A Century of Reason: Part 1

In 1999, the centenary year of the Rationalist Press Association, Nicolas Walter published a history of the RPA in New Humanist magazine. Following the 2025 merger between the Rationalist Association and Humanists UK, we republish Walter’s article in its original two parts.

The Origins of the RPA

The RPA had three roots. The first was the tradition of Freethought publishing, especially as established by Richard Carlile in 1817, when he took over William Sherwin’s radical publishing business and concentrated on criticism of religion rather than politics. As a result he spent several years in prison for blasphemy, with several members of his family and many of his colleagues. His business was superseded in 1831 by that of James Watson, which was purchased in 1854 by Austin Holyoake, was passed on at his death in 1874 to Charles Watts, and was passed on at his departure from the country in 1882 to his son Charles Albert Watts.

The second root was the tradition of moderate Secularism, which derived from the mass movement of social and political reform founded during the 1810s by Robert Owen. Owen opposed Christianity as well as capitalism, and tried to establish not only what was called socialism but also what was called rational religion. When the Owenite movement declined during the 1830s, many of its members continued the campaign against Christianity and passed from rational religion to no religion, from unorthodoxy to unbelief, from Deism to atheism. During the 1840s there were several Freethought periodicals, most of whose editors were also imprisoned for blasphemy. One of them was G. J. Holyoake, who was determined not only to produce literature but also to provide a proper identity for the new movement; he accordingly adopted the word Secularism in 1851, and began forming Secular Societies in 1852. He was soon superseded by the more militant Charles Bradlaugh. who produced the National Reformer and formed the National Secular Society in 1866. For several years Bradlaugh worked closely with Charles Watts, but in 1877 the Secularist movement split over the issue of ‘Malthusianism’ (i.e. birth control propaganda), and Watts joined Holyoake and other opponents of Bradlaugh in attempting to organise a more moderate Secularist movement.

The third root was the Watts family, which took a leading part in the Freethought movement for a century. John and Charles Watts were sons of a Methodist preacher in Bristol who were converted to Secularism during the early 1850s and came to work for the movement in London. They both collaborated for a time with both Holyoake and Bradlaugh. John died young, but Charles remained active for half a century, and was followed in his business and in the movement by his son Charles Albert Watts, who was later followed by his son Frederick Charles Chater Watts.

The moderate Secularists in the late 1870s attempted to restore Secularism to the moderate version envisaged by Holyoake a quarter of a century earlier. They had Watts’s printing and publishing business, and his paper the Secular Review, in 1878 they also formed the British Secular Union as a rival to the NSS, and produced the British Secular Almanack as a rival to the National Secular Society’s Almanack. Holyoake was the figurehead, but Watts was the real leader. The BSU recruited such distinguished foreign associates as Victor Hugo and Ernest Renan, and made the Marquis of Queensberry its first president.

But the new venture didn’t last long. Watts visited North America in 1882 and 1883, and settled in Canada in 1884. His printing and publishing business was taken over by his son, and the Secular Review was taken over by W. Stewart Ross (“Saladin”); but the BSU soon collapsed, and the British Secular Almanack disappeared. The vacuum was temporarily filled by an Agnostic movement, which was inspired by T. H. Huxley and Herbert Spencer, who had respectively invented and popularised Agnosticism, and which produced a stream of both non-religious and quasi-religious publications.

Charles A. Watts, who had been a committee member of the BSU and a sub-editor on the Secular Review, took a leading part in this development. He was born in 1858, apprenticed to Austin Holyoake at the age of 12, and worked as a printer and publisher until his retirement in 1930 and as an editor until his death in 1946. He published many Agnostic books and pamphlets; and he started several Agnostic periodicals. To replace the defunct British Secular Almanack he launched the Agnostic Annual 1884. When this appeared at the end of 1883 it prompted a minor scandal. It opened with a symposium on Agnosticism, consisting of replies to a questionnaire circulated by Watts, starting with that of Huxley himself. The two soon had a short sharp quarrel: Huxley accused Watts of dishonourable conduct by publishing what he claimed was a private communication, and Watts accused Huxley of hypocritical behaviour by wishing to conceal his irreligious opinions from the public; the fact was that Huxley was embarrassed by the company he found himself in, and the result was that Watts was embarrassed by quarrelling with such a prominent Freethinker. When Watts published their correspondence in a second edition of the Agnostic Annual 1884, it was clear that he had acted quite honourably; but four years later he apologised to Huxley, who didn’t apologise but did forgive him, and four years later contributed another article to the Agnostic Annual. 

But Watts wasn’t content with this success, and wanted to start a permanent organisation as well. During 1884 and 1885 he campaigned for an “Agnostic Temple”, to hold meetings and lectures rather than conduct any kind of worship of the “Unknowable”, and he appealed for an “Agnostic Press Fund”, to support the publication of Agnostic literature. Neither campaign was successful, and in fact the appeal of Agnosticism began to decline. As early as February 1885 the leading Agnostic G. M. McCrie called for “some new and better name”, and others agreed.

A significant factor at this time was the rise of the Ethical Movement. This had been founded in the United States by Felix Adler in 1876 and was brought to Britain by Stanton Coit ten years later. The London Ethical Society was formed in 1886, South Place became an Ethical Society in 1888, and Ethical Societies appeared in East London, West London, South London, and North London between 1889 and 1895. The four London societies formed the Union of Ethical Societies in 1896, and this sponsored the Moral Instruction League in 1897 and started a periodical — the Ethical World — in 1898. Watts was very sympathetic to the Ethical movement, and was the publisher of the Ethical World. One important point was that the Ethicism of Adler and Coit — like the original Secularism of Holyoake — was positive rather than negative. What was needed was a similarly positive term for the ideology of the moderate Secularists.

In 1896 the RPC was joined by Charles T. Gorham and Charles E. Hooper, who helped Watts with the next stage. This was actually foreshadowed by G. W. Foote, the founding editor of The Freethinker and the successor of Bradlaugh as president of the NSS, who attempted to put the militant Secularist movement on to a securer basis and in May 1898 succeeded in incorporating the Secular Society Limited as a company limited by guarantee and not having a share capital, so that donations and legacies could be safely directed at a Freethought organisations without fear of legal challenge. (When such a legacy to the Secular Society was in fact challenged, Foote prepared the Bowman case which went all the way to the House of Lords and eventually led to victory in 1917.) A year later Watts and his colleagues followed Foote’s example. First an elaborate draft scheme was published in the Literary Guide in February 1899, with the main object “to issue, or assist in the issue of, Rationalist publications”. (The original subsidiary objects included references to “a humanistic philosophy of life” and “humanist developments in Art, Poetry, the Drama, etc.”, probably introduced by Gould; but he left London in March 1899 and they disappeared.) After much careful discussion and detailed consultation, involving several leading members of the Freethought movement and also some prominent Freethinkers outside it (as well as no fewer than four lawyers), a successor to the RPC was formed and incorporated in the same way as the Secular Society.

The Rationalist Press Association Limited was registered on 26 May 1899 under the Companies Acts as a company limited by guarantee not having a share capital. There were eight original subscribers. The original aims and objects included the following:

The crucial passage in italics, like most such declarations of fundamental principle, included confusing and even contradictory propositions, but it proved serviceable and not only survived for a century but was borrowed by several later Freethought organisations around the world.

There were seven original directors, Holyoake again being chairman; the original secretary was Hooper, succeeded in 1912 by Gorham. The inaugural statutory General Meeting of the new company was held at the premises of the Union of Ethical Societies on 18 September 1899. Only about a dozen members were present, but Holyoake recalled that the first meeting of the Anti-Corn Law League (as of the Propagandist Press Committee) was attended by only four people. Joseph McCabe was added to the directors, and the RPA began its work. The first Annual General Meeting was held on 26 February 1900: the hundredth will be held on 12 July 1999. 

The RPA shared premises with Watts & Co., which remained a separate printing and publishing business, in Johnson’s Court, off Fleet Street in London. The buildings there were the headquarters of Freethought propaganda for more than a century, and a place of pilgrimage for Freethinkers all over the world.

By the end of 1899 the RPA had acquired nearly a hundred members and subscribers and had received an income of nearly £300 (including the small assets of the Rationalist Press Committee). Both figures rose steadily during the next half-century. The total of members and subscribers passed 1,000 in 1906, 2,000 in 1910. 3,000 in 1927, 4,000 in 1932, 5,000 in 1947. The annual income passed £5,000 in 1910, £15,000 in 1938, £25,000 in 1945, £35,000 in 1948; receipts included not only subscriptions but donations and legacies, sales to outsiders, interest on capital and rent from property. 

The early success of the RPA followed the spirit of the age. The heroic period of the Freethought movement was over, even the militant Secularists had become relatively respectable, the Ethicists had become temporarily successful, and there was a widespread thirst for positive philosophical and scientific material as well as negative critical material relating to religion. But tribute should be paid to some of the individuals who actually achieved its success.

C. A. Watts himself, unlike his father and most other Freethought leaders, was no writer or speaker, and he remained in the background as editor, printer, publisher, and bookseller, but his indefatigable industry and unquestionable reliability provided a firm base on which others could build. He was the managing director from the start, and became vice-chairman in 1900. At the beginning he had the assistance of two veterans — Charles Watts, who returned to Britain in 1891, supported the RPA as he had once supported the NSS; and Holyoake, who acted as chairman until his death, advocated Rationalism as enthusiastically as he had once advocated Secularism: they both died in 1906. 

Watts managed to attract two figures who had been associated with Bradlaugh — his daughter Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner, and his last colleague J. M. Robertson — but who preferred the RPA to the NSS. He also had the quiet support of Edward Clodd, a prosperous banker and man of letters who succeeded Holyoake as chairman. He had the services for several decades of three of the most prolific writers in the Freethought movement — F. J. Gould, a former Anglican chorister who specialised in advocating moral education and was a Positivist and Ethicist and Marxist as well as a Rationalist; Joseph McCabe, a former Catholic priest who specialised in popularising history and science and became a leading opponent of Christian doctrine and practice; and J. M. Robertson, a self-taught scholar who became a leading critic of Christianity and historian of Freethought.

The Freethought movement had always tried to obtain the support of prominent people outside its ranks, and the RPA followed the British Secular Union by recruiting leading Freethinkers from several countries as Honorary Associates. No fewer than thirteen were announced in 1899, including Paul Carus, Edward Clodd, Ernst Haeckel, Leslie Stephen, Edward Westermarck, and Emile Zola, as well as leading figures within the movement (Stanton Coit, F. J. Gould, and J. M. Robertson). During the next half-century the list contained many of the most important people in the worlds of philosophy, science, social science, history, journalism, politics, literature and the arts — including, appropriately enough, T. H. Huxley‘s son Leonard Huxley and his son Julian Huxley, and also William Archer, A. J. Ayer, A. J. Benn, Arnold Bennett, J. D. Bernal, John Boyd Orr, H. N. Brailsford, Ivor Brown, J. B. Bury, Gordon Childe, G. Brock Chisholm, Georges Clemenceau, John Collier, Richard Crossman, C. D. Darlington, Clarence Darrow, John Dewey, Albert Einstein, Raymond Firth, J.C. Flugel, Meyer Fortes, Sigmund Freud, Patrick Geddes, A. C. Haddon, J. B. S. Haldane, Jane Harrison, J. A. Hobson, Ernest Jones, Arthur Keith, Ray Lankester, Harold Laski, Hyman Levy, Cesare Lombroso, Bronislaw Malinowski, Kingsley Martin, Somerset Maugham, John Morley, Joseph Needham, Ernest Newman, Ivan Pavlov, Eden Phillpotts, Carveth Read, Bertrand Russell, Henry Salt, Charles Sherrington, Susan Stebbing, G. M. Trevelyan, Graham Wallas, H. G. Wells, A. D. White, Henry Wood. No other Freethought organisation ever managed to acquire such a galaxy of talent to raise its prestige in the outside world.

Watts’s original intention to provide a financial basis for Freethought publishing was fulfilled by a growing number of small donations and legacies, but above all at the start by George Anderson, who made a fortune in the gas industry and who gave more than £2,500 in six years (at a time when the annual subscription was 5 shillings). He followed a tradition going back to Julian Hibbert, who had financed Carlile and Watson.

Such generosity made a considerable difference to the publishing programme. During 1899 only a single book was published — The Religion of the Twentieth Century by Joseph McCabe, the first of so many by him over half a century. During 1900 seven books were published, including the first of nearly as many by J. M. Robertson, and McCabe’s translation of Ernst Haeckel’s classic The Riddle of the Universe. The latter was the first success of the RPA; in 1901 it needed the first of several new editions, and in 1902 it became one of the first items in the first successful series — the Cheap Reprints. This was made possible because Anderson offered large donations on condition that they were matched by others, and as a result Watts was able to produce editions of 50 classic texts over ten years which sold several million copies.

But the RPA didn’t confine its activity to publishing. Several other projects were started in successive years — a reference and lending library in 1901; an annual dinner in 1902; public lectures in 1903; regular members’ meetings and occasional attendance at international conferences in 1904; campaigning for secular education as well as moral instruction in 1905; public debates in 1908. A system of Honorary Local Secretaries was established in 1907, covering not only Britain but the world. The first of many legacies was received in 1908.

Edward Clodd was followed as chairman in 1913 by Herbert Leon, followed in 1922 by George Whale, who died during the Annual Dinner in 1925. From 1926 the RPA also had a president — Graham Wallas (1926-1929), Harold Laski (1929-1933), Harry Snell (1933-1940), C. M. Beadnell (1940-1947). Later chairmen were J. P. Gilmour until 1941, Ernest Thurtle in 1941, and Fred Watts from 1941.

There were problems with politics. The Freethought movement had always been on the Left. The Secularist movement had been associated with Radicalism, and Bradlaugh and Robertson were Radical Liberal MPs. The Ethical movement was associated with Socialism, and Coit stood as a Labour candidate in the 1906 General Election. The RPA by contrast was explicitly non-political, though most of its directors and members and supporters were also on the Left — at first mainly Liberal, then mainly Labour, and even partly Communist — and Harry Snell and Ernest Thurtle were Labour MPs. It was notable that when Francisco Ferrer was judicially murdered in Spain in 1909, British Freethinkers concentrated on his work for secular education and ignored his involvement in the revolutionary anarchist movement.

There was trouble during the First World War, when Haeckel’s support of the German war effort led to his resignation as an Honorary Associate and the issue of conscription caused controversy over the right of conscientious objection. A Rationalist Peace Council, which had existed since 1910 as an independent organisation (though led by prominent members of the RPA) was paralysed by disagreements over the war in 1914 and forced to suspend its activities in 1917: it was dissolved in 1921. There was less trouble during the Second World War, when the issues were more ideological than national.

The most serious political difficulty arose between the wars, when the world was polarised between Communism on the extreme Left and Fascism on the extreme Right, and economic depression precipitated political dictatorship in one country after another. Left-wing members tried to persuade the various Freethought organisations to adopt what they called Scientific Humanism — in effect a form of Socialism — as part of their principles and to devote their assets and efforts to social and political propaganda. Such proposals were put to the RPA during 1931, both in the Literary Guide and at the Annual General Meeting, but were rejected — as they were in the other organisations. The result was the formation in 1932 of the Federation of Progressive Societies and Individuals (from 1940 the Progressive League). Similar political pressure was occasionally exerted on Freethought organisations after the Second World War, but the RPA was never threatened again.

While appealing to the rich, the RPA didn’t forget the poor: in 1921 a Rationalist Benevolent Fund was established to assist “distressed Rationalists”. In 1926 there was a major breach with Joseph McCabe which led to his withdrawal from the RPA, but also to his new career as a major writer of Freethought publications in the United States. In 1929 the opening of Conway Hall, the new headquarters of the South Place Ethical Society, was followed by a series of joint meetings with the RPA in the Conway Discussion Circle, which lasted until 1939 and resumed in 1945. In 1929 the thirtieth anniversary of the RPA was marked by F. J. Gould’s book The Pioneers of Johnson’s Court: A History of the Rationalist Press Association from 1899 Onwards; an expanded edition appeared in 1934.

In 1930 Charles A. Watts retired from full-time work, because of ill health rather than age. He was succeeded as managing director by his son Fred Watts, who was responsible for the second successful series of publications — the Thinker’s Library. This was modelled on the old Cheap Reprints, but was much more ambitious. No fewer than 140 titles were published between 1929 and 1950, again selling millions of copies. The Thinker’s Library is probably the one thing for which the RPA is well known in the outside world, and the presence of items from its list on so many individuals’ bookshelves and in so many second-hand bookshops serves as a reminder of its greatest achievement. Charles A. Watts handed the Rationalist Annual over to Fred Watts in 1943, but continued to edit the Literary Guide to the end.

The RPA, like all print media, was challenged by the coming of radio in the 1920s and then of television in the 1930s. Its initial reaction was permanent protest against the BBC official ban on religious controversy, and in October 1946 it organised a powerful deputation which was followed by a relaxation of the ban and the first openly sceptical programmes about religion. Similarly it opposed the 1944 Education Act, which for the first time imposed explicit religious instruction on all state schools.

The Second World War, which was accompanied by a considerable increase in the sales of books, was followed by a new age which was not so comfortable. Charles Albert Watts died in 1946, and Fred Watts took over. The first half-century of the RPA was marked by the publication of The Story of the RPA, 1899-1949 by Adam Gowans Whyte, one of its founders. The second half-century was to be a very different story.

Read next: Part 2

_{Nicolas Walter, ‘A Century of Reason: 1’ in New Humanist, Vol. 114, No. 2, June 1999, pp. 15–18}