News and Opinion

Our new season of programmes starts this week. Until Friday there is an exhibition on display (9.30am - 4.30pm approximately, except Thursday morning) of photographs and maps, with accompanying text, telling the story of the epic march of some 400 and more of the Leicester unemployed to London and back in 1905. Many of the photographs are hand-coloured as was the practice at that time, before colour photography was developed. Members will have seen some of these before from Ned Newitt's talk given in June on the exact 100th anniversary. There are also photos of his previous exhibition in October 2004 on Leicester's Radical and Working Class History among the past talks pages. This new display has been put together with help from the Records Office at Wigston. I hope to include a photograph shortly. Ned Newitt's site: The Labour Movement in Leicester from 1883: http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/leicester_labhis/index.html The Record Office: http://tinyurl.com/a8bd4 The fir...

Thanks to Shani Lee of Frontline Books there is now a version of the programme for September - December on the LSS website. This is a provisional version and may be revised once the printed version comes out. The first meeting 27-30 September, is another showing of Ned Newitt's fascinating collection of historical material, with emphasis on the 1905 March to London. There is now a link at the top of the home page, leading to this blog. I've also revised the layout of past talks; there is now a separate page for each year, accessible via the Programme page. Having started off with a post a day we will probably settle down to a more sensible one or two per week. There is a facility on Blogspot to allow other people to post to the blog by joining as a Team member. Members of Leicester Secular Society who think they may have regular news items, and would like to post themselves, can apply to me to be included in the team (or I may contact you direct). You would not have the facilit...

The winter programme of events at Secular Hall is expected any minute, from our Secretary Michael Gerard, but all I know at present is that it begins with an Exhibition at the end of September. Meanwhile I've been doing some research on the history of the Society. We have some microfilms made in 1981 based on material in Leicester Record Office, which I've started to view on the reader in the Central Reference Library. The first Reel contains F. J. Gould's History of Leicester Secular Society written in 1900 (part of which is reproduced on our website), and G. J. Holyoake's eulogy written on Josiah Gimson's death in 1883. Then there are some copies of LSS Minute Books 1852 to 1902. In a historical introduction, written by Edward Royle of the University of York, there is an account of the Leicester Secular Hall Company. This was set up in 1873 to raise funds to build the Hall, by issuing 1000 shares at £5 each. Half of these were bought by Gimson, 60 by John Sladen a...

I went to the meeting of the 'Leicester Campaign to Stop the War', with Manzoor Moghal, of the Muslim forum, and Akram Hawwash, from Palestine, as speakers. There were 18 people in attendance in all, including myself and the speakers. Alas very little was said about what can be done now, rather than raking over old history. At the end I was able to ask Mr Moghal if he could say why there were (as far as I could tell) no Muslims in the audience, when the speakers were Muslim and the topic so obviously of interest to the Muslim community, and seems to have been well publicised. We had the same problem when Ziauddin Sardar spoke to Leicester Secular Society on 'Islam and Secularism' last January. (Dr Mukadam of the Islamic Academy was the only other Muslim evident.) Mr Moghal spoke of Muslims having the duty of prayer five times a day, and of family duties. This may be so, but is surely not sufficient. I pointed out that when I took part in a debate at a Leicester Universi...

A Report on the 'Law, Religion and Secularism' Conference This is a necessarily short note on a four-hour conference. Suleiman Nagdi spoke of the difficulties of meeting the requirements of Muslim customs particularly in the case of deaths in hospital, where burial within 24 hours may not be possible, due to post mortem delays. He also indicated that autopsy procedures might be seen as violation of modesty. In the question and answer session he indicated that the views of Muslims on transplants were divided; those from the Indian subcontinent tending to be against, and most other areas in favour. By far the most impressive talk was given by Peter Veitch, Consultant Transplant Surgeon, on his experience with kidney patients. He made quite clear the ethical dilemmas faced by such surgeons. He would never in practice use a kidney from a deceased patient without permission of the coroner and the patient's family, even if the patient had signed a donor card. Jean McHale describe...

Activities at Secular Hall A lot more happens at Secular Hall than just the meetings of the Secular Society, which are held in the Library on the ground floor. The much larger ballroom upstairs is used by the ABC Dance company and occasionally by the Society for specially large meetings. The basement is occupied by Leicester Martial Arts. A bookshop has been a feature of the building since it was opened in 1881, and part of the frontage is now occupied by Frontline Books. The Library and the adjacent Members' Room are available for hire, and are well used by numerous different groups. Bookings for these rooms are now made through Frontline Books: http://www.frontlinebooks.co.uk/ . There are some restrictions on who can hire the rooms. Obviously, for instance, we do not permit them to be used for religious services. There are higher rates for hire by commercial companies than for social groups. There is a Public Meeting scheduled for this Tuesday, 13th September, 7:30pm organised by...

I've been thinking of starting up a weblog for a while, but didn't want it just to be a place to impose my own views on the world, or to chat inconsequentially about anything that came to mind, since my mind is anything but orderly and disciplined. One of my favourite sayings is from Lewis Carroll: " never do anything without a porpoise ". The purpose of this blog is therefore to provide a News Service related to Leicester Secular Society, whose website I set up and maintain at: http://homepages.stayfree.co.uk/lss/index.htm . By reporting activities of the Society and other relevant events I hope it will be possible to stimulate greater interest, especially among younger people. Someone recently said to me that the Society is seen as a club for grumpy old men! Unfortunately I fear that there is some truth in this observation. That was one of the stimuli that led me to set up this site. We regularly attract younger people to look into our meetings, but the trouble is t...