--- title: "Humanist Society Scotland" date: "2026-10-09T13:34:28+01:00" modified: "2026-10-09T13:34:29+01:00" url: "https://heritage.humanists.uk/humanist-society-scotland/" post_id: 14555 categories: ["Ceremonies", "Politics", "Secularism", "Social Reform"] tags: ["Blasphemy", "Campaigns", "Ceremonies", "LGBTQ rights", "Politics", "Rationalism", "Secularism", "Social welfare"] --- # Humanist Society Scotland > There are not just Protestants and Catholics; there are also humanists. > > John McAllion MSP, in the first debate of the Scottish Parliament, 18 May 1999 **Humanist Society Scotland** (HSS) is the national humanist charity for Scotland. Founded in 1989 as the Humanist Society of Scotland, today it is one of the most successful humanist organisations in the world, with a large membership base and widespread name recognition in Scottish society, in large part as a result of the enormous popularity of humanist ceremonies in Scotland. From its early years, one of the Society’s most enduring campaigns had been for the legal recognition of humanist marriages, which it achieved in 2005. Since the 2010s, it has been the largest provider of weddings in Scotland other than the state, with HSS celebrants today conducting more legal weddings than any religious group in Scotland. ### Scottish roots Organised humanism in Scotland developed alongside the movement in England and the rest of the United Kingdom, sharing many of its periodicals, personalities, and arguments, but with its own campaigns, dictated by Scotland’s separate schools, marriage law, and national church. The earliest humanist organisation in Scotland was the Glasgow Rationalist and Ethical Association, which was founded in May 1904 and took rooms at 319 Sauchiehall Street. It was chaired by the architect and city councillor Ninian MacWhannell, who went on to preside over the Glasgow branch of the [RPA](https://heritage.humanists.uk/rationalist-press-association/) from its foundation until his death in 1940. By the early 1950s, Glasgow humanists met as a branch of the Rationalist Press Association, and by the early 1970s had become the independent Glasgow Humanist Society, which by the 1980s was affiliated to the [British Humanist Association](https://heritage.humanists.uk/the-union-of-ethical-societies/). ![](https://heritage.humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/10/1904-rationalism-in-glasgow.png)*Fred L. Greig announces the Glasgow Rationalist and Ethical Association, The Literary Guide, 1 November 1904*. In Edinburgh, a humanist society was born in reaction to a hostile legal climate for atheists and non-religious people. After Lord President Clyde ruled in the Court of Session in 1956 that atheism and a child’s welfare were ‘mutually exclusive’ in a custody case against an atheist doctor, one Miss D. Swan of Loanhead appealed through *The Humanist* (today’s *New Humanist*) for members to band together and form a group. The Edinburgh Humanist Group held its inaugural meeting in February 1957. The group later appointed [Lord Ritchie-Calder](https://heritage.humanists.uk/ritchie-calder/) as President and [Ludovic Kennedy](https://heritage.humanists.uk/ludovic-kennedy/) as Vice President. Its most lasting achievement was in welfare. Wanting to put humanist values into practice, members formed Edinburgh Youth Homes, which provided ‘family-style care’ to boys from troubled homes from 1964 until 2004. ![](https://heritage.humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/10/1957-edinburgh-group.png)*The Humanist reports the Edinburgh Humanist Group’s inaugural meeting and names Miss D. Swan as its secretary, April 1957.* In Aberdeen, the psychologist and broadcaster [Margaret Knight](https://heritage.humanists.uk/margaret-kennedy-knight/), whose 1955 BBC talks on ‘Morals Without Religion’ had made her a national figure, inspired the Aberdeen Humanist Group, which was formed in 1957 following her address to the city’s [Fabian Society](https://heritage.humanists.uk/fabian-society/). With Knight on the platform, the Aberdeen group’s public debates drew large audiences. In all, the group lasted 17 years; by the time it folded in the mid-1970s, Knight reflected that it had worked itself out of a job: the ideas it existed to promote had at last become respectable, and so no longer inspired heated debate. The first Scottish Humanist Conference was held in Edinburgh in April 1962, and a Scottish Council of Humanists was formed the same year. This national body successfully brought together humanist and rationalist groups from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, and Perth, but was short-lived. It lapsed in 1967 amid internal disagreements and the practical difficulties of travelling back and forth between the various groups. ![](https://heritage.humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/10/1962-scottish-conference-1024x589.png)*The Humanist announces the Scottish Humanist Conference in Edinburgh, 7–8 April 1962, with Margaret Knight speaking and Barbara Walsh taking bookings*. ### A single Scottish voice The council was revived as the Scottish Humanist Council in December 1978, with its first chairman as Nigel Bruce, a veteran of the Edinburgh Humanist Group who had founded its youth homes project, as well as a regular voice in the pages of the *New Humanist* magazine since the 1960s. The timing was deliberate. With a Scottish Assembly and devolved legislative powers then in prospect, Scottish humanists argued they needed one body to speak on matters decided in Scotland. Their chief concerns at that time were religious segregation in state-funded schools, religious education under the Scottish Education Department, and religious broadcasting on BBC Radio Scotland. The council drew its 12 members from the Glasgow and Edinburgh groups and from the regions, but was not open to individual members. Scots who wanted to join a national humanist organisation at that time joined the British Humanist Association in London, which naturally concentrated on Westminster, and on English law and English schools, where most of its members lived and where its influence lay. Scotland’s law, schools, and church settlement were different, and the need for a distinct Scottish body followed as a matter of course. Writing for readers of the BHA’s *Humanist News* in 1983, Nigel Bruce set out [why Scotland needed its own humanist body](https://heritage.humanists.uk/?p=14548). The Church of Scotland enjoyed a standing in state affairs, broadcasting, and education that the Church of England did not; religious instruction in Scottish schools rested on ‘use and wont’ rather than statute, and could be ended only by a local referendum no council had ever held; and since 1918 Scottish local authorities had borne the full cost of Roman Catholic schools, a grievance that ‘rankles with Scottish Humanists’. Scottish humanists, Bruce said, felt ‘a minority group and uncomfortably isolated’ in Scotland, but less so for their strong links with the BHA and the [International Humanist and Ethical Union](https://heritage.humanists.uk/humanists-international/) (today’s Humanists International). The council, 12 strong and drawn from the Glasgow and Edinburgh groups, acted ‘as a watchdog for Humanist interests and organiser of conferences’. The BHA was regularly represented at those conferences, with its general secretary and others usually in attendance, such as Maeve Denby’s visit in October 1982. ![](https://heritage.humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/10/humanism-in-scotland-social-1200x630-1-1024x538.png)*Nigel Bruce’s ‘Humanism in Scotland’ as printed in Humanist News, May 1983.* The local groups beneath the Scottish council were led by long-serving volunteers such as Anna McLaren, chairman of Glasgow Humanist Society and organiser of its Stirling conferences through the 1970s and 1980s. Her letter to the *Glasgow Herald* on humanist views of marriage, reprinted by the BHA, caught the movement’s view of egalitarian freethinking marriages a generation before legal humanist weddings: > Our families were not patriarchal but a partnership, perhaps because we had no belief in a Great Patriarch. Our children, now adult, have tended to form the same sort of marriages, the cheerful kind, where mutual enjoyment of each other is enough to \[overcome\] the tensions and differences always present between human beings living in close contact. > > Anna McLaren, ‘Marriage for Humanists’, reprinted in *Humanist News*, July 1983 ![](https://heritage.humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2026/10/mclaren-letter-crop-424x1024.png)*Anna McLaren’s letter to the Glasgow Herald, ‘Marriage for Humanists’, as reprinted in Humanist News, 1983.* Scottish humanists were early advocates of unity in the wider humanist movement. In 1985, members of the Scottish Humanist Council wrote to *New Humanist* to contrast Scotland’s success in bringing together secularists, rationalists, and humanists with the persistent divisions between the London-based national bodies of that time, urging them to merge as they had done so successfully. ### Founding the Society In 1989 the Humanist Society of Scotland was established as a membership organisation, run entirely by volunteers. It was formed out of a coming together, chiefly of the Glasgow and Edinburgh groups. It also took over some functions from the Scottish Humanist Council, whose magazine *The Scottish Humanist* (today published as *Humanitie*), founded by Eric Stockton in 1988, became the organ of the new Society from 1989 onwards. A few years later, after the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1990 created a distinct regime of recognised Scottish charities, in force from 1992 onwards, HSS became formally registered as a Scottish charity in 1997. Through the early 1990s it remained small, a federation of local groups in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, and Perth, later joined by Inverness, each of which had grown up independently in earlier decades. Through the 1990s demand for non-religious weddings, funerals, and namings grew, and the Society began formally training celebrants. It also began the campaign that would define it: for humanist weddings to be recognised in Scots law alongside religious and civil ceremonies. ### Devolution and the Scottish Parliament The arrival of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 gave the Society what the 1978 council had anticipated: a legislature in Edinburgh to lobby. Its influence in the early years was indirect but real, starting from day one. The new Scottish Parliament’s very first debate, on 18 May 1999, concerned whether to copy Westminster’s daily prayers. MSPs instead chose an inclusive weekly ‘[Time for Reflection](https://heritage.humanists.uk/article/time-for-reflection/)‘, open to speakers of all faiths and none, which began on 27 October 1999. Labour’s John McAllion told the chamber that ‘*there are not just Protestants and Catholics; there are also humanists*‘, and that their ‘beliefs and traditions must be kept in mind’. First Minister Donald Dewar, himself non-religious, argued against replicating the Westminster model. HSS celebrants have since been regular Time for Reflection speakers, though the Society’s own analysis in 2021 found that humanist and non-religious contributors had made only around 12% of addresses since 1999. The Society’s first major campaign at Holyrood was defensive. In 2000 it joined the coalition supporting repeal of Section 2A (Scotland’s version of Section 28, which forbade local authorities from teaching about the existence of LGBT people), which the Parliament carried by 99 votes to 17 against a well-funded religious ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign. Cultural historian Callum Brown has argued that the Society’s ceremonies did as much as its lobbying to win it a hearing at Holyrood. As humanist weddings and funerals spread, MSPs of every party came to know HSS’s membership figures and to attend its ceremonies themselves, and by the 2010s its agenda on equal marriage, blasphemy, and assisted dying was drawing support across the SNP, Conservatives, Labour, Greens, and Liberal Democrats alike. Over the following years the Parliament became the forum for reforms humanists had long sought, including adoption rights for same-sex couples in 2009, equal marriage in 2014, and the abolition of the blasphemy law in 2021. Its 25th anniversary in 2024 coincided with Scottish Census results showing that 51% of Scots have no religion, making Scotland, for the first time, officially the least religious nation in the UK. ### The marriage breakthrough The road to legal recognition began at Holyrood. In January 2001 the Society lodged a petition, presented by Charles Douglas and Ivan Middleton, asking the Parliament to amend the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1977 so that humanist weddings could stand alongside religious and civil ceremonies. MSPs were sympathetic but were advised that no legislation was needed, and the change, when it came, was administrative rather than legislative. In 2005 the Registrar General for Scotland authorised 12 HSS celebrants to conduct legal marriages, relying on provisions of the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1977 and the protection of ‘religion or belief’ under human rights law. By then the Society was already conducting around a hundred weddings a year, each needing a separate civil ceremony to be lawful. The first legally recognised humanist wedding in the UK took place on 18 June 2005 at Edinburgh Zoo, where Ivan Middleton, the Society’s secretary and a petitioner of 2001, married Karen Watts and Martin Reijns. The effect was transformative. By 2013 humanist ceremonies were the third most popular form of wedding in Scotland, and by 2017 the Society was conducting more weddings than the Church of Scotland. When same-sex marriage became legal at the end of 2014, HSS celebrants conducted Scotland’s first ceremonies on the stroke of midnight on 31 December. Then-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was a witness at one of them, the Glasgow wedding of Gerrie and Susan Douglas-Scott. On Valentine’s Day of 2017, the Scottish Parliament made the Society the first ‘prescribed body’ under the 1977 Act, giving its celebrants a permanent statutory right to solemnise marriages. By 2025, 20 years on from recognition, more than 50,000 couples had married in humanist ceremonies in Scotland, and MSPs marked the anniversary with a cross-party motion noting the Society’s 18,000 members. Scotland’s experience became the central evidence in the long campaign, still unfinished in England and Wales, for the same right across the UK. ### Growth and modern history The Society grew rapidly on the strength of its ceremonies work. From a volunteer-run society with a few hundred members in 1989, it had grown to a thousand members by 2005. By 2010, it had around 7,000 members and 90 trained celebrants. This had doubled by 2017, with more than 14,000 members conducting 3,500 weddings a year; by the mid-2020s it had over 18,000 members, making it one of the largest humanist organisations in the world relative to population. In 2011 members voted unanimously to reconstitute it as a charitable company governed by a board of trustees. The change took effect in 2012, when the ‘of’ was dropped from its name and it became Humanist Society Scotland. Its campaigns have since included assisted dying, the removal of unelected religious representatives from council education committees, and the abolition of Scotland’s blasphemy law, achieved in 2021. The Society professionalised in step with that growth. By 2007 it had its first office, in Glasgow, a new visual identity, and a place on the Scottish Executive’s list of consultees, and had placed the first humanist chaplain at a Scottish university, at Glasgow. Its volunteer executive committee gave way to a board of trustees by 2009, the year HSS became a full member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. By the late 2010s the charity employed a small team of staff, and had relocated from Glasgow to Edinburgh to be closer to the Scottish Parliament. The Society has continued to draw on prominent Scottish voices to spearhead its work, most visibly the crime novelist Christopher Brookmyre, who served as HSS President from 2008 to 2015. Other ‘distinguished supporters’ and patrons of HSS included the novelist [Iain M. Banks](https://heritage.humanists.uk/iain-banks/) and the poet and former Makar (National Poet of Scotland) Liz Lochhead. Beyond ceremonies and campaigning, the Society today supports a network of local humanist groups across Scotland, provides non-religious pastoral support in Scottish hospitals and universities, and runs a school visitor team offering assemblies and classroom materials for Religious, Moral, and Philosophical Studies. As with Edinburgh Youth Homes in the 1960s, the modern HSS continues to develop new services to support emerging needs in society. One such modern service was ‘Streetcare’, started by members of HSS in 2012 to take food, warm clothing, and conversation to rough sleepers in Glasgow. It later expanded to Edinburgh, before becoming an independent charity, Streetcare Volunteers, in 2023. HSS and Humanists UK are separate charities, reflecting Scotland’s separate legal and educational systems. HSS is responsible for ceremonies, pastoral support, local groups, and legislative work in Scotland; Humanists UK for the rest of the UK and for UK-wide matters. The ‘sister charities’, as they sometimes refer to each other, formalised a strategic partnership in 2018, with HSS members counted as associate members of Humanists UK, and HSS pastoral carers accredited by Humanists UK’s Non-Religious Pastoral Support Network. Both charities are full members of [Humanists International](https://heritage.humanists.uk/humanists-international/). ### Sources and further reading **HSS’s own magazines, in the National Library of Scotland catalogue:** - [*The Scottish Humanist*, no. 1 (Autumn 1988) – no. 25 (Winter 1994/95)](https://search.nls.uk/permalink/44NLS_INST/gt3sji/alma9927174563804341), Scottish Humanist Council (founding editor Eric Stockton) - [*Humanism in Scotland*, vol. 2 no. 1 (Spring 1995) – Summer 2007](https://search.nls.uk/permalink/44NLS_INST/gt3sji/alma9938932163804341), ISSN 1357-8200 - [*Humanitie*, Winter 2007–](https://search.nls.uk/permalink/44NLS_INST/gt3sji/alma9941585123804341) (print; ‘published as a newsletter for members only from 2016’); [online issues, 2015–](https://search.nls.uk/permalink/44NLS_INST/gt3sji/alma99116867454104341), individual issues catalogued separately **Articles cited from them:** - Ivan Middleton, ‘A marriage not made in heaven (actually, in the zoo!)’, *Humanism Scotland* vol. 3 no. 21 (Summer 2005), p. 4 — the 2001 petition, the Registrar General’s decision, the twelve celebrants and the first legal wedding - Mary Wallace and Jim Petherick, ‘New celebrants join the team’, *Humanism Scotland* vol. 3 no. 21 (Summer 2005) — celebrant training and numbers - Robin Wood, ‘A Humanist Prophet’, *Humanism Scotland* vol. 3 no. 22 (Autumn 2005), p. 12 — Eric Stockton, the Scottish Humanist Council and the founding of *The Scottish Humanist*, 1988 - Joan Gibson, ‘The HSS Development Plan’, *Humanism Scotland* vol. 3 no. 22 (Autumn 2005) — membership growth and the first proposal for a staffed office - Juliet Wilson, ‘Letter from the Editor’, and Tim Maguire, ‘Look to the Future’, *Humanitie* vol. 1 no. 1 (Winter 2007) — the title *Humanitie* and the 2007 identity - Gordon Ross, ‘Ceremonies are up!’, *Humanitie* vol. 1 no. 1 (Winter 2007) — ceremony and celebrant numbers - Nigel Bruce, ‘Ludovic Kennedy – A Tribute’, *Humanitie* vol. 3 no. 1 (Winter 2009), p. 7 — the Edinburgh group’s sponsors in the 1960s - Joan Gibson, ‘The beginning of organised humanism’, *Humanitie* vol. 3 no. 1 (Winter 2009), p. 16 — HSS’s own account of its origins - Callum Brown, ‘An oral history of humanism in Scotland’, *Humanitie* vol. 3 no. 1 (Winter 2009), p. 18 - Gordon MacRae, ‘Chief Executive’s report’, and ‘Happy tin anniversary!’, *Humanitie* (Summer 2015) — ten years of legal weddings; membership over 10,000 **Archive of *The Humanist* and *New Humanist*:** - ‘Scottish Humanist Conference’, Humanist Front, *The Humanist*, April 1962 - ‘Humanism in Scotland’, Rational Record, *New Humanist*, May 1975 - ‘Scottish Humanist Council re-formed’, *New Humanist*, February 1979 - Robin Wood, ‘Humanist unification’, *New Humanist*, December 1985 - Nicolas Walter on *The Challenge of Secular Humanism*, *New Humanist*, December 1991 - Letters on the first Scottish humanist wedding, *New Humanist*, July 2005 - Sally Feldman, ‘Oh, happy day’, *New Humanist*, September 2013 - ‘Rationalism in Glasgow’, *Literary Guide*, November 1904 (founding of the Glasgow Rationalist and Ethical Association) - Obituary of Ninian MacWhannell, *Literary Guide*, February 1940 (Glasgow Ethical Society; Glasgow RPA) - ‘Humanist Front’, *The Humanist*, March 1957 (prospect of an Aberdeen group; RPA Glasgow Branch AGM); Aberdeen Humanist Group first listed April 1957 - ‘Atheist’s Child’, *The Humanist*, December 1956 (Court of Session custody ruling); Miss Swan’s appeal, October 1956; Edinburgh Humanist Group inaugural meeting, April 1957 - All of the above are in the [New Humanist digital archive on Exact Editions](https://shop.exacteditions.com/new-humanist) (subscription) **Other sources:** - Humanist Society Scotland, [‘What is humanism: Our History’](https://www.humanism.scot/get-involved/what-is-humanism/) - Humanists UK, [‘Humanists UK and Humanist Society Scotland announce strategic partnership’, 18 May 2018](https://humanists.uk/2018/05/18/humanists-uk-and-humanist-society-scotland-announce-strategic-partnership/) - Humanists UK, [‘Scotland celebrates 20 years of humanist marriages’, 18 June 2025](https://humanists.uk/2025/06/18/scotland-celebrates-20-years-of-humanist-marriages/) - [OSCR register, charity SC026570](https://www.oscr.org.uk/about-charities/search-the-register/charity-details?number=SC026570) - Joe Higgins, [‘Time for Reflection in the Scottish Parliament’](https://heritage.humanists.uk/article/time-for-reflection/), Humanist Heritage - Joe Higgins, [‘Holyrood at 25: the foundation of a humanist parliament’](https://www.humanism.scot/2024/05/15/holyrood-at-25-the-foundation-of-a-humanist-parliament/), HSS, 15 May 2024 - Humanist Society Scotland, [‘Section 28, 25 years on: a campaigner reflects’](https://www.humanism.scot/2025/06/02/section-28-25-years-on-a-campaigner-reflects/), 2 June 2025 - Humanist Society Scotland, [‘We’re delighted to be recognised for ceremonies provision’](https://www.humanism.scot/2017/02/14/humanist-society-become-prescribed-body/), 14 February 2017 - Humanist Society Scotland, [‘Celebrating 20 years of legal humanist weddings’](https://www.humanism.scot/2025/02/13/celebrating-20-years-of-legal-humanist-weddings/), 13 February 2025 - Scottish Parliament motion S6M-17902, [‘Celebrating 20 Years of Humanist Marriage in Scotland’](https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/votes-and-motions/S6M-17902), 2025 - *The Scotsman*, [‘Nicola Sturgeon in row over first gay wedding’](https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-in-row-over-first-gay-wedding-1517816), December 2014 - Free Presbyterian Magazine, [‘The First Minister’s Funeral’](https://www.fpchurch.org.uk/?p=58939), December 2000 - Humanist Society Scotland, [‘Streetcare Volunteers now an independent charity’](https://www.humanism.scot/2023/07/25/streetcare-volunteers-now-an-independent-charity/), 25 July 2023 - Humanist Society Scotland, [‘Meet our new chair, Jennifer Buchan’](https://www.humanism.scot/2024/01/29/humanist-society-interview-series-meet-our-new-chair-jennifer-buchan/), 29 January 2024 (university chaplaincy; school visitor team) - Callum G. Brown, David Nash and Charlie Lynch, *The Humanist Movement in Modern Britain* (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023) - *Humanist News* (BHA), July 1983: ‘Scottish Humanist Council’ conference report; and Anna McLaren, ‘Marriage for Humanists’ (letter reprinted from the *Glasgow Herald*) - ‘Scottish Humanist conference’, *New Humanist*, April 1975 (Anna McLaren as Glasgow organiser) - Nigel Bruce, ‘Humanism in Scotland’, *Humanist News* (BHA), May 1983 - [Edinburgh Youth Homes Ltd: minutes, files and papers, 1964–2004](https://discovery-cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F230820), Edinburgh City Archives, Accession 877 (National Archives Discovery) - [Edinburgh Gazette, Companies Removed from Register, notice E-25953-2609-294](https://www.thegazette.co.uk/notice/E-25953-2609-294) (Edinburgh Youth Homes Ltd struck off, 2005) See also ---------- - [ Time for Reflection in the Scottish Parliament ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/article/time-for-reflection/) - [ Humanist Ceremonies ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/humanist-ceremonies/) - [ Margaret Knight ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/margaret-kennedy-knight/) - [ The Union of Ethical Societies ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/the-union-of-ethical-societies/)