Humanists UK


Humanists UK, known from 1967 until May 2017 as the British Humanist Association, is a charitable organisation which promotes secular humanism and aims to represent non-religious people in the UK through a mixture of charitable services, campaigning on issues relating to humanism, secularism, and human rights, and through publishing the magazine New Humanist.
The charity also supports humanist and non-religious wedding, funeral, and baby naming ceremonies in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Crown Dependencies, in addition to a network of volunteers who provide like-minded support and comfort to non-religious people in hospitals and prisons. Its other charitable activities include providing free educational resources to teachers, parents, and institutions; a peer-to-peer support service for people who face difficulties leaving coercive religions and cults; work to promote tolerance and understanding between religious communities and the non-religious; and work to promote humanist values and understanding of humanism. The current president of Humanists UK is Adam Rutherford and the chief executive is Andrew Copson. The association currently has 70 affiliated regional and special interest groups and claims a total of approximately 140,000 members and supporters.
Humanists UK also has sections which run as staffed national humanist organisations in both Wales and Northern Ireland. Wales Humanists and Northern Ireland Humanists each have an advisory committee drawn from the membership and a development officer. Wales Humanists and Northern Ireland Humanists campaign on devolved issues in Cardiff and Belfast and work to expand the provision of humanist ceremonies, pastoral care, and support for teachers in those countries.

Aims

The organisation's Articles of Association sets out its charitable aims as:
  • The advancement of Humanism, namely a non-religious ethical lifestance the essential elements of which are a commitment to human wellbeing and a reliance on reason, experience and a naturalistic view of the world.
  • The advancement of education and in particular the study of and the dissemination of knowledge about Humanism and about the arts and science as they relate to Humanism.
  • The promotion of equality and non-discrimination and the protection of human rights as defined in international instruments to which the United Kingdom is party, in each case in particular as relates to religion and belief.
  • The promotion of understanding between people holding religious and non-religious beliefs so as to advance harmonious cooperation in society.
Reflecting these, Humanists UK's 2021-2025 strategy defines its remit as:
It defines its three strategic outcomes as:
  1. More people knowing what humanism is and more people with humanist beliefs and values identifying themselves as humanists
  2. More non-religious people living happier, more confident, and more ethical lives
  3. More people enjoying greater freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of choice over their own lives
These three strands cover, broadly speaking, Humanists UK's education work, interfaith dialogue, and public awareness campaigns; the charity's support programmes offering direct support, including pastoral support and humanist ceremonies; and its public policy agenda, which includes lobbying on human rights and equalities issues.

History

Ethical Union (1896–1967)

The organisation traces its origins to the Union of Ethical Societies, which was founded in 1896 under the leadership of American-born Stanton Coit. The Union brought together the numerous ethical societies existing in Britain. Amongst the important founding figures was Lady Elizabeth Swann. Other figures included the feminist writer Zona Vallance, executive committee member May Seaton-Tiedeman, chair from 1900 to 1901 Ramsay MacDonald, and the writer and critic Leslie Stephen. Stephen served multiple terms as President of the West London Ethical Society.
The Union of Ethical Societies changed its name to the Ethical Union in 1920 and was incorporated in 1928. In 1963 H. J. Blackham became the first executive director.
In this period, the Ethical Union's projects focused on addressing legal and social barriers to non-religious people, as well as the needs of the urban poor, racial minorities, and elderly. Such projects included the Humanist Housing Association founded in 1955, the Agnostics Adoption Society, later known as the Independent Adoption Society founded in 1963, and the Humanist Counselling Service in 1960, and the umbrella network Secular Organisations for Sobriety.

British Humanist Association (1967–2017)

The Ethical Union became the British Humanist Association in 1967, during the Presidency of philosopher A. J. Ayer. This transition followed a decade of discussions which nearly prompted a merger of the Ethical Union with the Rationalist Press Association and the South Place Ethical Society. In 1963 the first two went as far as creating an umbrella Humanist Association of which Harold Blackham was the executive director.
In the 1960s, the organisation campaigned for reform of the Education Act 1944's clauses on religion in schools and it was active in the campaign to legalise abortion and homosexuality. It supported repeal of Sunday Observance laws and the end of theatre censorship, the provision of family planning on the NHS and other reforms. More generally the BHA aimed to defend freedom of speech, support the elimination of world poverty and remove the privileges given to religious groups. It was claimed in 1977 that the BHA aimed "to make humanism available and meaningful to the millions who have no alternative belief."
File:'No Prayer Breakfast' event run by the British Humanist Association.jpg|thumb|BHA supporters, including Andrew Copson and Polly Toynbee, taking part in a No Prayer Breakfast event at the Labour Party Conference in 2012
The local ethical societies united in 1896 had renamed themselves as humanist groups and their number grew over time, becoming today's network of affiliated local humanist groups. A network of celebrants able to conduct non-religious funerals, weddings, naming ceremonies and same sex affirmations was also developed and continues today as Humanist Ceremonies.
Social concerns persisted in the BHA's programme. The BHA was a co-founder in 1969 of the Social Morality Council, which brought together believers and unbelievers concerned with moral education and with finding agreed solutions to moral problems in society. The BHA was active in arguing for voluntary euthanasia and the right to obtain an abortion. It has always sought an "open society". It is credited with substantially popularising the salience and use of the concept in Britain. In 1969 it held an influential conference, Towards an Open Society, at the Royal Festival Hall.
Throughout the period, the number of people professing no religion grew steadily. This led to the creation of new programmes, as well as older programmes becoming redundant due to market forces stepping in or government action. For example, growing numbers of non-religious people led to numerous new housing associations forming which did not impose religious restrictions on who could use their services. The Humanist Housing Service was spun off from the BHA and acquired by a commercial provider. Meanwhile, the BHA's adoption service, whose focus had been non-discriminatory and interracial adoption, became obsolete following national anti-racism legislation. Still, new services came into being to suit the needs of the times, including the Humanist Bereavement Project. The Humanist Counselling Service, whose early work had been subsumed by the development of the BACP, was restarted in the 1990s response to growing awareness of discrimination and mistreatment of non-religious prisoners, hospital patients, and armed forces members in chaplaincy-based support services. This programme was re-established in 2016 as the Non-Religious Pastoral Support Network, together with other projects under a "Humanist Care" programme group. Humanist Care's other service reflected the changing demographics. Faith to Faithless was founded by ex-Muslim humanists to provide specialist support to people leaving high-control religions and cults, who are sometimes labelled apostates and subjected to shunning and honour-based violence.
The BHA also campaigned for reform of BBC broadcasting policy, including preferential treatment of religions and "religious privilege" in broadcast scheduling. Throughout the period, it told the BBC that its policy banning non-religious people from appearing on the Thought for the Day slot in Radio 4's Today programme was discriminatory. In April 2009 a "breakthrough" in the BHA's campaign saw Andrew Copson invited to participate as a humanist representative in the BBC's short-lived Standing Conference on Religion and Belief when it replaced the Central Religious Advisory Committee.

Humanists UK (2017–present)

In May 2017, the BHA changed its operating name to Humanists UK. Its chief executive, Andrew Copson, said that the change followed "a long, evidence-driven process with focus groups of non-religious people across the UK and research involving over 4,000 of our supporters... Humanists UK represents not just a new logo, but a totally new, friendly look that captures the essence of humanism: open, inclusive, energetic, and modern, with people and their stories placed first and foremost...".
By the 2020s, Humanists UK had achieved several key victories in relation to its service provision. Following changed NHS England and prison service guidelines on pastoral care, non-religious pastoral carers were embedded in many NHS trusts and local prisons as an example of best practice, and Humanists UK was an integral part of the spiritual care sector. In 2023, the Ministry of Defence awarded Humanists UK endorsing authority status to provide humanist pastoral carers to serve alongside religious chaplains in the army, navy, and air force. The Welsh Parliament also appointed a humanist pastoral carer to Welsh politicians, reflecting the significant non-religious population in Wales.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, Humanists UK was part of the Government's moral and ethical advisory group, on the basis that humanists conducted a more significant share of British funerals than many religions. At the peak of the first national lockdown, Humanists UK organised a virtual "national memorial ceremony" led by its then-President Alice Roberts, Mark Gatiss, Joan Bakewell and others. Humanist funeral celebrants and pastoral carers were designated as "key workers" during lockdowns in the United Kingdom, and Humanists UK directed thousands of its members towards volunteering with mutual aid programmes and food banks, and in support of the Covid vaccine rollout. Humanists UK's Chief Executive was also invited by NHS England to lead a national ceremony of commemoration for NHS staff in 2021.
A number of perennial humanist campaigns saw success or significant progress in the late 2010s and early 2020s, including the legal recognition of humanist weddings in Northern Ireland and Jersey. Humanists UK also counted other wins around organ donation registers across the UK, same-sex marriage and legal abortion in Northern Ireland, legal changes to allow early stage at-home terminations of pregnancy, and the creation of Safe Access Zones around abortion clinics in response to rising levels of harassment experienced there. A major legal win concerning Religious Education curriculums in 2022 also led to humanists joining most Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education as full members.
In 2021, Humanists UK celebrated its 125th anniversary. It launched a new , cataloguing much of its 125-year history and the wider history of humanism in the UK, and received cross-party video messages of congratulations from the Leader of the Opposition and Labour, Sir Keir Starmer; the First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party, Nicola Sturgeon; from the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Edward Davey; the co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Siân Berry; and a warm letter of thanks from the Conservative UK Government.
In 2025, Humanists UK announced that it had completed a merger with the Rationalist Association after "more than a century" of close collaboration. This change saw Humanists UK take over the RA's responsibilities as the publisher of New Humanist magazine, transforming New Humanist into "the UK's newest major print publication", with more than 26,000 print subscribers and an online readership of more than 130,000.
Humanists UK continues to work closely with Conway Hall Ethical Society, the UK's other longstanding humanist charity.