Newsletter of the Sutton Humanist Group

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Secretary                 Alan Grandy                                           Don Pincham

Treasurer                 Alan Grandy                                           Derek Yeo

Membership           Martin Lake,

SACREs                  Leslie Bracken 

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CHANGE OF DATE AND VENUE FOR OUR MONTHLY MEETINGS.
 
Starting with our May Meeting we will meet in Cheam Village on the first Wednesday of the month. Our meetings will be held in a back room of the Prince of Wales PH in Cheam Village (see map at end). The Prince of Wales is in Malden Road 300 metres north of the cross roads at the centre of Cheam Village. There is a train station nearby (500m). By Train, Cheam is the next station from Sutton. Leave by the “up-platform” exit – there is a tunnel from the “down-platform” [saves 5 mins. walk]. Also buses 151, 213, X26 and 470 pass through the village. There is a free car park in nearby Park Road if there isn’t room to park on the street. Meetings will start, as usual, at 8pm.

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PROGRAMME OF GROUP EVENTS:

Wed 7 May            HUMANISM AND EDUCATION – Marilyn Mason

                                Marilyn is the former Education Officer at the BHA.

Wed 4 June          QUALITY AND EQUALITY – HUMAN RIGHTS, PUBLIC SERVICES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANISATIONS – Naomi Philips

Naomi Philips Education and Public Affairs Department at the BHA

Wed 2 July           KEEP THE POLITICAL ARENA A RELIGIOUS FREE ZONE [RELIGIOUS

PRIVILEGE AND THE COST OF RELIGION – PAST AND PRESENT]. Keith Gimson and

Alan Grandy.

August                  No Meeting 

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From Alan,

Quite a lot of the political / religious debate is now making mainstream news – but quite a lot isn’t.  Here is a brief round-up, mainly taken from NSS, BHA & IHEU publications. 

* The EU will not develop new laws against blasphemy, said the European Commissioner for External Relations.  Speaking in Riyadh, Benita Ferrero-Waldner spoke of two principles – freedom of press and freedom of religion.  She stated that every individual has a right to express their point of view; similarly the other individual, who is not in agreement, can rebut in the same way.  So that answers the challenge from the Vatican and the Eastern EU Countries, and is good news.

* At the UN  alarm has been raised over a resolution passed at the United Nations Human Rights Council [UNHRC] that threatens to restrict free speech.  A block of Islamic countries acting in concert with Cuba, Russia and China have called on UN member states to introduce legislation outlawing defamation of religion – particularly Islam.  Keith Porteous Wood said that “the UNHRC  is now totally dominated by the Organisation of Islamic Conference Countries [IOC] which are trying to restrict criticism and free examination of  Islam.  Western countries seem paralysed in the face of this onslaught and the UNHRC has been rendered not only ineffective, but counter-productive.  It is now dominated by countries with a highly ambiguous attitude to the ‘Charter of Universal Human Rights’ and instead wants to introduce a sharia-compliant version called The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.”  Roy Brown [IHEU] has also written extensively on this threat.

The good news is that these motions have no legal force.  The bad news is they reflect ongoing attempts to try to force critics to be silent.

* In the UK

+ Faith Schools have been criticised by schools inspectors over their selective admissions policies – they may well have been operating illegally. Ed Balls came in for some serious flak when he dared to suggest that all is not well with Faith Schools.

+ In the House of Commons several MPs involved in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Debate, identified themselves by their religious beliefs which took precedence over reason and science, and the collective rules of their constituents.

+ Halal meat may well be getting into the common food chain.  Food and Farming Minister Lord Rooker objected to the method of slaughter.  However religious slaughter is exempt from the provisions of Britain’s Welfare of Animals Regulations.  It seems that this meat might be in all sorts of places, just in case someone asks for it.

+ Talk continues about charities, including religious organisations, taking over the administration of certain Welfare Services.  Not hard to see the government thinking here – religions have always been good at controlling people and getting money out of them – job done.

Because of everything that is going on, some members of Sutton Humanists have become interested in trying to pursue a Secular Agenda and help to create a local Secular Alliance Forum.  At the next meeting members will be given a questionnaire to find out who might be interested in either participating in discussions, and / or participating in campaigning.

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We thank SPES`s Ethical Record (April 2008) and Donald Rooum for this:

VIEWPOINT

How Hitler Favoured Christianity

Many readers of Ethical Record will have noticed the factual error in Kyla Greenbaum-

Crowcroft's piece on Feminism and Atheism (ER March 08). There was a chorus of denials when she made it in her lecture on 24 February.

Far from being an 'obvious example of a society that tried to abolish religion in the 20th Century', Nazi Germany was a society which tried to abolish independent thought in favour of Christianity. When the Chancellor (i.e. Hitler) became sole legislator by the Enabling Act of March 1933, one of the new laws drafted in advance and enacted immediately was the law prohibiting atheist organisations. The Freethinkers' Hall in Berlin, headquarters of the German Freethinkers' League which had half a million members, was immediately taken over by Christians, as an advice centre assisting people to apply for church membership.

'Secular schools', Hitler said in a speech in April 1933, 'can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air'.

Himself a Romanist - 'I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so', he said to General Engel in 1941 - he did not oppose Protestantism. Article 20 of the Nazi constitution reads: 'The Party represents the standpoint of a positive Christianity, without owing itself to a particular confession'.

I guess the lie, that Nazi society was against religion, was invented in the 1930s or 1940s, in an attempt to turn religious people against Nazism. Evidently, it is still believed by people who do not bother to check the facts.

                                                                                        Donald Rooum - London El

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DONALD ROOUM, CARTOONS SINCE 1980

An exhibition at Conway Hall, sponsored by the Ethical Society.

Donald Rooum (born 1928) has contributed cartoons to Spectator, New Society, Private Eye and the daily press, but was best known in the 1960s for his political cartoons in the weekly Peace News, 'for non-violent revolution'. In 1963 and 1964, he was famous as the successful defendant in a case of badly planted evidence.

Originals of his Peace News cartoons are held at the British Cartoon Archive in the University of Kent at Canterbury. None of them will be on show at the Conway Hall exhibition, which is why it is called Cartoons since 1980.

During the 1970s, Donald more-or-less gave up cartooning to study Life Sciences with the Open University (First Class Honours degree 1980). He began drawing the Wildcat comic strip for the anarchist periodical Freedom in January 1980, and the Sprite comic strip for The Skeptic in 1887. Recently he has resumed political cartoon work for Peace News (which is now a monthly).

The exhibition at Conway Hall will feature a selection of original drawings for cartoons, mosdy published in 1980 and since. The curator is Giles Enders, current Chairman of SPES. The Exhibition will be open for three months.

The Golden Rule, no.6

‘HE SHOULD TREAT ALL BEINGS AS HE HIMSELF SHOULD BE TREATED. THE ESSENCE OF RIGHT CONDUCT IS NOT TO INJURE ANYONE’

 the sixth of our selections from the BHA`s wall chart, which lists the many and varied versions of the `Golden Rule`, as expressed down the ages.

                                                                   Jainism, from The Suta-Kritanga, about 550 BCE.

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Contact for information about the Group:
Martin Lake, 87 Porchester Road, Kingston upon Thames, KT1 3PW.

Tel. 020 8541 3437  Email: walker@martinlake.plus.com