| The Conway Hall in London, home of the South Place Ethical Society and centre of free speech, celebrated its 75th birthday this autumn in style - with trenchant attacks on Blunkett's attempt to introduce a law banning 'religious hatred'... |
What's so sacrosanct about religion?
WORKERS, NOV 2004 ISSUE
The opening of Conway Hall in London's Red Lion Square, where free speech has been exercised for 75 years, was celebrated there in a fitting manner with a meeting tackling the current wave of assaults upon free speech. The Communist Party of Britain, having the tradition of holding May Day meetings in the main hall for over 30 years, was represented amongst the guests at this special celebration.
The evening took the form of a very lively meeting with four speakers and contributions from the floor of the hall. The speeches had great practical import and urgency with fire directed at the Home Secretary's renewed attempt to introduce a law on religious hatred.
The first speaker of the evening was Barbara Smoker from the South Place Ethical Society (SPES), which moved its base to Conway Hall when it opened. The Society was founded in 1793, and Barbara gave a very entertaining account of how it came from being a dissenting religious group to the non-religious ethical society it is today, after a decision in 1869 to reject the idea of a personal God. When in 1887 the Society abolished evensong as it moved away from its religious root, the members substituted chamber music instead, a tradition which continues unbroken to the present day. This explains why, when it moved to Conway Hall, the Society insisted on a hall with excellent acoustics.
Just an ideology
After the historical introduction, Barbara Smoker turned her fire on the proposed incitement to religious hatred legislation. The key point, she said, is that religious ideology is no different to any other ideology. Why could it not be challenged, criticised, indeed ridiculed? The cartoonist Martin Rowson spoke further on this theme and also showed some of the best of his cartoons on a screen. He described them as part of the rich vein of British culture which uses humour to challenge and provoke thought and dialogue. The audience rocked with laughter at his famous strip cartoon, called the Failure of Intelligence, depicting Bush and Blair as personally suffering a series of intelligence failures in their decision-making on Iraq. Just because the cartoonist had described one of the phases of intelligence failure as "religious mania" he had been subject to several letters of complaint.
In addition to the unifying theme of the meeting, all the speakers had one other thing in common - they had all been on the receiving end of copious hate mail for daring to challenge religious ideas and they had all been accused of being racist. Polly Toynbee, another of the speakers, has received both hate mail and death threats since an out-of-context extract from an article she wrote in a national newspaper challenging the concept of Islamophobia, has been placed on an Islamist website.
Richard Dawkins, the scientist, was the fourth speaker of the evening. He discussed his work in both Britain and the United States. He pointed out that the common mantra is that we must "respect" religion. Why? Why should we respect ideas which cannot stand scrutiny, was his challenge.
Communist Party meeting at Conway hall from the 1970s: the party has held a May Day meeting in the hall every year since 1968
Evolution and atheism
He pointed out that no politician in the United States, whether at local or national level, could admit to being an atheist and still stand any chance of being elected. He pointed out that his American scientific colleagues constantly ask him to hang back and not admit out loud that an understanding of evolution and scientific thought might lead someone to question the existence of a higher being. In order to allow the science of evolution to at least get an airing, they urge him to say that the teaching of evolution is entirely compatible with Christianity.
All the speakers asked the audience to reject the political correctness, which stifles the challenge to religious ideology. As one speaker from the floor pointed out, the BBC in the post-Hutton era has already succumbed and lost its way. On the very same day as the Conway Hall meeting, the BBC had cancelled a new series called Popetown for fear of causing offence to the Catholic Church - with cowardly actions like that, David Blunkett hardly needs a new law.
Speaking out
Fortunately many are already speaking out, including the comedian Rowan Atkinson who has pointed out that the whole Blackadder series would have been suppressed had this law been in place.
Many people, however, seem to have forgotten that this is the Blair government's second attempt to bring in a law of incitement to religious hatred. The last attempt fell because the House of Lords said that religious discrimination was "too complicated" and refused to back it. The audience was given a stark challenge: If we do not have the courage to challenge fundamentalist religious ideas, then we have actively connived in allowing "organised unreason to get its hands on the levers of power".
