Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 117 No. 7 £1.50 July 2012 APES ARE LIKE US

photos: Jutta Hof Chimpanzees are the closest living relatives of humans – see article by Volker Sommer page 13

‘THE UNHOLY MRS KNIGHT’ AT THE BBC: SECULAR AND THE THREAT TO THE ‘CHRISTIAN NATION’, c.1945-1960 Callum Brown 3 APES LIKE US. TOWARDS AN EVOLUTIONARY HUMANISM Volker Sommer 13 VIEWPOINTS Donald Langdown, , Fiona Weir, Beatrice Feder, Charles Rudd, Ray Ward, Chris Purnell 11 ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS 20

MARTIN LINCÉ. We regret to report the death of long-time stalwart of our Sunday Concerts, Martin Lincé. An obituary will appear in the August ER. The funeral will take place at 2pm, Wednesday 18 July 2012 at Putney Vale Crematorium. Martin was over 97 years old.

CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON. Historian, lecturer to the Ethical Society, died in April 2012. A Tribute to his life will take place from 3.30 pm Saturday 21 July 2012 in Conway Hall. SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Main phone for all options: 020 7405 1818 Fax (lettings): 020 7061 6746 www.ethicalsoc.org.uk or www.conwayhall.org.uk Chairman: Chris Purnell Vice-chairman: Jim Herrick Treasurer: Chris Bratcher 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 Alia Tel: 020 7061 6740 [email protected] Librarian: Catherine Broad Tel: 020 7061 6747 [email protected] Hon. Archivist Carl Harrison [email protected] Programme Co-ordinator: Sid Rodrigues Tel: 020 7061 6749 [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, Alfredo Olivo, Rogerio Retuerma Maintenance: Zia Hameed Tel: 020 7061 6742 [email protected] BEN PARTRIDGE, PROGRAMME COORDINATOR On the 14 June 2012, Ben Partridge tendered his resignation. He has been offered a place on a prestigious teacher training course. Ben has performed the role of Programme Officer since November 2009 and has always demonstrated passion, enthusiasm and skill in performing his tasks. He will be most definitely missed and we wish him every success in his new vocation. In the meantime, Sid Rodrigues will be our interim (3 months) Programme Co-ordinator. Jim Walsh, CEO.

DEBATE REPORT: THAT SOCIALISM AND ARE NATURAL ALLIES This event took place on Sunday afternoon, the 17th June in the Brockway Room. It arose because of a controversy which began last November with a talk on the subject to the Ethical Society by Terry Liddle (See ER Dec 2011) . The motion was proposed by Terry Liddle and opposed by Mazin Zeki, who argued that secularists could have any political opinion. Norman Bacrac was the Chairman. A poll taken before the speeches gave the result: 11 for the motion, 6 against and 7 abstentions. After the debate, the vote for the motion was 10, against 8, abstentions 6.

SOUTH PLACE 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 humanism 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 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 now £35 (£25 if a full-time student, unwaged or over 65)

2 Ethical Record, July 2012 ‘THE UNHOLY MRS KNIGHT’ AT THE BBC: AND THE THREAT TO THE ‘CHRISTIAN NATION’, c.1945-1960 Callum Brown Lecture to the Ethical Society, 22 April 2012

In January 1955, Margaret Knight, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Aberdeen, broadcast two talks (and a third discussion programme) entitled ‘Morality without Religion’ on the BBC Home Service. In these she argued that scientific humanism, founded on , would be better for children than

Christian teaching. Though Bertrand Russell had 1made the first full broadcast by an atheist on the same station eight years earlier, Knight’s programmes were a landmark. Not being a philosopher, she aimed to be populist and, dealing with policy towards children, she caused a huge controversy. The BBC was accused of permitting attacks on Christian faith, on Christian values and on the Christian monopoly of religious education for children. To get to air, her two half-hour talks had to overcome considerable resistance by some Christian managers at the BBC who felt that the Corporation had a lead role in evangelising Britain. The broadcasts prompted outrage in the press, with nearly three thousand letters sent to the BBC and to Knight personally, and thousands more to national papers. For three weeks she was hounded and pilloried by the press. The Margaret Knight affair of 1955 marked an important turning point for Christian culture in Britain, one of at least equal significance to the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial of 1960 and the furore over John Robinson’s book Honest to God in 1963. It exposed the apparent vigour of Christian culture in Britain, including within the BBC, and a deep attachment to traditional gender roles which Mrs Knight was accused of breaching. But on the other hand, the public reaction was actually deeply divided, revealing an emerging open contest between liberal and conservative within Britain’s culture. The Knight affair allowed ordinary people, nearly all of them Christians, to articulate liberal sentiments and tolerance towards atheist views, challenging in the media the narrowness of sentiment of the mid 1950s, and presaging sixties’ broader secular challenge. As the broadcaster and writer commented in his history of Britain’s journey from God: ‘Before Mrs Knight, Britain had been a2 more or less Christian country; after her it became a more or less secular one.’ Religious Broadcasting Under Reith Under its first Director General, John Reith, the BBC in the 1920s and 1930s had developed radio to keep Christianity central to national culture. This was done to the point of alienating listeners by keeping a silence between 10.45a.m. and 12.30p.m. during its ‘Sunday Programme’. But during the Second World War and the decade following, Christian 3culture became more reliant on the Corporation and more invigorated by it.

Between 1923 and 1951, the intensity of religious broadcasting increased. Data from the BBC’s own written archives centre show the numbers of hours of religious broadcasting increased, especially on weekdays, and notably during and after the Second World War: from 4 programmes covering just over two

Ethical Record, July 2012 3 hours in 1923-8, to 32 programmes and over five hours in 1951. After the War, the BBC operated a policy laid down in 1948 by Sir William Haley, the Director General of the BBC, addressing the British Council of Churches:

There are many demands of impartiality laid upon the Corporation but this is not one of them. We are citizens of a Christian country, and the BBC (an institution set up by the State) bases its policy upon a positive attitude towards the Christian values. It seeks to safeguard those values and to foster acceptance of them. The 4 whole preponderant weight of its programmes is directed to this end.

This was interpreted by the churches as allowing debate about Christian faith, but not about Christian values, which were sacrosanct as part of British identity.

This led the head of religious broadcasting to inform BBC governors in 1956: 5‘It is the duty of religious broadcasting to make people join the Christian faith.’ In this way, faith could be debated, but it was BBC policy to promote it. This led in the early 1950s to the BBC developing ‘radio missions’, first in Scotland then in English regions. This led onto the Billy Graham crusades of 1954 and especially 1955, with extensive coverage on BBC radio and television. This angered humanist and atheist organisations that the BBC was failing to engage with modern philosophy, science and humanism. The BBC Religious Broadcasting department and the Christian-dominated Board of Governors were content that Britain was a Christian nation. In a confidential survey one month before the Knight programmes, it was shown that 25 per cent of adults were frequent churchgoers (defined as ‘most Sundays’), and 36 per cent occasional (from once a month to once per year), and 39 per cent non-churchgoers;6 only 3 per cent of people ‘don’t believe in Christianity any more’. Against this background, the survey revealed that 37 per cent of the population were ‘frequent listeners’ to religious broadcasts on radio, and a further 31 per cent were ‘occasional’ listeners; only 32 per cent were non-listeners. In all 68 per cent of adults claimed to hear one or other of its religious programmes every Sunday. If true, more were listening to Christian hymns, preaching and debate than at any time in history. The Tortuous Process of Getting to Air Into this state of affairs stepped Margaret Knight (nee Horsey, 1903-1983). Educated at Roedean, she developed religious doubt at Cambridge University, and later married a fellow atheist, Rex Knight, the professor of psychology at Aberdeen University, where in 1938 she became assistant lecturer. As the editor of a William James anthology, and co-author of a well-known Knight and Knight textbook for psychology students (which was a standard university text throughout the 1950s and 1960s), she sought to bring her specialism to a wider public audience. She made her first broadcast (on the nature of statistics) in 1951, and then sought over an eighteen month period to get her proposal for a talk of humanism for children accepted at the Corporation. She went through a tortuous and tetchy relationship with the leading religious

4 Ethical Record, July 2012 and philosophy talks producer at the BBC, TS Gregory, and his boss Harman Griseman, who were both Catholics. Knight knew this and started to complain to the BBC about their refusal to allow her proposal. Gregory was three times abusive to her on her intellectual abilities – foolishly in writing – and three times he was reprimanded and made to apologise by his bosses. Knight got support throughout this from one of the BBC governors, the socialist rationalist and sociologist Professor Barbara Wootton (1897-1988). As a result of her intervention, Knight was allowed to submit a second proposal. This was again rejected by Gregory and by the head of religious broadcasting. Margaret Knight complained again, resulting in an even greater furore, with Barbara Wootton being dragged in again. The BBC’s Director of the Spoken Word decreed that Gregory ‘was certainly in error’, that the Religious Broadcasting Department should not be seen to have the power to reject a talk by a non-

Christian, and sought7 ways to mollify Knight by letter and by sending an emissary to Aberdeen. The result was a complete change in BBC approach. From April 1954, Mary Somerville, the BBC Controller of Talks Sound (that is, radio), came to Knight’s defence. Knight’s programme then went into production with an experienced producer, Joseph Weltman, a former intelligence officer, who warned senior managers that Knight ‘regards the Catholic Church and Communism as twin anti-humanism absolutisms’, and was likely to attack both one air. But Mary Somerville was less concerned, writing to another BBC manager: ‘It is right that we gave the rationalists another slot of ‘freedom8 of the air’, according to the policy on controversial Religious broadcasting.’ So much so that Somerville upped the proposal from one programme to two talks and a third discussion programme with a former female missionary (the latter to mollify the head of religious broadcasting). So, Knight was guided to air by, interestingly, another woman – the most senior woman in BBC management. Knight was later to recall this whole process as one in which she felt she was competing against powerful Christian vested interests at the BBC. ‘But I was prepared to make a nuisance of myself,’ and she ‘continued writing and pressing and suggesting topics for talks, until eventually the resistance gave way’. The Broadcasts and their Reaction The first and second live broadcasts from Broadcasting House were made on 5 and 12 January 1955 to the London and south east region of the Home Service alone, restricting the audience to half a million listeners each. The third broadcast9 was taken up by London, Welsh and Scottish regions, but not the others. The narrow listenership did not restrict the geography of the ensuing controversy. In the two broadcasts, later published in a book dedicated to

Bertrand Russell, Knight addressed ‘the ordinary man and woman, whose10 attitude towards religion is that they do not quite know what they believe’.

Ethical Record, July 2012 5 She argued against the stifling of doubt, and rounded on the suggestion that Christianity was the only alternative to problems ranging from communism to juvenile delinquency. Christianity and communism were not ‘the two great rival forcesî, she said, but ‘dogma and the scientific outlook’. Though she suggested that ‘orthodox Christianity is no longer intellectually tenable’, she said that she was not setting out to destroy religious convictions, but to argue against imposing them on children, positing instead the value of a humanist approach to moral training for the young in which the power of reasoning rather than scriptural authority should dominate. Yet, children should, she said, be told of God and Christ, read the New Testament stories in the same manner as Greek mythology, and be introduced to the aesthetic beauty of churches. She discussed aspects of the psychology of childhood, like how to control aggression in children by moral guidance. Her presentation rested on rather brief, perhaps simplistic views of theology, but was not an aggressive anti-Christian polemic. The first broadcast on Wednesday 5 January seems to have been received with relative calm; the BBC duty officer reported only twelve critical telephone calls, and five of approval. But three newspaper stories in four days started the moral panic. The columnist in the Daily Telegraph, ‘Peterborough’ (W.F. Deedes), wrote an item two days after the first broadcast talking about Mrs Knight’s ‘sustained attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular’ which he described as ‘one large slab of atheistical propaganda’, objecting specifically to Knight’s suggestion that ‘we are quite wrong to teach our children religion’. On the same day, the columnist Cyril Aynsley in the Daily Express wrote that Knight

‘began to11 demolish all that millions of parents, mistakenly or not, hold to be sacred.’ Knight Called ‘A Fanatic’ Knight recalled that ‘an agreeable young reporter had called on me, and I had chatted with him unsuspectingly for a while.’ Two days later, the reporter, Terence Feely, produced a front page full-spread in the downmarket Sunday Graphic, headlined ‘THE UNHOLY MRS KNIGHT’ with a large photograph of

Knight, in which he said that the BBC had ‘allowed a fanatic to rampage12 along the air lanes, beating up Christianity with a razor and a bicycle-chain’. These three hostile articles in the Express, Telegraph and Graphic seeded the controversy that ensued over the last three weeks of January 1955 and that engulfed both the BBC and Margaret Knight. The controversy comprised many thousands of letters from the public (including literary celebrities, church people, academics and philosophers) addressed to the newspapers, to the BBC and to Knight herself in Aberdeen, and newspaper stories at home and abroad; and it included leader columns in over thirty newspapers.13 Most regional daily and many evening newspapers carried opinion columns. Virtually all these were hostile to Knight’s views, and the majority criticised the BBC’s decision to broadcast her. In the process, the terms ‘Mrs Knight’, ‘the likes of Mrs Knight, ‘this woman Margaret Knight’, and ‘the Mrs Knights of this world’ became shorthand for a series of ideas which together expose important 6 Ethical Record, July 2012 elements of prevailing discourse about British Christianity of the mid 1950s. There was a strong gendered dimension to the articulation of the controversy. The Daily Express headline was: ‘A WOMAN makes a remarkable attack on religion for CHILDREN’,14 with the capitalisation accentuating the subversion of a normative association. The Sunday Graphic played on Knight’s gender in its story, ‘THE UNHOLY MRS KNIGHT’. Churchmen were amongst the most sexist. The Daily Express canvassed widely for churchmen to attack Knight, and Dr Neville Gorton, the 66 year-old Anglican bishop of Coventry, obliged. Under the banner headline ‘BISHOP CHECKS Mrs KNIGHT: ‘This bossy female’’, the newspaper’s front page lead story centred on him calling her ‘this brusque, so-competent, bossy female’, adding: ‘She seemed a very simple-minded female to me’. He characterised her as the devious sort of a woman: ‘The woman uses the subtle approach of the broadcast to break into a lot of homes where there are so many young parents with a first child, teaching it to say its prayers and so on. She tells them: ‘You can miss out God and it’s equally15 satisfactory.’ This is the sort of woman who drags children from the Cross.’ The Bishop Apologisies Five days later, the Express published an apology from the Bishop, but only for the ‘brusque and16 bossy female remark’, saying: ‘It was a pretty unchristian remark of mine.’ The gendered critique of Knight attacked her for straying outside the role of housewife, for being childless, and for the waste of ‘over-education’ on women. The News Chronicle reported the forthcoming debate-based third broadcast:

‘Next week Mrs Knight who is childless, 17will be opposed before the microphone by a mother of four, Mrs Jenny Morton.’ The ‘over-education of a woman’ theory was a strand picked up by Beachcomber in the Express. He spoke sarcastically of ‘the lady’ as a good candidate to be a ‘bishopette’. A second characteristic of the controversy was intellectual snobbery – not merely towards Knight but towards the British public whom she might bend to her atheism. Margaret Knight was dismissed as ‘simple-minded’ and not intellectually-18 nor theologically-equipped to speak on the issues in her broadcasts. The Sunday Times wrote: ‘There is something ludicrous about a lady in a broadcasting studio dismissing the Gospel of Christ, which has comforted, guided19 and ennobled countless millions of mankind for close on two thousand years’. The Revd Dr Donald Soper, prominent peace campaigner and recently president of the Methodist Conference, was unimpressed: ‘The talk consisted mainly of undigested bits of moral philosophy, bristling with mistakes; obviously delivered by one very ill-acquainted with the substance of Christian teachings.’ Ethical Record, July 2012 7 Many clergy, and the novelist Dorothy L Sayer, all laid into Knight on intellectual grounds, but in often patronising tones. Right-wing newspapers stated that Knight’s atheism was going to admit communism. A Daily Telegraph leader noted that the ‘BBC does not allocate official time to Communists to explain their views, and yet what Communism is in matters political atheism is perhaps in matters metaphysical’. It described both as ‘too repulsive and repugnant to public opinion for them to be included in any symposium of views however impartial’. Father Joseph Christie, a Jesuit priest at Farm Street Chapel in Mayfair, who for two weeks was used by both the Telegraph and the Mirror as a spokesperson of the Catholic view, said: ‘It is not only the great antiquity of Mrs Knight’s ideas that is repellent, but20 the fact that the Nazi, Fascist and Communist ideologies were born of them’. A general point of criticism was that the BBC was at fault in a Christian nation in not supporting Christianity. A hard-line position was adopted by the Daily Telegraph which accused the BBC of ‘A Sponsoring of Atheism’, and not being ‘a defensible medium for the dissemination of stale so-called rationalist patter.’ It feared that a precedent was being set that would allow the new commercial television companies, just coming to air in 1955, to broadcast ‘agnostic propaganda’; it compared this to the broadcasting of ‘a serious apologia for polygamy21 , or homosexuality, or any other manifestation of the frailties of human nature’. Knight Did Have Supporters On the other side of the coin, Knight attracted many supporters. Many Anglicans defended her right to be heard on the BBC, though disagreed with what she said. In all, around 40 per cent of letter writers to the BBC and to the Daily Express were supportive of her being heard. The Daily Mirror, left-leaning in its politics, took up the cudgels to defend both the BBC and Margaret Knight, praising the

Corporation resisting pressure to abandon the second talk, whilst22 its columnist, Cassandra, wrote: ‘The broadcast was a bold and brave one.’ Even Donald Soper presented more moderate views after the second broadcast, Daily Mirror telling the that he was ‘appalled23 at the working up of hysteria’ over presenting religious disagreement on air. Most of the liberal and left-wing newspapers supported the right of Knight to be broadcast, though few agreed with what she had said. Those like the Mirror that seemed to be wobbling over support of the Christian nation were attacked by competitors. Headlining the broadcasts as ‘GODLESS RADIO’, the Daily Sketch opined: ‘Is the Mirror pro-God or anti-God? Its readers can only guess

...We hope the Mirror likes the Godless company24 it is keeping. And if we are to be attacked for defending God that suits us fine.’ For the ‘red-tops’, Knight was fodder for a circulation war. The newspapers fostered a moral panic that drew many Britons to write. By 18 January 1955, the BBC had received 1,585 letters, the largest number ever received for a talks programme. These were analysed by its audience unit as 38 8 Ethical Record, July 2012 per cent in support of Mrs Knight and the broadcasting of her views, 60 per cent against. Margaret Knight herself received 1,153 letters 19 days, 65 per cent of them supportive, tolerant25 or neutral, and 36 per cent hostile, abusive or what she termed ‘psychotic’. Daily Express The reported within 12 days 26that it had received 1,000 letters, with 600 ‘against’ Mrs Knight and 400 ‘for’. Sadly, none of these appear to have survived in any archive. The moral panic induced by Knight was one of the most short-lived though most intense of post-war Britain. By the beginning of February 1955, the affair was over as a public spectacle. Curiously, it had caused hardly a ripple in politics; whilst the voices of Anglican bishops were common in the furore, not a single MP, and only one lay lord, was quoted on the Knight affair in the press. But in three weeks it had drawn in almost the entire media and stirred thousands of people to letter writing. It showed a deep suspicion, almost a hurt, of a woman challenging religion. It also showed just how far the nation had come to expect that the BBC lay at the heart of the Christian nation, and this was to trigger an internal struggle for religion at the Corporation. Outcomes

BBC managers were stunned by the furore. Initially,27 there was a concern that Knight’s talks might break the law on seditious libel. There then ensued more than five years of internal BBC debate about the broadcasting of atheist views. On the one side were Christian governors and managers, and the entire staff of the Religious Broadcasting Department, who thought Knight was ill-educated on Christian theology and rude to Christians. They were incensed that she complained of Catholics being in control at the BBC. On the other side was BBC governor Barbara Wootton, and a few managers led by Mary Somerville who, as Controller Talks (Sound), regarded Knight’s talks as no more offensive than previous ones, and who stood by the right for non-Christians to have their views heard and for the defence of free speech, whilst atheists outside the BBC demanded access to air unhindered by Christian restriction. What resulted was really a standoff. Senior management sought hard to have Knight broadcast on radio again, but she and other humanists refused unless they had no Christian interlocutors. In addition, hostility to Knight amongst Christians at the BBC was fierce. The head of religious broadcasting in

Scotland, Revd Ronald Falconer, wrote internally: ‘The Margaret Knight cult28 is of course widespread these days, and we tend to believe she is over-rated.’ Finally, the assistant head of religious broadcasting was relieved to report in summer 1960 that not only did his department feel Knight ‘is not a suitably qualified speaker on the subject [of religion]; is not sincere; a bit of a show- woman’, but that ‘these sentiments29 were confirmed by H[ead] E[ditorial] B[oard]’ senior management.

Ethical Record, July 2012 9 But a lot of things happened in the wake of Knight’s broadcast. One was the mobilisation of senior atheists and humanists. A group of 24 leading figures was formed to lobby the BBC about her and about atheist broadcasting in general. It was an astounding group, including Julian Huxley, J.B. Priestley, Stephen Toulmin, Noel Annan, A.J. Ayer, Jacob Bronowski, E.M. Forster, Bertrand Russell, AJP Taylor and Margaret Knight. Though they didn’t get immediate access to radio, TV was just taking off in Britain. One result was the rise of religious discussion programmes on TV, starting in 1957 in the wake of the Knight affair with Meeting Point. In addition, some of these people became major broadcasting figures, including Bronowski’s landmark series on The Ascent of Man. The Rise of Satire Meanwhile, from 1960, television comedy was transformed by the rise of satire in which criticism and fun-poking of organised religion was rife, some of it by atheists and rationalists like Jonathan Miller. The BBC retained an overt policy promoting Christian culture, but it had quickly become the principal medium in which conventional religion was questioned. Nobody recognised this so well as Mary Whitehouse who in 1965 founded the Christian-orientated National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association. One of her first complaints ironically concerned the treatment of premarital sex on BBC TV’s religious discussion programme Meeting Point the year before. She said later: ‘The programme remains as a landmark in the creation of ‘the permissive society’ and a classic example of 30the power of television to create and change patterns of thought and behaviour.’ But the BBC’s relationship to the Christian nation was no longer threatened merely by radio talks to a few hundred thousand listeners. The vast bulk of letter writers to the BBC had not listened to Knight’s broadcasts (many, admittedly, because they were not broadcast to their regions), yet two out of five signalled support for freedom of speech on religious matters. The almost hothead reaction of newspapers in January 1955 was followed by a rising chorus of calmer liberal views. Newspaper critics laid into religious broadcasting in the wake of the Knight affair. Fred Cooke, the television critic of Reynold’s News, wrote in 1957 that television was ‘flunking’ what was needed: ‘a full-scale documentary which probes the doubts surrounding the ‘official’ conception of God, religion and worship’. He went on: ‘there must be an end to this hypocritical collusion between Church and TV, in which anti-religion is looked upon as a mischievous31 choirboy easily corrected by a fatherly homily and a pat on the head.’ Under a headline ‘I SAY TV IS SO WRONG ABOUT RELIGION’, Peter Black in the Daily Mail wrote in the same year: ‘What is the use of arguing if the argument is of no importance?32 Why put a bishop against a bargee? Let him take on Bertrand Russell.’ By 1963, The Times regarded religious programmes as ‘an affront to the intelligence and belief of Christian33 men and women and a sheer laughing-stock to the benighted agnostic’.

In the meantime, religious programmes on radio suffered from a severe decline 10 Ethical Record, July 2012 of audiences and hours of broadcasting. When aggregated, the data indicate that total radio audience for religious programmes fell from an aggregate of 49 per cent of adult population in 1950, to 36 per cent in 1955, 19 per cent in 1960, 14 per cent in 1965, and to 8 per cent in 1970. The figures for BBC television audiences for religious programmes fell from 21 per cent of adult population in

1963 to 13.6 per cent in 1970, and34 a slightly smaller fall on ITV from 24 per cent in 1960-1 to 22 per cent in 1970. As television grew in popularity, it was a medium in which religious programming was reduced and less popular than on radio. Margaret Knight was feted by the National Secular Society as guest of honour at its annual dinner in 1957, and to this day Knight and the panic centred around35 her is regarded by British humanists as a turning point for their movement. “This House Does Not Believe in God” In May 1962 the Oxford Union passed the motion that ‘This House does not Believe in God’ by 295 votes to 259. By 1964, the Oxford University Humanist

Group claimed one thousand members, with 39 per cent of final 36year students describing themselves as humanist, atheist, agnostic or rationalist. This was but one indication of changing times. The BBC’s commitment to Christian broadcasting rose very significantly between 1947 and 1955. Yet, religious broadcasting was soon to be the object for derision, and the BBC lost its overall association with reverential Christian culture. The sixties made broadcasting culturally liberal, experimental and anti- deferential. That change may be dated to the Margaret Knight affair. Amongst the thousands of correspondents, 38 per cent of letters to the BBC, and 65 per cent to Knight herself, were in support of her and the Corporation for broadcasting her talks. Even the correspondents to the Daily Express, that most conservative and Christian-loyal of papers of fifties’ Britain, were (perhaps to the surprise of its editorial control) 40 per cent supportive of Knight. This may explain the strange silence of British politicians on the episode. Christianity was not dead, but the Knight affair marked how the conservative cultural hegemony of the type represented by Billy Graham’s crusades was to be challenged. Margaret Knight formulated a down-to-earth idiom in which to discuss the religious education of children, thereby offering a language, and a space for it to be used, including in church circles and (literally) on the public omnibus. Meanwhile at the BBC, despite the restatement of policy in favour of promoting Christian values, Knight crystallised an opposition to unquestioning, uncontroversial religious broadcasting, paving the way for critique and humour on Christian values and religion. Moreover, she allowed a liberal public sentiment to coalesce around her,37 aiding and abetting the termination of cultural dominance of Christian Britain. [A fuller version of this research is published in English Historical Review vol. 127 (April 2012), pages 345-76.]

Ethical Record, July 2012 11 1 ‘The faith of a rationalist’ on 20 May 1947; published as B. Russell, Why I am Not a Christian and The Faith of a Rationalist (London, RPA/NSS, 1983), p. 2. 2 L. Kennedy, All in the Mind: A Farewell to God (London, 1999), p. 247. 3 Cf. Bailey, ‘Christian pedagogy and religious broadcasting,’ passim. 4 Sir William Haley, ‘Moral Values in Broadcasting’, cited in Report of the Broadcasting Committee [the Beveridge Committee], BPP 1950-51 cmmd 8116, para 246, p. 63. 5 BBC WAC R, Cont1 Talks: Personal File: Margaret Knight, Memo from R McKay HRB to H Grisewood 18 June 1956. 6 BBC, Religious Broadcasts and the Public, pp. 17-18 7 In the end, nobody went to Aberdeen. BBC WAC, R Cont1 Talks: Personal File: Margaret Knight, memo from Gregory to Rev. E.H. Robertson (head of religious broadcasting) 26 February 1954; letter from Gregory to Knight, 2 March 1954; two memos, Thornton to Grisewood 12 April 1954, marginal note by Grisewood. 8 BBC WAC R51/405 Talks Religion: Morals without Religion 1954 File 1, memo from Mary Somerville to CHS, 6 October 1954,. 9 Daily Express 14 January 1955, p. 1d. 10 Knight, Morals Without Religion, pp. 27-50. The two talks can be viewed online at http://www.humanism.org.uk/humanism/humanist-tradition/20century/margaret-knight 11 Daily Express 7 January 1955, p. 4c. 12 Sunday Graphic 9 January 1955, p. 1a, facsimile on dust jacket of Knight, Morals without Religion. 13 Knight, Morals without Religion, p. 25. The issue was also raised on the BBC ‘Any Questions?’ Home Service radio programme on 14 January 1955. 14 Daily Express 7 January 1955, p. 4c. 15 Daily Express 13 January 1955, p. 1b. 16 Daily Express 18 January 1955, p. 4d. 17 BBC WAC 368/4 Press Cuttings: Morals Without Religion, News Chronicle 14 January 1955; 18 Knight did admit twenty years’ later that she was not as well informed as she might have been on historical Christianity, ‘about which I knew no more than the average layman who has had a nominally Christian education’. M. Knight, Christianity: The Debit Account (London, 1975), p. 3. 19 BBC WAC 368/4 Press Cuttings: Morals Without Religion, Sunday Times 16 January 1955. 20 Daily Express 13 January 1955, p. 2d. 21 Daily Telegraph 13 January 1955, p. 6a. 22 Daily Mirror, 10 January 1955, p. 4e. The Daily Mirror continued to champion Knight and defend the BBC; ibid., 13 January 1955, pp. 1a, backpage c. 23 Ibid., 14 January 1955, p. 3c. 24 Ibid., Daily Sketch 13 and 15 January 1955. 25 Knight, Morals Without Religion, p. 60. 26 Daily Express 18 January 1955, p. 4c. 27 BBC WAC R51/957/1 Talks: Religion, memo LPR Roche to Solicitor, and reply 10 January 1955. 28 BBC WAC R CONT 1 TALKS personal File Margaret Knight, R Falconer to Religious Talks, 3 February 1957. 29 Ibid., memos from 3 February 1957 to July 1960. 30 The Times 24 November 2001, quoted at accessed 3 March 2011. 31 AUSLA Margaret Knight Papers MS3133/6/1, Reynolds’s News 23 June 1957. 32 Ibid., Daily Mail 2 March 1957. 33 The Times 25 May 1963. 34 Figures from or calculated from data in R. Currie, A. Gilbert and L Horsley, Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of church growth in the British Isles since 1700 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 235-7. 35 See http://www.humanism.org.uk/humanism/humanism-today/humanists-thinking/margaret- knight-morals-without-religion , and . 36 AUSLA Margaret Knight Papers MS3133/6/18, The Times 6 February 1964. 37 Or what Grimley calls Christianity’s ‘soft power’; Grimley, ‘Religion of Englishness’.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY – CORRECTION Our Librarian, Cathy Broad, thought it curious that the article in the June ER on the poet Shelley gave his middle name as ‘Florence’. The author had inadvertently inserted the name of the poet’s son, Florence (the city of his son’s birth) instead of Bysshe. (cf: Florence Nightingale). [Apologies, {Ed}]

12 Ethical Record, July 2012 APES LIKE US. TOWARDS AN EVOLUTIONARY HUMANISM Volker Sommer Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at UCL Lecture to the Ethical Society, 20 May 2012

Our everyday language separates ‘human’ and ‘animal’. This popular definition is perhaps rooted in a desire for self-discovery. For the question ‘Who am I?’ is easier to answer if I can designate ‘the other’. Sigmund Freud had another take on this. He theorised that the admission that humans derive from the animal kingdom would hurt our pride and self-esteem. Indeed, if the orangutan could think, if the gorilla commanded a free-will and the bonobo possessed consciousness, would this not drag our superior minds from metaphysical heights down to rather earthly abodes? And chimpanzees permeated by a soul? Suddenly, the pinnacle of creation would fall flat... Descartes’ Dualism of Body and Soul In Western intellectual history, the animal/human polarity is tightly connected with the philosopher René Descartes. His 17th-century ideas signal the beginnings of modernity. The critical and thinking self became the hinge for Descartes’ dualism of body and soul. Within this philosophy, there is a strict distinction between entities of thought (res cogitans) and matter (res extensa). The mind – more or less identical with the soul – belongs to the former category. It is nonmaterial, does not occupy space and therefore does not follow the laws of nature. Only humans possess a true mind or soul, whereas animals do not. This led Descartes to say that animals did not feel real pain. He thus advocated the practice of the dissection of live animals to better understand human health and disease. Descartes maintained that animal testing for the benefit of humans made sense, given how dissimilar they were with respect to the soul. But he argued that all living beings were subject to the laws of nature when it came to their bodies, as they all consisted of matter. Descartes was inspired by clocks, at the time the peak of mechanical craftsmanship, and therefore suggested that bodies, whether those of animals or humans, resembled machines and functioned like clockwork. Descartes was one of the first thinkers who looked at biological processes as if they were mechanical. He thus postulated unbroken sequences of cause and effect – similar to the interactions amongst the precisely tuned parts of a watch. This approach is at the core of scientific progress and its practical achievements in technology, physiology and medicine. Nevertheless, Descartes’ animal/human dualism with respect to the mind and soul fuelled the very philosophy that claims a special position for humans because of purportedly unique characteristics such as technology, culture, language and social behaviour. The quest for ‘the unique’ with its dividing perspective of all-or-nothing would thus intensify, despite the rise of evolutionary theory with its unifying perspective of a more-or-less. However, detailed research over the last half century and studies of apes in Ethical Record, July 2012 13 particular have raised more and more doubts that certain traits are the human privilege we once thought they were – be it tool manufacturing, empathy or planning for the future. This revised state of knowledge, while not undisputed, is not only important in a scientific sense, but has also implications for ‘big questions’ in ethical and existential perspectives. Under the heading of evolutionary humanism, such debates are gaining momentum. Legal Status of the Great Apes Discussion is needed, for example, concerning the legal status of great apes. Initiated by philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri, the Great Ape Project demands that some privileges that currently apply only to humans should be extended. This includes a right to life, liberty and the prohibition of torture for great apes. Supported since 1993 by dozens of renowned primatologists, the initiative aims for an expansion of the ‘community of equals’. Defenders of the project would also like to see that great apes are recognized as ‘persons’, given that their complex mental landscape includes consciousness, emotions and sophisticated cognitive abilities such as forward planning and empathy. These demands are basic and they remain measured – because nobody requests a right to education for bonobos, voting rights for gorillas, data-protection rules for chimpanzees or a minimum age for sexual consent amongst orangutans. Supported by eminent primatologists, the Great Ape Project simply wants to expand the ‘community of equals’ in certain aspects. For example, it should be unlawful to inflict pain on great apes for the alleged benefit of others – as is done in biomedical experiments. Moreover, their freedom should not be arbitrarily deprived – although it is recognised that, for their own good, apes born in captivity might need to be kept in a zoo or in a sanctuary where they were brought to as orphans after hunters had killed their mothers. Demanding basic equality for great apes is a contemporary continuation of former debates – for example, if women should have a right to vote, whether dark-skinned Africans or Australian aborigines are human, or whether gay people can marry. Ethical sentiments amongst humans were first restricted to one’s own relatives, then extended to clans, later to members of larger societies, and eventually to all people – with the UN Declaration of Human Rights. More and more primatologists and philosophers are convinced that the historic moment has arrived to again be more inclusive. This time, we would have to remove the barrier of ‘speciesism’ that justifies inequality amongst living beings solely based on assignment to a particular species. Of course, the arbitrary line between humans and great apes on the one hand and the rest of the animal species on the other could likewise be questioned at any time in the future; interestingly, such a lobby is currently forming for whales and dolphins. Thus, the Great Ape Project understands itself as a door-opener for a wider discussion of animal rights. Practical limitations do not contradict the principle. Interests of humans unable to speak up for themselves – such as infants or those afflicted by conditions such as Alzheimer’s – are represented by guardians. Guardians can therefore also safeguard the legal rights of great apes. Legislation to this end has already been drafted in New Zealand and Spain. 14 Ethical Record, July 2012 What we now know about apes also certainly provides new arguments against the mind-body dualism of Descartes. To be sure, contemporary philosophy engages with his positions at best for historical reasons. But Cartesian dualism still plays a prominent role in popular conceptions. Roman Catholics, for example, trust in the existence of an immaterial and immortal soul. Some animal researchers are likewise sympathetic to such lines of thought, but they would want to shift the boundary between ‘soulful humans’ and ‘inanimate animals’ [or ‘insentient’ animals? {Ed}] and thus ascribe souls also to animals. The prominent ape researcher Jane Goodall publicly confesses such beliefs, which include a life after death – and her conviction that chimpanzees, too, can expect immortality. A New Monism? However, those sceptical about the conventional human-animal dualism can also be more radical, and question the distinction between mind and matter on principle. The result would be a new monism – a worldview that renounces non- material interpretations altogether, and maintains that psychological phenomena can be fully explained by physical-chemical processes in the brain. It is not without irony that this is a late consequence of the Cartesian programme of the mechanisation of nature. This train of thought is now catching up with the very dimension that was originally explicitly excluded: the soul. For disciplines such as palaeontology, medicine, genetics and neurobiology have not only dissected animals into finer and finer parts and corresponding chains of cause and effect, but also we humans. Thus, we suddenly find ourselves to be machines – an apparatus that commands a gifted brain which itself created the soul. But if everything can indeed be attributed to materialistic processes, then we are finally reunited with all other animals. Whether one wants to defend this monism or not, it eliminates a paradox of classic dualistic thinking: how could it happen that an archaic mother who lacked a soul gave birth to a child with a soul? A monist does not have to ponder such a miracle but can enjoy secular wonders – the wonders of nature, and how they instill a feeling of being close to other living things. With this, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic interpretation of the stubborn persistence of the mental animal/human divide would likewise be passè. Because those who take evolutionary theory seriously would not find it insulting but empowering and enriching to understand themselves to be an animal – a mammal in general and an ape in particular. [Volker Sommer conducts field studies of primates in Asia and Africa and advises the International Union for Conservation of Nature as an expert on apes. He is on the scientific board of the Giordano-Bruno-Foundation, a think-tank that promotes evolutionary humanism. This contribution is based on: Hof, Jutta (photography) & Volker Sommer (text) (2010). Apes Like Us. Portraits of a Kinship. [Bilingual edition German/English]. Mannheim: EditionPanorama.]

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

Ethical Record, July 2012 15 VIEWPOINTS The Monarchy I was interested to see Jennifer Jeynes’ Guest Editorial on the monarchy and Jubilee celebrations (ER June 2012). I am sure that Jennifer will have got all her facts right but, for supporters of the monarchy such as myself, the Jubilee is another occasion to raise very important issues which are not generally aired and which I would like to see taken up by the humanist/atheist movement at the highest level. No one setting up a new state now would be likely to choose a monarchy, even a constitutional one, but 1000 years of history are not to be lightly discarded. The very fact that the Monarch is not elected can be considered a virtue. Would a million people turn out to celebrate their Britishness in the shape of a President Blair or Hattersley? I think not. The idea of Tony and Cherie Blair riding in an open carriage and acknowledging the cheers of the crowd makes the mind boggle. The Jubilee was, of course, all ‘bread and circuses’ but I enjoyed the spectacle enormously as did millions around the world, and the cost to us individually was modest. There is a parallel debate as to whether the Monarch holds us back in terms of the English ‘class structure’, and whether the desirable more equal society that we would all like to see would come with a republic - I doubt whether such a change would be significant. The hereditary is being dismantled. Social inequality is now being driven by the gross greed of bankers and superstar celebrities; excessive immigration holds back wages and employment. For us rationalists, our future Monarch, Prince Charles, has some peculiarities but he is trying to do a good job in a difficult role – and I have a soft spot for a man who has saved us from some of the worst excesses of modern architecture. Religion in Public Life Outdated Where we must tackle the Prince is to persuade him to take less time talking to his flowers (although I myself had the odd word with an oak tree in my garden) and give serious consideration to the fact that at least 50% of his potential subjects believe religion to be the problem, not the answer. We do not need a defender of all faiths but a defender of all people both with and without faith. This is a matter of elementary justice which our Monarch should observe. Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s and the Cenotaph are national monuments. Their link to one religion is an anomaly which should be ended with the disestablishment of the . The audience at all the public ceremonies associated with these monuments is a comprehensive cross-section of society with many known atheists (such as Messrs Clegg and Miliband) in attendance. It will be a long haul to change this system but a sensible start could be made with a major re-configuration of the ceremony at the Cenotaph. Many who 16 Ethical Record, July 2012 served in the forces (including myself) are atheists and indeed involvement in war could turn people away from religious concepts such as a loving god. Acknowledgment of the enormous sacrifices made for our freedom is very important. We need to move towards integrating humanism in public life. We should start by nominating significant humanists for one of the Queen’s honours. I finally return to Jennifer’s editorial and note that she appears to prefer ITV and Sky to the BBC. I think this is called ‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater’. Donald Langdown - Orpington

Monarchs Not That Bad Though I enjoyed reading the June editorial by Jennifer Jeynes, mainly for her amusing style, I feel I must reply to it on behalf of the Queen. Not that I support her or her privileged family unreservedly, but every other type of rule is in my view worse than a constitutional monarchy – a view underwritten time and time again by history. In 1649 the English beheaded King Charles I, but the monarchy was restored by popular demand after eleven years of the kill-joy Cromwell regime. Russia similarly murdered its Tzar (together with his whole family) in 1918, having deposed him a year earlier; after six years he was replaced by Stalin. It was also in 1918 that Germany deposed its Kaiser, to replace him by Hitler fifteen years later. Tyrannical Shahs in the middle east were replaced by even more tyrannical Presidents. Of course, there are some democratic republics, but none bettering the constitutional monarchies of Scandinavia and Holland, which provide more stability as well as popular colour. And if faced with a choice between, say, the Queen and George W Bush, or even President Tony Blair, I know which I would prefer – and mine would be the majority choice. [In which case Blair would not be elected. {Ed}] At the same time, I am hlghly critical of the extravagance of the British royal family especially in these austerity days, when Cameron tells us ‘we are all in it together’. For one thing, why do we need so many royal palaces? I suppose we have to retain Buckingham Palace in the capital; also, Windsor, for its history, and probably Balmoral [owned by the Queen. {Ed}] as long as Scotland remains in the UK. But why, for instance, Sandringham? As far as I can see, it serves only to provide grouse-shooting in August. Then there are all the enormously valuable works of art owned by the Queen, for which there is hardly hanging space in all the huge rooms of all the palaces. Many of them could surely be sold off to Chinese millionaires so as to fund our failing hospitals, subsidise public transport and reduce the VAT. It is also high time for so much surviving royal protocol to be pensioned off – especially the absurdity of female royals curtseying to their own siblings and cousins. The celebration of the Queen’s diamond jubilee went a bit over the top, but provided an opportunity for a popular knees-up, and I approved of the river pageant – though, as Jennifer says, it was spoilt by the appalling BBC television coverage of it. I was horrified that an official commentator should actually Ethical Record, July 2012 17 imagine Waterloo was a sea battle won by Nelson’s corpse, and when another referred to the Queen as ‘Her Royal Highness’ instead of ‘Her Majesty’, I wondered whether republicans had infiltrated the BBC team for the occasion. Barbara Smoker - Bromley Prince Charles A thought for Jennifer Jeynes (Guest Editorial, ER, June) and fellow republicans (although I realise they won’t be much interested because they don’t want anyone as monarch). By the end of the Jubilee, Prince Charles seems to have gained some kudos. However, if he were deemed unsuitable to succeed as monarch, why then should the role jump a generation and pass to his offspring rather than to the next in line of his own generation, his sister Princess Anne? Fiona Weir - Islington Royal Retaliation? According to The Week, the Queen has updated her protocols and placed the Duchess of Cambridge some way down in the pecking order. A document said to have been circulated in the Royal household apparently decrees that as the Duchess is a former commoner, she must show reverence to the ‘blood princesses’, which means that in public and private she must curtsey to those of Royal birth, unless Prince William is present. Is that because the bright red ensemble worn by the Duchess on the Diamond Jubilee flotilla on the river upstaged the soberly dressed Queen? Beatrice Feder – London NW6 Romans and Greeks Roman rule was harsh, and rebellions ruthlessly suppressed, and the Romans added little or nothing to Greek knowledge, but they did not and could not “stamp it out” (John Dowdle, ER June 2012). On the contrary, the Romans actually preserved it and transmitted it, e.g. in Latin translations. Examples: Vitruvius could not have written his treatise on architecture without Hermogenes and other Greek writers (Plato for his geometry, Eratosthenes and Archimedes); in medicine, many doctors in the Roman empire were Greek, and medical knowledge was dominated by Hippocrates and Galen (both Greek) right down to the Enlightenment, so cannot have been “stamped out” by the Romans or anyone else; Lucretius transmitted the atomic theory of Democritus and the philosophy of Epicurus, which is quite close to modern humanism, in his poem De rerum natura.

And it was the Christian emperor Justinian who closed down the Athenian schools of philosophy in 529 CE. Incidentally, Kenan Malik (ER May 2012) was careful to qualify the ‘Dark Ages’ with ‘so-called’: most modern historians avoid the term as misleading. Charles Rudd - Ealing

18 Ethical Record, July 2012 Where Sharia Law Prevails People debating Sharia law (Viewpoints, ER May and June) might have found interesting the last episode of Simon Reeve’s Indian Ocean series, which found him in Aceh province, Indonesia, on the island of Sumatra, where strict Sharia law dictates that a woman may not be in public with any man other than her husband or a close relative (father, brother, etc.). Reeve went out with a police patrol, looking for couples thought not to be married or related, some of whom ran away, while others were arrested. How do couples ever meet and get to know each other to find out if they might wish to marry in such circumstances? This ludicrous waste of time, money and resources was a ghastly example of what happens in a place where religious law prevails. Ray Ward – London SE16

[Presumably couples are not supposed to form by chance, spontaneous meetings as in the decadent West, but instead ‘suitable’ marriages are arranged for them. {Ed}]. Multiculturalism and Bigotry Ed McArthur’s support for my opposition to the BNP, EDL and other racist organisations (ER June at page 11) is very welcome as is his robust criticism of Sharia as it exists in Iran. I, like many others, signed Amnesty international communications demanding the abolition of the use of stoning to death in that country, which according to some AI reports has in fact now been suspended by the Iranian government. There is, moreover, every reason to oppose military intervention by the West in either Iran or Syria. This would lead to the deaths of thousands more people than those whose lives were saved. That was what happened in Iraq. The deep religious and religious/secular divisions in both Iran and Syria suggest that military intervention by the West, (particularly, in the case of Syria, if Turkey were involved) would precipitate a similar catastrophe. It’s bigotry which is the problem, not Islam per se. One can find both followers of Islam and humanists who are bigoted although most of the people whom I’ve worked with over the years, whether Islamic or humanist or whatever, have not been bigoted, which is probably borne out by people’s experience generally. Ed asks for a definition of multiculturalism. There are a number of weighty social science definitions but Collins English Dictionary simply reads ‘MULTICULTURAL: adjective, of or for the cultures of several different races’. Chris Purnell - Orpington

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Ethical Record, July 2012 19 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1R 4RL. Tel: 020 7405 1818 Registered Charity No. 251396 For programme updates, email: [email protected] Websites: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk or www.conwayhall.org.uk Admission to Sunday morning lectures is free for members of SPES and £3(£2conc) for non-members. For other events, no charge unless stated. Sunday meetings are held in the Brockway Room. JULY 2012 Sunday 15 SCHOPENHAUER AND CHARACTER-DETERMINISM 1100 Tom Rubens

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