--- title: "Barralet v Attorney-General (1980)" date: "2026-10-14T10:31:03+01:00" modified: "2026-10-14T10:36:46+01:00" url: "https://heritage.humanists.uk/barralet-v-attorney-general-1980/" post_id: 14675 categories: ["Ethical Movement", "Freedom of Belief", "Human Rights", "Secularism"] tags: ["Campaigns", "Charity", "Ethical Movement", "Humanism", "Religion", "Religious education"] --- # Barralet v Attorney-General (1980) > ‘Religion, as I see it, is concerned with man’s relations with God, and ethics are concerned with man’s relations with man. The two are not the same.’ > > Mr Justice Dillon Few humanists today would call humanism a religion. A century ago the line was much less clear. Several ethical societies had grown out of nonconformist congregations and kept some of their language, and ‘religion’ was often used for any serious outlook on how to live. English charity law, meanwhile, recognised the advancement of religion but had no place for a non-religious worldview. So when the South Place Ethical Society, the owner of [Conway Hall](https://heritage.humanists.uk/conway-hall/) in London, went to the High Court to recover its charitable status, it argued that it was religious. It lost that argument and won the case. In *Barralet v Attorney-General*, reported as *Re South Place Ethical Society*, Mr Justice Dillon ruled in June 1980 that the Society was not religious, because religion meant faith in a god and worship of that god, but that its objects were charitable all the same: they advanced education and benefited the community. Within three years the Humanist Trust and then the [British Humanist Association](https://heritage.humanists.uk/the-union-of-ethical-societies/) (now Humanists UK) had registered as charities on the strength of the ruling, and humanists no longer had to present humanism as a kind of religion to be treated fairly in charity law. The case also changed how humanists saw themselves. It marked the point at which English law drew a clear line between religion, resting on faith in something beyond the natural world, and beliefs grounded in reason. It placed humanism firmly on the second side of that line, which is where the movement has located itself ever since. --- ### Charity law and godlessness English law has long treated the advancement of religion as a charitable purpose. After *Bowman v Secular Society* in 1917, the case that crowned the work of the [Liberty of Bequest Committee](https://heritage.humanists.uk/the-liberty-of-bequest-committee/), it was lawful to leave money to freethought causes, but that did not make them charities. Organisations promoting a non-religious outlook had to find another way in, usually as educational bodies, and in the 1960s the door began to close. The Charities Act 1960 set up a central register of charities, and the Charity Commissioners took a close look at the humanists. In September 1965 the [Ethical Union](https://heritage.humanists.uk/the-union-of-ethical-societies/)‘s committee heard that it had been struck off the list of charities on what *Humanist News* called ‘an entirely legalistic interpretation of our Articles’. Its treasurer, Alex Dawn, warned that the lost tax relief could push its deficit to £3,000 a year. South Place was refused registration because it did not worship a Supreme Being, and by *New Humanist*‘s count it went fourteen years without charitable status. The 1965 decision had implications for the original incarnation of the British Humanist Association, the 1963 charitable vehicle the Ethical Union had set up with the [Rationalist Press Association](https://heritage.humanists.uk/rationalist-press-association/) to advance humanism. Once the Ethical Union was struck off, the BHA could not legally be a charity either. The RPA, still a charity itself, was advised that it could not fund a body that was not. At the end of 1965, pressed by its lawyers and afraid for its own charitable status, it withdrew its financial support, leaving the Ethical Union to keep the BHA going alone. The Ethical Union made a virtue of necessity, and the committee decided to stop trying to be a charity at all. > ‘The BHA must be free to carry its Humanism into politics when it wants to. It cannot do so while hampered by the restrictions of charitable status without waste and great confusion.’ > > *Humanist News*, December 1966, under the headline ‘We choose strenuous liberty: movement, not money, comes first’ Members agreed. At an extraordinary general meeting at Conway Hall, reported in February 1967, members of the Ethical Union voted by 996 to 12 to simply rename the Ethical Union the British Humanist Association. A separate Humanist Trust was set up as a registered charity for educational work, but it later lost that status too: its object, ‘the advancement of education of the public with respect to the ideas and principles known as Humanism’, was ruled to be not education but propaganda. The Rationalist Press Association fared no better. Removed from the register in 1971, it gave up the fight in 1973, when registration would have meant ceasing to publish *New Humanist*, because publishing was not counted as education. --- ### Conway Hall in danger South Place’s position was the most precarious of all. It had begun in 1793 as a congregation of radical dissenters, and the trust deed for its chapel at South Place in Finsbury, drawn up in 1825, committed it to ‘the public religious worship of one God, even the Father’. But like a number of Unitarian and freethinking liberal congregations of the period in Europe and North America, it had quickly become a non-theistic community, abanoning prayer in 1869 and taking the name South Place Ethical Society in the late 1880s. After amending its deeds in 1907 and again 1930, its charitable objects had been for ‘the study and dissemination of ethical principles and the cultivation of a rational religious sentiment’. By the late 1970s the Society faced three threats at once. It had no charitable status, and so no relief from rates and taxes on Conway Hall. The Attorney-General had challenged whether the 1907 and 1930 amendments were valid at all. And in 1977 the Registrar General had withdrawn Conway Hall’s licence to hold weddings. ![](https://heritage.humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/10/new-humanist-1979-03-p150-conway-hall-in-danger-687x1024.jpg)The Society’s appeal for £25,000, as printed in *New Humanist*, March 1979. *Humanist News* ran it the following month. In spring 1979 the Society appealed to the wider movement for £25,000. The appeal was signed by its General Secretary, Peter Cadogan, its Chairman, W. Home, and its Honorary Treasurer, C. E. Barralet, whose name the case would carry. It pointed out that Conway Hall was used by theatre and opera companies, orchestras, trade unions, political and religious groups, the Blood Transfusion Service and voters on polling day, and it argued that South Place had changed no more than many churches had. > ‘Other religious bodies, including the Church of England, have altered in ways that are comparable – but no one threatens them with disinheritance or loss of charity status.’ > > South Place Ethical Society appeal, *New Humanist*, March 1979 --- ### Seven days in the Chancery Division The case came before Mr Justice Dillon in the Chancery Division of the High Court and took seven days. Three parties put three different cases: - The Society argued that it was a religious charity, as it always had been, and in the alternative that it advanced education or benefited the community. - The Attorney-General argued that it was not religious, but neither supported nor opposed its other claims. - The Commissioners of Inland Revenue opposed it ‘root and branch’: not religious, not educational and not beneficial. The Society’s counsel drew on American cases, in which ethical societies had been treated as religious, and on a 1979 pamphlet by Peter Cadogan, *The Two Meanings of Worship*. Cadogan quoted the late Lord Sorensen, one of the Society’s lecturers, who had argued that worship ‘is not necessarily theological’ and that the word really meant ‘worth-ship’, or appreciation: the feeling of sitting in a garden, listening to music, or watching an infant gaze into its mother’s eyes. The judge was respectful but unmoved. He accepted that the members were ‘sincere people of the highest integrity’, and that the court should not discriminate between deeply held beliefs. But he would not stretch the word ‘religion’ to cover them. > ‘If reason leads people not to accept Christianity or any known religion, but they do believe in the excellence of qualities such as truth, beauty and love, or believe in the Platonic concept of the ideal, their beliefs may be to them the equivalent of a religion, but viewed objectively they are not religion.’ > > Mr Justice Dillon, judgment of 11 June 1980, as printed in *New Humanist*, September 1980 Of the American view that a sincere belief could occupy ‘a place parallel’ to belief in God, he remarked drily that ‘parallels, by definition, never meet’. Religion, he held, needed faith in a god and worship of that god, and he took his definition of worship from a 1970 case about the Church of Scientology. He sidestepped Buddhism, which he did not ‘know enough about’, noting an affidavit from the English Buddhist Christmas Humphreys that Buddhism did not deny a supreme being. The rest of the judgment went the Society’s way. Studying and spreading ethical principles was the advancement of education. Even ‘the cultivation of a rational religious sentiment’, in which the word ‘religious’ was ‘not in my view used in its correct sense’, could only be pursued by educational means, including the Sunday concerts. On 11 June 1980 Dillon declared the Society’s objects charitable, ‘but not for the advancement of religion’. --- ### Charity, yes; religion, no! That was how *New Humanist* headlined its editorial. It welcomed the result, and almost as warmly the fact that South Place had been denied the religious status it had claimed for so long. Most humanists, it said, were ‘convinced that Humanism is not a form of religion’. Freed from having to argue that it was, the Society could now take its place in the wider movement, and the magazine even suggested that Conway Hall might become ‘the national headquarters of British Humanism’. The Society’s legal costs came to about £25,000, but the tax and rating relief that came with charitable status secured its future. *Humanist News* told BHA members that the BHA and the trustees of the Humanist Trust would study the judgment closely, and the BHA’s annual general meeting that year formally congratulated South Place on regaining its charitable status. ![](https://heritage.humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/10/new-humanist-1980-07-p3-editorial-1024x269.jpg)*New Humanist*‘s editorial on the judgment, July 1980. --- ### Out of the taxable wilderness The BHA took two years to act on the precedent. In July 1982 its executive committee put the question to members, and at an extraordinary general meeting on 23 October 1982 they voted by 317 to 2 to adopt a new Memorandum of Association and by 317 to 1 to apply for registration as a charity. By 292 to 27 they also agreed to set up a separate, non-charitable body to campaign on matters of law, which became Humanist Campaigns. It was a reversal of the choice the BHA had made in 1967: keep the charity, and put the politics in a separate organisation. The Humanist Trust regained its charitable status first, and the BHA followed. On 14 February 1983 it held a press conference to announce its new status. *The Times* reported the next day under the headline ‘Humanists quit taxable wilderness’, saying the BHA had spent more than 75 years there. That was a generous count, since the Ethical Union had been a charity until 1965. > ‘Acceptance of Humanism as charitable recognises its status as an alternative to religion. It fills the moral vacuum left by the natural decay of religious belief.’ > > Sir Hermann Bondi, President of the BHA, quoted in *The Times*, 15 February 1983, and *Humanist News*, April 1983 The BHA’s new charitable object was ‘the mental and moral improvement of the human race by means of the advancement of Humanism, that is to say, the moral and social development of the community free from theistic or dogmatic beliefs and doctrines’. Its wording echoed the judgment: Dillon had found South Place charitable partly because the law accepted trusts tending to promote ‘the mental or moral improvement of the community’. The BHA’s Chairman, [Harry Stopes-Roe](https://heritage.humanists.uk/harry-stopes-roe-1924-2014/), explained to members what had changed. Beyond the tax benefits, he wrote, charitable status meant that humanism had the same standing as religion, which strengthened the case for coverage in the media and for humanism’s place in [Religious Education](https://heritage.humanists.uk/tag/religious-education/). But a charity could not campaign to change the law. It could still respond to government consultations and put reasoned arguments to MPs, and he did not see that as a loss: ‘the methods allowed us are those which we would prefer anyway as Humanists – and they are likely to be more effective.’ *New Humanist*, whose own association remained outside charity law, called its June 1983 editorial ‘Better times ahead’. --- ### Analogous to religion? Humanists went on arguing about what the judgment had actually decided. In December 1988 [Nicolas Walter](https://heritage.humanists.uk/nicolas-walter/) wrote in *New Humanist* that the court had rejected ‘all the attempts to raise any analogy’ between the Society’s objects and religion. Stopes-Roe replied that Walter had confused two claims. Dillon had rejected the idea that humanism *is* a religion, rightly in his view, but had accepted that it is *analogous* to one, since the textbook he relied on described trusts for moral improvement as ‘similar in many respects to a trust for the advancement of religion’. That mattered, Stopes-Roe argued, because it gave the BHA the wider powers of a religious charity rather than the narrower ones of an educational charity. --- ### Religion or belief Dillon’s narrow definition of religion did not last in charity law. The Charities Act 2006 recognised religions that do not involve belief in a god, and in 2013 the Supreme Court, in *R (Hodkin) v Registrar General*, overturned the Scientology case he had relied on. But the bigger change for humanists came from human rights law, which stopped asking whether humanism was like a religion at all. The European Convention on Human Rights protects ‘freedom of thought, conscience and religion’, and requires the state to respect parents’ ‘religious and philosophical convictions’ in education. In 1982 the European Court of Human Rights held that a conviction counts if it attains ‘a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance’ and is ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’. The Human Rights Act 1998 brought the Convention into UK law, and the Equality Act 2010 protects ‘religion or belief’ as a single characteristic. Humanism clearly qualifies as a belief, so humanists can claim equal treatment with religions without claiming to be one. That framework has [underpinned a series of humanist successes](https://heritage.humanists.uk/humanists-uk-campaigns/). Humanist weddings have been legally recognised in Scotland since 2005, and in Northern Ireland since 2018, when the Court of Appeal ruled in a humanist couple’s favour. In *R (Fox) v Secretary of State for Education* (2015), the High Court held that the state must accord ‘equal respect’ to religious convictions and to non-religious belief in religious education. In May 2018, after a humanist parent, Kathy Riddick, challenged her exclusion from the Vale of Glamorgan’s Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education, Wales’s Cabinet Secretary for Education, Kirsty Williams, wrote to every local authority that the Human Rights Act required humanists to be eligible to sit alongside religious representatives on these councils, setting aside the 1994 guidance that had barred them and described humanism as a belief ‘analogous’ to a religious one, the very word Stopes-Roe had fought for. Schools in Wales have since replaced RE with Religion, Values and Ethics, teaching humanism on an equal footing with religions. In *R (Harrison) v Secretary of State for Justice* (2020), the High Court found that the lack of legally recognised humanist weddings in England and Wales was real discrimination, though it held that the Government could justify waiting for the Law Commission’s review of wedding law. And in 2023, in a case brought by the humanist Steve Bowen, the High Court ruled that Kent County Council had acted unlawfully in refusing to consider him for the group of its Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education that represents religious communities. --- ### Legacy In the long run the judgment shaped the humanist movement itself as much as it shaped the standing of non-religious people in society. It was an early step towards equality for the non-religious, giving humanist organisations the same standing in charity law as religious ones and ending the need to dress humanism up as a non-religious religion in order to get it. It also marks a change in what ‘religion’ meant. In the nineteenth century the word could cover any serious orientation towards the big questions of life, which is how South Place could speak of cultivating ‘a rational religious sentiment’ without any sense of contradiction. By 1980 a court could divide that ground in two: religions, resting on faith in the supernatural, and beliefs grounded in reason, of which humanism is one. The ruling also helped to settle an old argument within the movement. For decades British humanists had divided, loosely, between those who saw humanism as a non-theistic religion, in the tradition of the [ethical churches](https://heritage.humanists.uk/the-ethical-movement/), and those who saw it as a name for a rationalist and humanitarian outlook with no religious trappings at all. In its 1979 appeal South Place had called the law ‘archaic’; the judgment implied that it was the older, broader sense of ‘religion’ that had become archaic. With the most religious-minded of the ethical societies told by a court that its outlook was not a religion, the first position lost its last institutional footing, and British humanism has needed no qualifying adjective since. In the United States, where courts had gone the other way in the cases Dillon declined to follow, a small number of organisations still describe humanism as a religion and meet as congregations, a model that now looks unfamiliar in the UK and Ireland. The Society Dillon judged is now Conway Hall Ethical Society, and the association that followed it into charity law is Humanists UK, a registered charity to this day. See also ---------- - [ Conway Hall ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/conway-hall/) - [ The Liberty of Bequest Committee ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/the-liberty-of-bequest-committee/) - [ Harry Stopes-Roe ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/harry-stopes-roe-1924-2014/) - [ Hermann Bondi ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/hermann-bondi-1919-2005/)