Highgate Cemetery - George HOLYOAKE

George Holyoake was one of the leading members of the English secularist movement, a cooperative, and also a social reformer who campaigned for social reform with regards to the governments treatment of the poor. After joining the Birmingham Mechanics Institute, Holyoake came under the influence of the ideas of Robert Owen, who was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founding members of the cooperative movement in Britain and Utopian socialism, and a very controversial figure. His Utopian socialist philosophy is known as Owenism - which is very closely linked with the British trade unions movement, reflecting Owen's cooperative opinions - and his followers known as Owenites. 

Holyoake's grave at Highgate

Holyoake became an Owenite social missionary in 1840, and began writing articles critical of the Christian faith for The Oracle of Reason, an Atheist publication. 

The Oracle of Reason was founded by Charles Southwell and led by a small group of working class Atheists in response to the failure of the working class movement. It was radically democratic and secular in it's criticisms. Southwell was arrested in 1941 for blasphemy, after publishing a highly antisemitic article titled "The Jew Book". 

Despite his more moderate approach, like Southwell, Holyoake was also arrested for blasphemy in 1942 after his comments made during a lecture while answering the question of a local preacher, and sentenced for six months in prison.

"For my part I don't believe there is such a thing as a God....If I could have my way, I would place the Deity on half-pay as the government of this country did the subaltern officers"

Holyoake was also a member of The Chartist Movement, which was 'the first mass movement  driven by the working class'. It began in 1832 after the Reform Act failed to extend to beyond those who own no property. The Peoples' Charter, which was drawn up in 1838 demanded things such as the universal suffrage for all men, a secret ballot, but also for the constituencies to be all of equal sizes, something which David Cameron has been calling for since being in opposition in 2009. However, it is important to note that although Holyoake was a supporter of the movement, he refused to be involved in the violence and rioting which ensued after the Charter was rejected by Parliament.

Following his release from prison, George Holyoake began the weekly publishing of his journal, The Movement, later known as The Reasoner, with which he used to campaign for different political and social issues.

One of the things Holyoake is most known for is the fact that he created the term secularism, in order to describe "a form of opinion which concerns itself only with questions, the issues of which can be tested by the experience of this life". In his book, Principles of Secularism, he explained the term as:

"...that which seeks the development of the physical, moral and intellectual nature of man to the highest possible point, as the immediate duty of life which includes the practical sufficiency of natural morality apart from Atheism, Theism or the Bible which selects as it's methods of procedure the promotion of human improvement by materialmeans, and proposes these positive agreements as the common bond of union to all who would regulate life by reason and ennoble it by service"