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When we think of the progressive reforms of the 1960s, we often picture youth in revolt, the sexual revolution, and a sudden explosion of freedom. But what if the real blueprint for change arose from something quite different? What if it was meticulously plotted across decades by a remarkable network of intellectuals, activists, and friends — co-conspirators in a plot to change the world?

In this episode of Unholy Histories, we dive into what H.G. Wells called "the open conspiracy" — a decades-long campaign by 94 leading humanists who set out to rewrite Britain's moral laws, overturning moral theocracy in favour of individual autonomy, humanitarianism, and internationalism. From the decriminalisation of homosexuality and attempted suicide to divorce law reform, abortion rights, nuclear disarmament, and the abolition of capital punishment, we trace the hidden humanist network behind the most sweeping ethical transformation in modern British history.

Guest:

Professor Callum Brown, social and cultural historian and author of Ninety Humanists and the Ethical Transition of Britain (2026), The Death of Christian Britain (2001), Becoming Atheist (2017), and The Battle for Christian Britain (2019). wiki/Callum_Brown

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Music: Small Things by Simon Folwar

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In 1942, at the height of the Second World War, the economist William Beveridge published his report identifying five giant evils facing British society: want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. From that report grew the National Health Service, the post-war welfare state, and a new vision of what a country owed its citizens. But the welfare state did not appear from nowhere. Behind it stood a long tradition of ethical and philosophical thought – from the British idealists of the nineteenth century, through ethical socialism and new liberalism, to the post-war reformers who put those ideas into practice – rooted in secular ethics, human dignity, and a belief that reason, compassion and collective responsibility could be the foundation of a better society.

Guests:

• Lord Neil Kinnock, Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty, who served as Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992.
• Professor Colin Tyler, Professor of Applied Ethics and Political Theory at the University of Hull, and author of Common Good Politics  hull.ac.uk

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Music: Small Things by Simon Folwar

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In her 1818 novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley asked what it meant to make a person – and what we owed to the beings we create. Two centuries later, the questions she opened are still being asked, in the time machines and starships and feminist utopias of the science fiction tradition. 

Humanism has long found a home in speculative fiction: a genre where the supernatural is set aside, where the world's contingency is laid bare, and where, as this week's guests put it, we can test-drive our values without looking to the heavens for answers. 

From H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon to Naomi Mitchison, Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany and the writers reimagining the genre today, this episode asks how imagining the impossible helps us change the present – and boldly go towards a better future.

Guests:

S.I. Martin, British historian, author and educator specialising in Black British history and literature, and a patron of Humanists UK. simartin.org.uk

Katie McGregor Stone, literary critic and researcher of science fiction and utopian literature, currently writing a book on Frankenstein. katiemcgregorstone.co.uk

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Music: Small Things by Simon Folwar

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In 1789, the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham asked a deceptively simple question: not whether animals can reason or talk, but whether they can suffer. That question opened a long argument about how a secular, humanist ethics should reach beyond the human — an argument that Victorian reformers like Henry Salt and his Humanitarian League turned into a campaign for animal rights, vegetarianism, the abolition of vivisection and the reform of zoos and blood sports, and that runs in a long line through Bridget Brophy and the Oxford Group of the 1970s to the modern animal rights and vegan movements. This episode traces the humanist ideas at the heart of that tradition, and asks what those Victorian and Edwardian thinkers still have to teach us about how we treat the animals we share the world with.

Guests:

Dr Helen Cowie, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of York, whose books include Animals in World History and work on zoos, menageries, and the trade in animal commodities. york.ac.uk

Dr Andrew Fenton, Professor of Philosophy at Dalhousie University, whose work on animal ethics includes the co-authored The Three Pillars of Ethical Research with Nonhuman Primates and ongoing research on the philosophy of Henry Salt. dal.ca

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In February 1965, James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr. faced each other across a packed Cambridge Union, debating whether "the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro." Baldwin won the vote by a landslide. But that famous moment was one flashpoint in a much wider struggle. Across the United States and here in Britain, activists, writers and thinkers were challenging injustice, confronting systems of power, and asking fundamental questions about equality, dignity and how we ought to live. Many looked to humanist ideas of reason, shared humanity, and a vision of ethics grounded in human experience. 

This episode traces the humanist threads that ran through the civil rights movements on both sides of the Atlantic, from Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry in the United States to the Windrush generation, the 1965 Race Relations Act, and the Black British radical tradition of C.L.R. James, Claudia Jones and Darcus Howe.

Guests:

Dr Nicholas Buccola, Dr Jules K. Whitehill Professor of Humanism and Ethics at Claremont McKenna College, and author of The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America (Princeton, 2019). nicholasbuccola.com

Dr Angelina Osborne, British historian, researcher and heritage consultant, and co-author with Patrick Vernon of 100 Great Black Britons (Robinson, 2020). 100greatblackbritons.co.uk

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Long before the Enlightenment, ancient thinkers were already questioning the gods. In the Greek world of the seventh to fifth centuries BCE, medicine, weather and the natural world began to be explained without divine intervention. Philosophers asked whether the gods existed at all, whether ethics could rest on human reason alone, and whether a meaningful life required belief in an afterlife. The answers they gave — Epicurus on the consolations of mortality, Protagoras on the limits of knowledge, Lucretius on a universe of atoms — would echo through European thought for the next two thousand years, surface again in the Reformation and the Enlightenment, and shape the British humanist movement in ways that are often forgotten. This episode goes back to the ancient world to recover the first humanists, and traces how their ideas reached the radicals, ethical societies, and classical scholars who built modern British humanism.

Guests:

Professor Edith Hall, Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University, Fellow of the British Academy, and author of A People's History of Classics: Class and Greco-Roman Antiquity in Britain and Ireland, 1689–1939 and Aristotle's Way. /edithhall.co.uk

Professor Tim Whitmarsh, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, and author of Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World. classics.cam.ac.uk

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In 1880 a newly elected MP walked into the House of Commons and refused to swear an oath to God. Parliament refused to let him take his seat. He was re-elected four times. The standoff lasted six years. Charles Bradlaugh's fight ended with the Oaths Act of 1888, a turning point in the recognition of non-religious conscience in British public life. This episode traces that struggle from Bradlaugh's Northampton victory to the 2024 General Election, the most secular Westminster has ever returned, and asks how much religious privilege still shapes power in Britain today.

Guests:

Professor David Nash, historian of secularism and freethought and co-author of The Humanist Movement in Modern Britain: A History of Ethicists, Rationalists and Humanists (Bloomsbury, 2023). jesus.ox.ac.uk

Lizzi Collinge, MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group. lizzicollinge.com

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In the aftermath of two world wars, a new vision for humanity began to take shape, one grounded in shared dignity, freedom, and cooperation across borders. At the heart of that vision were humanist thinkers, from H.G. Wells, whose Rights of Man helped inspire the movement, to Julian Huxley, the first Director-General of UNESCO. This episode traces the ideas that shaped the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, asks why it still matters, and considers what challenges lie ahead for the universal ideals it enshrines.

Guests:

• Bill Cooke, historian, senior editor of Free Inquiry, and author of A Wealth of Insights: Humanist Thought Since the Enlightenment and H.G. Wells and the Twenty-First Century. secularhumanism.org/authors/cooke-bill/
• Francesca Klug, human rights scholar and writer, visiting professor at the LSE Centre for the Study of Human Rights, and author of Values for a Godless Age and A Magna Carta for All Humanity. lse.ac.uk/people/francesca-klug

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Throughout modern British history, the movements for sexual freedom and freedom of belief have often converged, challenging moral orthodoxy and religious authority in the name of human dignity. This episode traces how humanism and LGBT activism have evolved side by side, and what that shared legacy means today.

Guests:

• Lesley Hall, historian and retired archivist, specialising in sexuality and gender in 19th and 20th century Britain. Author of Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880.
• Peter Parker, cultural historian and biographer, author of Some Men in London: Queer Life, (Vol 1) 1945–1959 & (Vol 2) 1960-1967

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Education has always been central to humanist thought, from the founding of the Moral Instruction League in 1897 to Margaret Knight's scandalous 1955 BBC broadcasts on raising children without religion. This episode traces the long humanist tradition of moral and civic education in Britain, and asks how children form their identities and worldviews in an increasingly non-religious society.

Guests:

• Dr Lois Lee, senior lecturer in secular studies at the University of Kent, whose research examines contemporary forms of non-religiosity and the formation of humanism in childhood. explainingatheism.org
• Dr Susannah Wright, associate professor in the history of education at Oxford Brookes, whose work focuses on secularism, war and peace in the history of British education. brookes.ac.uk

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Unholy Histories is produced by Humanise Live a production agency creating values-led podcast content. Start podcasting today at humanise.live

Music: Small Things by Simon Folwar

Podcast transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors or omissions. They are provided to make our content more accessible, but should not be considered a fully accurate record of the conversation.