorial Lecture at South Place, GRAHAM WALLAS made out a similar case for Fox, noting how he had pleaded for "the principles of pacifism and self-determination in international affairs".6 W. J. Fox, therefore, has always personified English radicalism in one or other of its many forms. Indeed, it was in this spirit that South Place Ethical Society celebrated the bi-centenary of his birth two years ago. The two lectures given on that occasion located Fox firmly within a radical tradition which stretches back in an unbroken line over two centuries.6 But here lies the problem for the historian. For just as Fox's radicalism is open to any number of positive caricatures—be they member of the Manchester school, freethinker, social reformer, pacifist or internationalist—so it also lends itself to a series of negative stereotypes. Thus, Fox has been seen more recently as the paid demagogue of the Anti - Corn Law League, and as the subservient tool of the manufacturers of Oldham, the town which he represented in Parliament, with two interruptions, from 1847 until 1862." In other words, there are any number of types of radicalism to which the various aspects of Fox's long life might conform, but no one all-inclusive category which properly sums up his politics, without lapsing into caricature. Must we be left then with a bundle of stereotypes—or, worse, with what Edward Garnett called "a blurred shadow . . . a phantom lingering in the twilight of its past triumphs"? n Or can the political radicalism of W. J. Fox be defined more adequately? I think it can—but only if we dispense with the urge to pigeon-hole Fox as representing this or that particular shade of radicalism. It may be more useful to look at Fox's political life as a series of contradictions, some of which were peculiar to himself, some of which he shared with many of his radical contemporaries. Fox lived through a period when some of the central tenets of radical thinking were being undermined by events at home and abroad. 12 Ethical Record, May 1988 The degree to which Fox came to terms with these problems and adapted his politics accordingly is probably the best guide to his success and to the uniqueness of his contribution to English radicalism. This process of adjustment was not always a straightforward one—even -for the most progressive minds. As FRANCIS NEWMAN, a fellow radical who came to lecture at South Place in the 1860s, pointed out in 1850, "Radicals are almost as slow as Tories to admit a new thought".12 There ivere three main areas of . contradiction and contrast within Fox's radicalism. The,first might be termed geographical. The major part of Fox's adult life and virtually all his years in active politics were spent in metropolitan London —and more specifically, in the three great central London boroughs on the Middles& side of the Thames: —Finsbury, Westminster and the City. It was from these three locales that he derived most of his political life-blood—from his friends among the circle of manufacturing and mercantile Unitarian families in Finsbury, from his journalistic and political contacts on the Common Council of the City of London and those in the publishing houses -of Fleet Street and St Paul's, and, particularly after his move to Bayswater following the separation from his wife in 1834, from the companionship of Francis Place and JOHN STUART MILL in Westminster. Fox was thus very much a cockney politician, yet his most significant claim on posterity was his oratory on behalf of the Manchester-based Anti-Corn Law League between 1843 and 1846, and his years spent as MP for the Lancashire mill-town of Oldham. To what extent was a political outlook forged in London appropriate to Fox's later political career? After all, xixth century radicalism a not always travel easily and, if we are to believe the story-line of MARK RUTHERFORD'S classic radical tale, The Revolution in Tanner's Lane, the move from the metropolis to Lancashire was amongst the most hazardous. The second contradiction in Fox's radicalism was one common to many radicals of his generation and the one succeeding. We might, for the want of a better term, call it a contradiction of ideas. In Fox's writings and speeches we can see the confluence of two distinct radical programmes—on the one hand, a set of demands which had been handed down, more or less unchanged, from the days of JOHN WILKES and MAJOR JOHN CARTWRIGHT in the 1760s and 1770s and which called for the ballot, short parlia- ments and suffrage reform; and on the other, the ideas of the Benthamite radicals or utilitarians, who argued for not merely reform of political institutions, but reform through political institutions such as the New Poor Law. Benthamites thus had something of a more pragmatic attitude towards power than the legatees of Wilkes and Cartwright, who tended to be dubbed "destruc- tives" in the early 1830s. Neither of these two programmes were easily compatible with the free-trade liberalism represented by the Whig followers of CHARLES JAMES Fox— men such as Lord JOHN RUSSELL, Lord BROUGHAM and Earl GREY, who took up the slogan of "peace, retrenchment and reform" in 1832, as Bright and Cobden were to do in the 1840s and 1850s. As Fox later argued, such doctrines as these related to commercial policy only, and not to foreign affairs and defence. Fox thus had his differences with the Manchester school, but he was also, as we shall see, impatient -with some of the old-fashioned attitudes of the "destructive" radicals and dubious about the zealousness of the Benthamites. Finally, there is not so much a contradiction, as a contrast, between the 30 years of his life which Fox spent in the pulpit and on the platform and the last 15 or so which he spent within the House of Commons. It is an ironic contrast. Fox began his oratory in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars when the very nature of public speaking was often seditious and unconstitutional—as another famous orator, HENRY HUNT, found out to his cost. Even at the time of the Reform bill of 1831-2 there were strict legal constraints governing the language and style of public meetings—or "pressure from without" as they began to be known. In the 1840s much of this was to change. The "model" Ethical Record, May 1988 13 agitation of the Anti-Corn Law League—with its ticket-only meetings in Covent Garden, its public subscriptions and banquets, and its commissioned journalists, of whom Fox was one, did a great deal to legitimise the cause of public pressure. At the close of his life Fox witnessed the emergence of national pressure-groups taken from the mould of the League, such as the Liberation Society and the Parliamentary Reform Association; and he also saw the success of politicians such as BRIGHT and GLADSTONE who, with the aid of the electric telegraph and the railway, made the public platform the very basis of their national reputations. Yet by the 1850s Fox's own voice had begun to give up, and beset with bronchial and throat problems, about the only place he could be heard at all was in the House of Commons. At the same time, as we shall see, his own views on the virtues of agitation had changed as well. A Cockney Politician I shall deal firstly with the geographical contradiction evident in Fox's political radicalism. When Fox arrived in London in the early spring of 1817 to take up the ministry of the Parliament Court chapel in Bishopsgate he was not, of course, a wide-eyed newcomer to the city. Between 1806 and 1809 he had attended JOHN PYE-SMITH'SDissenting Academy in Homerton which, though at a fair distance, was near enough to central London for Fox to become a fairly frequent visitor to Covent Garden, where he developed his life-long interest in the drama. Pye- Smith, who originally hailed from Sheffield, enjoyed a scholastic reputation amongst dissenting families nationwide and, to some extent, Fox must have benefited from the association with Pye-Smith in his first contact with local non- conformist circles. At any rate, in 1817 he settled not far from Homerton—in Dalston, on the border of the vast borough of Finsbury, which in those days stretched from Seven Dials to Stoke Newington. During the years between his first and second residence in London Fox held ministries in Hampshire, becoming converted to Unitarianism in 1812. It was at this time that he met the TAYLOR family, relatives and eventual business partners of the COURTAULD silk manufacturing family of Braintree in Essex, whose connec- tions with the City of London were substantia1.13 At the commencement of his London ministry Fox thus already had an entree into two of the three circles which were to dominate his London life—Finsbury, via Pye-Smith; and the City, by way of the Taylor-Courtauld connection. Lasting friendships were made amongst the Parliament Court chapel-goers, most of whom, though not all, responded enthusiastically to Fox's insistence on a secular rather than what he called a "priestllike" relationship of minister to congregation. Fox's unorthodoxy was apparent almost immediately—in 1819 he supported the atheist publisher, RICHARD CARLILE and, in the following year, he delivered a sermon on the Queen CAROLINE affair." Fox perhaps found most in common with a group of men who attended Parlia- ment Court who were of similar age—in their late twenties and early thirties— and who were relatively recently settled in London. They included JOHN BOWRING, HENRY SOUTHERN and SOUTHWOOD SMITH and it was through them that Fox made his publishing debut in the capital—firstly, in a series of reviews for Southern's Retrospective Review and then, in 1824, the first article in the first number of the Westminster Review, which at its commencement was edited by Bownng and THOMAS PERRONET THOMPSON." Other journalistic contacts were made through his connections with the City of London. DANIEL Warne HARVEY, subsequently MP for Colchester and South- wark, but in the early 1820s a member of the Common Council of the City of London and proprietor and editor of the Sunday Times, was probably introduced to Fox by one of the Taylor family. In a move which would be repeated some 16 years later when he joined the Morning Chronicle, Fox began contributing dramatic criticism to HARVEY'S Sunday Times, before moving on to write some of its leading political articles.16 However, the bulk of Fox's publishing activities in the late 1820s and the first 14 Ethical Record, May 1988 half of the 1830s were taken up with the journal of the Unitarian Association, the Monthly Repository, of which a particularly fine history has been written .by FRANCIS MINEICA." Fox became editor of the Monthly Repository in 1828 without effecting any change in the fairly parochial tone of the journal. Alterations were forthcoming in October, 1831, however, when•Fox became proprietor of the Repository. He turned over the publishing of the journal to his younger brother, Charles, to whom he had long provided financial support and with whom he had recently persuaded a reluctant HARRIET MARTINEAU to publish her popular tracts on political economy." Furthermore, within a year of severing the Repository from the Unitarian Association, Fox had expanded its list of contributors to include writers from outside the Unitarian circle. Alongside old-hands such as Bowring now appeared articles from WILLIAM BRIDGES ADAMS ("Junius Redivivus"), ROBERT BROWNING, WILLIAM and MARY HOWITT and JOHN STUART MILL. Under Fox the Monthly Repository of the 1830s helped fill a growing gap in the liberal press. In the 1820s, with no end to a Tory administration in sight, the differences between the reformers among the opposition Whig party and radical reformers outside Parliament had been reduced to almost negligible proportions. Thus, Harvey's Sunday Times, to which, as we have seen, Fox contributed, though owned by a radical was little more than "a cautious advocate of tempered Whiggism", as one commentator has described it." In 1831-2, however, on the eve of the first Reform Act, and particularly in its aftermath, a series of schisms developed within the Whig party and within the radical movement itself. To counteract the dominance of the Morning Chronicle, the organ of the Whigs, a series of radical newspaper initiatives developed. New life was breathed into the Examiner which had been flagging under the editorship of LEIGH HUNT, although its new editor, ALBANY FONBLANQUE, was remarkably reserved in stating his political convictions; the True Sun was commenced in 1832, but was so plagued with various libel-suits in its first few years as to be almost completely ineffective." And then there was the Monthly Repository in which Fox, along with W. B. ADAMS and Thrust STUART MILL, developed an unequivocal radicalism, asserting the old demands for the ballot, short Parliaments and an extended franchise as well as being alive to newer trends such as French socialism. Fox's editorship of the Monthly Repository committed him to a more active role in metropolitan politics. He joined the council of the National Political Union, which was established in 1831 by JAMES MILL and FRANCIS PLACE and he remained in one or other of Place's political associations for the next decade. Unlike other members of the council of the National Political Union Fox remained friendly with the National Union of the Working Classes, which was established at the same time." There may also have been a financial incentive in politicking in this fashion. When Fox separated from his wife in 1834 and set up house with ELIZA FLOWER he estranged some of the South Place congregation, and with that section of offended opinion went an appreciable part of his income. Within a year he had given up the Monthly Repositor y, turned down John Stuart Mill's invitation to edit the new London Review and rejoined DANIEL WHITTLE HARVEY, now owner of the True Sun, where he took on much of the editorial work until the end of 1837. When the True Sun ceased publication he was taken on as dramatic critic by Sir John Easthope at the Morning Chronicle. There, he graduated to writing the paper's leading articles—four per week during 1839-40, according to the testimony of his daughter—and it was from the columns of the Morning Chronicle that Fox's writing recommended itself to Richard Cobden as he began the organisation of the Anti-Corn Law League.22 So, by the late 1830s Fox was very much a cockney politician. Not only was he in demand among the leading Whig and radical London dailies, but he had also Ethical Record, May 1988 15 become something of a focal-point for a new generation of metropolitan radical- ism. To the Finsbury rump of the National Union of the Working Classes he remained an ally throughout their campaign for the repeal of the newspaper taxes and their participation in the London Working Men's Association, formed in 1836. One of them, the young WILLIAM JAMES LINTON, later recalled that his political education diet at this time included the South Place lectures of Fox, JOHN ARTHUR RoaaucK's Pamphlets for the People and SHELLEY'S Queen Mab.23 Provincial Unitarianism also continued to send down to Fox a steady stream of young impressionable minds—men such as WILLIAM SHAEN, JAMES STANSFIELD and PETER TAYLOR Jr, who imbibed Fox's lectures along with the proceedings of the Benthamite London Debating Society as a distraction from the more mundane legal and business training which they were ostensibly in the capital to pursue. In no way did Fox's London credentials diminish after he began to work for the 'Anti-Corn Law League in 1843. Indeed, he joined up with another City of London alderman in 1846, JAMES HARMAN, the owner of the Weekly Dispatch, having just spent seven months with the newly-established Daily News. By this time, however, there was a new agenda to Fox's political radicalism, and, more significantly, a new political audience in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire. What then was distinctively metropolitan about Fox's radicalism and how successful was he in adapting it for a northern setting? Living in London, in close proximity to the mercantile activities which made the capital the "warehouse of the world" and -in daily contact with the literary and journalist figures in the neighbourhood of Fleet Street and the Strand, it is not surprising that Fox had a particular conception of what constituted the "people". His own congregation at South Place was mainly made up of those whose business was in the City, and the radicals with whom he acted in and around Westminster in the early 1830s were, for the most part, lawyers or medical men. His contact with the labouring classes was slight—in 1846 the only instance he could recall of being in the close company of non-electors was during his member- ship of the council of the National Political Union; and his experience of the classes of people to be found in the workshop or larger manufacturing trades was minimal. In this respect, there was a certain aptness in the pseudonym which he adopted in his letters contributed to the Anti -Corn Law League's newspaper, The League — that is, "The Norwich Weaver-Boy"—an indication, perhaps, of the extent to which his London bearings were of little relevance to the League's appeal. On the other hand, Fox's ignorance of the manufacturing districts—his assumption that all towns were essentially entrepots--served the Anti -Corn Law League well. His romantic picture of the great northern towns acting together in a kind of Hanseatic league to break the feudal bonds of the countryside became one of the most successful motifs developed by League propaganda.?' Fox's view of the electorate was also a limited one, influenced by his immediate environment. Like most other radicals at the time of the Reform bill, Fox accepted that by the term the "people" it was the middle-classes to which reference was being made. This was a political rather than an economic classifica- tion insofar as it usually included the shopkeepers and small employers who were newly enfranchised by the Reform act. Fox went along with this—he numbered the shopkeeping branch of the middle-classes at around one-eighth of the popula- tion—but he also included what he called the "uneasy classes"—the professions, the trading community, those in whom he noted: ". . . an almost universal unfixedness of position. Every man is rising or falling, or hoping that he shall rise, or fearing that he shall sink".25 Fox thought that this situation of perpetual motion had one important advan- tage—it guaranteed a shrewdness of mind and a certain independence of opinion, which at election time meant that the urban middle classes were free from the kind of exercise of aristocratic influence and bribery which characterised the small boroughs and the counties. He maintained in 1852, that "the cheapest elections, sometimes perfectly 16 Ethical Record, May 1988 costless, are those of the large popular constituencies"; 26 but, as we shall see, by then, his own election experiences at Oldham, where the Riot Act was read on the first two occasions on which he contested the seat, were beginning to sow doubts in his mind about the purity of the electorate. 0 NOTES 1 Daily News, 6 June 1864, p.5; cf. Nonconformist, 8 June 1864, p.466. 2 Memorial Edition of the Collected Works of W. J. Fox. 12 vols., (1865-8) I, pp.vii-viii; the educationalist, W. B. Hodgson, was responsible for the plan of the edition: J. M. D. Meiklejohn (ed.), Life and Letters of William Ballantyne Hodgson, etc. (Edinburgh 1883), p.380. 3 Moncure D. Conway, Centenary History of the South Place Society Based on Four Discourses Given in the Chapel in May and June, 1893. (1894). 4 Richard Garnett, The Life of W. J. Fox, Public Teacher and Social Reformer, 1786- 1864 . . , Concluded by Edward Garnett, etc. (1910). 5 South Place Magazine, vol. 8, no. 6 (March 1903), pp.85-9; vol. 8; no, 8 (May 1903), pp.120-3; vol. 10, no. 6 (March 1905), pp.81-7. 6 Carolyn G. Heilbrun, The Garnett Family. (1961), pp.77, 93-4, 99; Edward Garnett's satires were reprinted as Papa's War and other Satires. (1919). 7 See Richard Garnett's entry on Fox in the Dictionary of National Biography for his overview; cf. Garnett, Life, pp.253, 325-7, J. A. Hobson, Richard Cobden, the International Man. (1918); for Hobson and South place, see: Ian Mackillop, The British Ethical Societies. (Cambridge, 1986); Graham Wallas, William Johnson Fox (1786-1864). (1924), p.27. 9 Ethical Record, vol. 91, no. 7 (July-August) 1986), pp.5-7; vol. 92, no. 2 (Februarz 1987), pp.3-7. . 10 Norman McCord, The Anti-Corn Law League, 1838-1846. (1958), •p.185; John Foster, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution : Early industrial capitalism in three English towns. (1974), pp.172-3; Foster's picture of Fox has been recently challenged: Stewart A. Weaver, John Fielden and the Politics of Popular Radicalism. (Oxford, 1987). 11 Garnett, Life, p.x. 12 Newman to Joshua Toulmin Smith, [October 1850], in I. Giberne Sieveking, Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman. (1909), pp.37I-2. 13 Garnett, Life, ch. I. 14 Susan Budd, Varieties of Unbelief : Atheists and Agnostics in English Society, 1850- (960. (1977), pp.15-20. " George L. Nesbitt, Benthatnite Reviewing : The First Twelve Years of the West- minster Review, 1824-1836. Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Lterature, no. 118. (New York, NY, 1934), ch. 2; Walter E. Houghton (ed.), Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals. 3 vols. (1965), III. 16 Charlotte Fell Smith, Daniel Whittle Harvey, rptd. from the Essex Review. (1915). " Francis E. Mineka, The Dissidence of Dissent : The Monthly Repository, 1806-1838, etc. (Chapel Hill, NC, 1944). 10 Harriet Martineau, A utobiography. 3 vols, (1877), I, p.166. 19 Stephen Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Modern Britain. 2 vols. (1981), I, p.48. 29 W. E. S. Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817-1841. (Oxford, 1979), ch. 7; C. H. Vivian, Radical Journalism in the 1830s: the True Sun and Weekly True Sun", Modern Language Quarterly, 15 (September 1954), 222-32. 21 James Hamburger, James Mill and the Art of Revolution. Yale Studies in Political Science, 8. (1963), p.131. 22 E. F. Bridell Fox, "William Johnson Fox", South Place Magazine, vol. 2, no. 11, (August 1897), pp.161-4; Koss, Political Press, I, p.62. 23 William James Linton, Memories. (1895), pp.26-7. 24 Finsbury Lectures. Reports of Lectures Delivered at the Chapel in South Place, Finsbury, by W. J. Fox. (1835-40), no. XXI, pp.13-15; "Letters on the Corn Laws, no. IX", The League, 30 November 1844, pp.I534; Speech at Covent Garden Theatre [15 January 1845], rptd in Collected Works, IV, p.I74; cf. Gary S. Mesinger, Manchester in the Victorian Age: the half-known city. (Manchester, 1985). 1111.73-8. 25 Finsbury Lectures, no. III, pp.7-8. 23 "Representative Reform", Westminster Review, vol. 1, no. 1 n.s. (January 1852) rptd in Collected Works, VI, p.140. Ethical Record, May 1988 17 Viewpoints Readers Attempted Concept/Word Definitions(see February 1988 Ethical Record page 14). ROBERT (BOB) AWBERY writesas follows:— 1. Ethics/Ethical A person is behaving Ethically if he considers one more person than himself before he acts. The greater the number of people he considers before he acts the more Ethical a person is likely to be. Since a person is not able to consider the total consequences of his action on, say, his locality/state/set of states/planet/ galaxy then it is impossible for one person to act 100% ethically. For Ethics to exist then writing or speech is necessary. A Ethic is normally a set of rules that indicate how people should relate to people in different situa- tions. A Ethic could exist prior to speech or writing, but such a ethic would be very primitive and closer to Biological Ethics.Some ethics are considered Absolute (Religious ones) and some are considered Relative. It can be shown that all ethics are relative and based on Commonsense/ Rules of Group Survival. LEVEL 2—Cultural Ethics (based on Commonsense).

LEVEL 1— Biological Ethics (based on Genes). All social forms of life contain some ethics coded into their genes/nerve system. 2. Humanist/Humane A Humanist is a person who believes he is totally responsible for his own existence in this physical universe. That all Values are created by Himself. The German philosopher NIETZSCHE said all is interpretation. Even the act of Seeing is a learnt process— we See things that people did not see the further back in time you go. The French Existentialists say Being precedes Essence. The Human Being defines who he is. This is an ongoing, evolutionary (cultural) process. Humane—the avoidance of any unnecessary cruelty to any form of life. 3. Rational/Rationalism To be Rational is to try to use Reason in any situation that confronts a human being. A Rationalist believes that all situations a human being faces can ultimately be examined by Reason. 4. Secular/Secularism A Secularist is a person who believes the State should be Independent of Religious type beliefs. If a person is religious he should be religious in his own time, using his own money. The person can only hold his "religious" belief provided this does not harm other people in the state. Secular values are values derived independent of Religion or Tradition. They are based on Common Sense or Science. Common Sense evolves with time and is the sort of educated intelligence a population uses in practical everyday living. 5. Freethought/Freethinker Freethought covers a wider number of Political/Social/Scientific issues than normally covered by, for example, Humanism. A Freethinkeris a person devoted to consider all the issues of the day without having to worry about a Party Label, eg Humanist, Atheist, etc. 6. Atheist/Agnostic A Atheist is a person who does not believe in God. Normally he does not believe in the god of Theists (god of Revelation and Prophets). It is more difficult to attack the god of a Deist. Agnostic— a person who cannot yet decide whether or not god exists. 7. Radical is a person who departs from the Norm of his particular group, eg Mrs Thatcher is a conservative radical. S. A Republican is a person who believes that all public offices should be open 18 Ethical Record, May 1988 of science, then there is no reason why such a person should not exist. .

to free competition, ie elections. There should be NO hereditary component in the affairs of the State. Also that no person/persons should be above the Law— eg monarchy/government, etc.—they key political concepts for a modem state should be openess and concensus. All the law in the state should be' based on a time guilotine of perhaps 100 years, to prevent us, the current generation being held to 'ransom' by our ancestors, tradition, etc. All old law would have to be gathered together and put in new statutes, if the old law is still relevant. It is wrong to/rule' a country by a particular family. A family which may have arisen in history as the result of murder, war, bribery, illicit sex, etc. No one should be allowed to 'rule' a country as a result of the particular womb they emerged from—such a system is based on a Caste system Human Rights. That all people should be equally treated in society. For example, no Discrimination based on Age/Sex/Religion/Colour/Education/Aristo- cratic background, etc. Religious. A belief in something that has no evidence to support it. Normally also evokes supernatural beings. Science, for example, is a belief/ideology supported by evidence Culture. A Culture is everything that exists, because human beings exist. This includes physical things/ process (such as TVs, chairs, roads, computer-hardware) and abstract things such as Law, Math, Human Language, Computer Languages, Religion, etc. These things would begin not to exist if we all died. MATTER EVOLUTION->BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION-) -)CULTURAL EVOLUTION Cultural Evolution is a substitution for Biological Evolution. The major com- ponent of a cultural system is the Economic System. Most people battle to survive in an economic system rather than a biological system solely. GENES->GENES CONCEPTS-)CONCEPTS BIOLOGY CULTURE GENERATION GENERATION GENERATION GENERATION R, R, Progressive. Something is Progressive only if it improves on what has gone before and maintains ecological stability. Feminist. A person trying to raise the profile of females in society and prevent- ing them from being second class citizens. Fundamentalist. A person who believes in the literal truth of his religion. For example, Islamic people believe alcohol would damage their soul if it should touch their liris Alcohol is medically dangerous if taken in large doses—but otherwise harmless. Freedom. An increase in Freedom for some in society leads to decrease in freedom for others. Normally, those at the top of the "pile" have much freedom, due to those at the bottom having limited freedom. A Free society provides an equal amount of freedom for all. Future. The Future is a concept that is only important if a state is undergoing Change. People who are not changing do not have a Future. Secular Royalist. A person could be a Secular Royalist in principle. In practice religious people are likely to support a monarch if he exists in their state. A Secularist does not support religion, but he could support an hereditary "Leader". Rationally Religious. In principle it would be possible to construct a Rational Religion. The Deist religion of THOMAS PAINE is one such example. 18. Religious Humanist. You could.be a Religious Humanist provided you allowed other people to enjoy their religion/non-religion in your state and recognised all values are created by human beings. Religion would be a Yu/tie—something constructed to correspond to a hypothetical god. If that god could be constructed in such a way so that no inconsistency appeared and no contradiction with "facts"

Ethical Record, May 1988 19 Companson Between Theories and Adjectives—eg.Humanist/Humane It appears that some humanists are under the impression that the meanings of the words HUMANIST/HUMANEare somewhat related. Both words refer to the Latin for "Man", but there is no correlation whatso- ever in meaning. The word HUMANISMwas first coined in Italy at the very inception of early Renaissance and it referred to a new school of art (and the school of thought supporting it), which reacted to and contrasted Gothic art (and its relative school of thought) by focusing the artist's attention and work on the actual human body, whereas Gothic art ignored totally the human body by covering it so thoroughly almost as to deny its existence. Gothic art concentrated on a sort of hieratic expression of an emotionless face implying a link with a super human world. The Humanism of the Renaissance implied a return to the art and the world views of pagan Rome and Greece, where the human world was at the centre of human endeavour. Even religion was based on mankind and the human world. Therefore a religious person could be very compassionate and Humane, whereas a Humanist might be insensitive and even cruel. I have noticed some confusion with regard to the difference between a term describing a theory (about the world) such as Humanism and Rationalism, and adjectives such Humane and Rational. DAVIDIBRY , London NW II, 19/2/'88

"We'reDoing HumanismThis Term" Short Report of the Talk to SPES at the January 17 Sunday Forum For this lecture JOHN WHITE brought specimens of pages from the London, Manchester and Brent Religious Education syllabuses and copies of the revised Humanist Dipper in its Oxford and Cambridge blue cover (£ 1).. He drew atten- tion to the GOLDEN RULE started by CONFUCIUSand other sages and to the ingenious word puzzle which teaches what COMPASSION,TOLERATION, etc., mean. John said there had been, since the 1945 BUTLEREducation Act, a period of 20 years when nothing was changed and a headmaster could keep 1,000 boys in for not singing hymns. This was followed by a realisation that this situation was impossible and very mixed assemblies are now held. (B. Smoker held one and the hymn was It Ain't Necessarily So). John had even been asked to supply the item on PREJUDICEto a religious encyclopaedia. Discussion was lively and included the suggestion that copies of the Dipper be sent to all schools, paid for from SPES funds. S.B.

Those Other Women Mathematicians CHRISTINEBONDI, one of South Place's Trustees, writes:— Apart from the women mathematicians mentioned (Ethical Record, February 1988, page 14) the ones that come to mind are:—HYPATIA (from Alexandria)— c400 AD, SONYAK0VALEy5KY-1850-1891, Emmy N0ETHER-1882-1935, and, in our own time, and in this country: —Dame MARYCARTWRIGHT, FRS, and Dame KATHLEENOLLEVENSHAW, WhO was President of the /nstitute of Mathematics about 10 years ago. Both are still alive, but Mary Cartwright must be nearly 90. There is a book called Women In Mathematics by LYNNM. OSEN, published by MIT Press, listing a number of women mathematicians, including CAROLINE HERSCHELand MARY SOMERVILLE,WhO might perhaps be equally well described as scientists. Incidentally, there is a poster produced (I think by the Association of Teachers of Mathematics), giving details of a number of female mathematicians, which I have seen displayed in schools. I am, myself, involved in attempting to increase girls' self confidence in mathematics, and would be happy to hear from anyone who wants to know more. 20 Ethical Record, May 1988 Continued from page 2] report says there are 14- million people agination to create the theories, and living "below the poverty line" and intelligence to test them. A recent 30,000 homeless families in London. description by a physicist, describing Through the post (to those of us the "super-string" theory of matter, who may have perhaps actively sup- talked of six dimensions and the totally ported some cause), or given out, different assumed behaviour of matter come an endless array of well-pre- at the level millions of factors smaller pared and persuasive appeals. for the than the smallest we have already had dying millions; the other species of to consider. Was there much differ- living forms; the land and environ- ence in quality to the ideas, for ex- ment (did you watch the fascinating ample in Arthur Clarke's 1986 SF TV series about Easter Island and story The Songs of Distant Earth, understand the way the altered en- where he designates a "quantum vironment—by human intervention— drive", enabling the human species to changed and reduced everything built escape to other parts of the Universe up previously? Are we creating a just before the total destruction of parallel situation on the world scale?). planet Earth. Among many recently noted causes So, the material for our studies is there are, for example, people con- there, and studying these subjects high- cerned with Aboriginal Land Rights, lights some of the Ethical, Social, a Nuclear Free and Independent Political and Human issues involved Pacific, the breathes of the Geneva in creating any different type of Protocol on Chemical Warfare (bk society—the aim of some of the using it to kill many Kurds in Iran). Utopias. More of us (and others whom And our attention has also been we should encourage to participate) focussed on the unacceptable methods could usefully take part in these used by "terrorists" (heroes to those classes. Are you going to join us? whose causes they aspire to), govern- All that, of course still leaves on ments, police and others. What does one side the burning issues in the UK that imply about Ethical values and in regard to what is being done to us about the way people are educated? over tax, education, local government, Language* is muddied and muddled: research (Sir GEORGE PORTER, in this "well-organised hi-jack" comes to year's Dimbleby Lecture at The Royal mind with many others. Watch out for Society showed clearly how the UK this work of the very slick editors, was "dropping behind in research") deliverers of "news" and of "public —so, again what are the Ethical im- relations" people. plications here? Incidentally, do very few optimistic, Another recent report shows the good, beautiful things happen* among neglect (one person interviewed sug- our 5,000,000,000 fellow human beings gested the whole issue was a "time- (other than charity "walks", "runs", bomb") in regard to the property held "Elephant" happenings and "royal" by UK local authorities (worth visits)? thousands of millions of pounds and With this issue members who receive including schools, libraries, fire and the Ethical Record by post are sent : police stations, town halls). (1) The new leaflet, produced by the The divisions and inequalities in our Humanist Liaison Committee, giving society are shown up by "Mother" a brief description of the Humanist THERESA'S visit to London from the movement in the UK and of each of streets of Indian cities! (And how the individual societies. This is a use- illogical can you get—it is suggested ful short account to give to people she is here to discuss the anti-abortion who show an interest in the ideas with proposals — will unrestricted popula- which we are all concerned. Copies tion growth, supported by this same from the Society's Secretary, or at "lobby", solve things and is it meetings. But we ourselves should, of Ethical?). However, another recent [Concluded on page 22 Ethical Record, May 1988 21

course, ask of the movement and its ability, and our tendency to "dream" constituents. "Are we doing enough— altered conditions, helped by the and on the right lines?" This leaflet many who have already made pro- is a useful reminder of the history and posals, "save" the current -human" various stances, from which we can species from the fate of countless species in the past and many in the look at these questions—even for our claimed own Society. present?" (GERALD DURRELL in 1981 that "progress at our present (2) The second issue of The New rate will eliminate 1,000,000 species by European, courtesy the publishers. A the end of the century"). report has now also been published And what are the Ethical principles giving more details of the proposed which will be successful in producing 1992 disappearance of the barriers be- that saving? tween the present European Com- munity countries (will Britain abstain, Don't miss Sir Alfred Ayer's Con- despite the Channel Tunnel?). As the way Memorial Lecture on Thursday BBC Money Programme showed May 19. The large Hall holds 4-500, (again on April 17) the financial, so bring friends, relations and others. commercial and industrial interests We want to make it a success and look to a "market" of 320 million of many people should find what he has us, able to "compete" with the USA to say on The Meaning of Life inter- and Japan. We should consider some esting—have you any answers to that of the Ethical assumptions and likely question? Some questions will be consequences—a reason for keeping taken at the end of his Lecture. abreast of developments in Europe. In Three days later there is the im- this current issue of The New Euro- portant Annual General Meeting — per- pean SPES member COLIN MILLS haps at the end of the formal business questions the journal's assumptions we can spend some time on ideas for about which really are the European developing the Society and how we countries. can get such issues as those hinted at No wonder it is a "neurotic" age above clarified? The Annual Report and most people prefer to think of should reach members soon, other things than the concerns out- By the way, meetings this year will dld be extended into July. lined above. Anyway, your Editor PETER FIUNOT become somewhat overwhelmed that Sunday April 17—there was little sleep that night! Maybe Ethical Record readers are built of sterner *See Viewpoints in this issue for an stuff! The next night was better, attempt to define some of the words we human beings have resilience, if. use. Do you agree with these definitions? often, they lack commonsense and Two publications which might help: on Atheism, DAVID BERMAN'S A History of have very inadequate knowledge. Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Perhaps you disagree with much of Russell (Croom Helm 1987); and on Feminism, LisA TUTLE'S Encyclopaedia this editorial, or particular statements. (Arrow Books, 1987). The View- of Feminism If so, send in your comments to first is in the SPES Library. points, but be brief and succinct. As On a separate issue, just come to hand, you can see from the contents of this a small, well-produced 40-page booklet issue there is a lot to publish (the by Member MARGARET CRISMAN: Exer- reason some of your shorter contribu- cises in Truth, Beauty and Goodness tions are held over. Nevertheless they (Institute for Social Inventions, 24 Aber- are of interest). corn Place, London NW8 9DP, £2.50, The basic question seems to us to Post free) which may help you define be: "Can human intelligence, adapt- these concepts.

22 Ethic& Record, May 1988 SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Humanist Centre, Conway Hall 25 Red Lion Square, London WCIR 4RL. Telephone: 01-831 7723.

COMING TO CONWAY HALL PROGRAMME OF EVENTS MAY 1988 Sunday (morning) Meeting (Free—collection) (afternoon) Forums and Socials (Free) All the Society Meetings, Forums and Socials are held in the Library (unless otherwise indicated) Two Lecture/Discussion Courses (In partnership with London University Extra Mural Department.) In the Library at Conway Hall, 6.30 to 8.30 at El a session (to include refreshments). Each course continuing for 10 sessions. Tuesdays PH1LOSOPHY—from Hobbes to Humanism Tutor: Peter Heales. Thursdays UTOPIAS, FUTURES, CATASTROPHIES Tutors: NICHOLAS HYMAN and others. Sunday May 1 at 11.00 am Lecture: ELLIS HILLMAN—Apocalypse Now and Then. at 3.00 pm Forum: Apocalyptic continuation, GEORGE HAY and others. Sunday May 8 at 11.00 am Lecture: AMRIT WILSON.Britain as a Colonial Power—Asian Women in Britain and the Legacies of Colonialism. Amrit Wilson has communicated the reality of life for many Asian women in Britain. Her sense of history and of the individual's potential enhance our understanding of Britain's cultural and Ethical epoch of transition. at 3.00 pm Forum: CATHERINE BUDGET-MEAK1N,Deckchairs on the Titanic. The relevance of E. F. Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful. Sunday May 15 at 11.00 am Lecture: HAROLD BLActutAm—TheDimensions of Humanism. It is now 40 years since the British Humanist Association received its name. What does "humanism" as concept, aspiration or idea in action, suggest—in 1948 and 1988? Harold Blackham, whose exposition of "the plain view", of something "not religion but . . . more than 'morals without religion' " has won many to humanist opinions, is the humanist par excellence. at 3.00 pm Forum: ABRAHAM BARAVIEChemical : Warfare Against Civilians in Kurdistan. THURSDAY May 19 at 7.00 pm. Professor Sir ALFRED AYER onThe Meaning of Life. In the MAIN HALL. In the chair: Professor TED HONDERICH. Ethical Record, May 1988 23 Sunday May 22 at 11.00-am Lecture: DENIS MACEOIN.Fundamentalism in the Middle East and Global Observations. at 2.30 pm A.G.M. SATURDAY May 28 at 2.00 pm sharp. An Outing has been arranged by JOAN FREEDMAN to theMuseum of London. Meet at ST. PAUL'S TUBE STATION (Booking Hall) at 2.00 pm. After Museum visit we will stroll back to the Barbican Centre for Tea. Admission FREE. Sunday May 29 at 11.00 am MAIER VANUNU: Israel, Nuclear Proliferation and Human Rights.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY The ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING of the Society will take place at 2.30 pm in the Library at CONWAY HALL ON SUNDAY MAY 22, 1988 Refreshments will be served at 4.00 pm The Report to the Society for the 1987-8 year is being prepared, and will be circulated in due course. NICHOLAS HYMAN,Secretary There will be a Lecture in the morning at 11.00 am DENIS MACEOIN Fundamentalism in the Middle East and Global Observations

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