Blackham Obituary

Harold Blackman believed in action. Faith without works, he said, was not Christianity. But, then, “unbelief without any effort to shoulder the consequences for mankind”, as he put it in his book Objections to Humanism, “is not humanism”.

Harold Blackham

The Times (London) said of him, “Harold Blackham was the main founder of the modern Humanist movement and devoted the whole of his long life to the service of his fellow human beings.”

Blackman was born in Handsworth, near Birmingham, and his parents were a lay preacher and a bookseller. He inherited his sense of duty and purpose from both his mother and his father (the latter died when Harold was a child).

After graduating from Birmingham University, where he studied English and ethics, he taught at Doncaster Grammar School, and among his subjects was divinity.

However, he rejected the supernatural and in the thirties moved to London and became involved with the ethical movement.

He worked with the fire service during the Second World War, and also helped efforts to get Jewish children into Britain so they could escape Nazi persecution.

Ethical Union

After the war, he became secretary of the Ethical Union and launched The Plain View, a quarterly magazine, in 1945. It would continue to publish for 20 years.

Blackman worked with several humanist and ethical organisations throughout his life, and among books he wrote and edited are Stanton Coit 1857–1944 (1948), a memoir and anthology of his old patron; Living as a Humanist (1950), a symposium presenting his view of the new ideology; Six Existentialist Thinkers (1951).

Other books he wrote include Political Discipline in a Free Society (1961); Religion in a Modern Society (1966); Objections to Humanism (1963); and The Fable as Literature (1985).

It was in Objections to Humanism that he made the remark we refer to above: “Faith without works is not Christianity, and unbelief without any effort to help shoulder the consequences for mankind is not humanism.”

The Times obituary speaks generously of Harold Blackham:

He was concerned not to attack but to transcend religion and he worked ecumenically and equally with religious and non-religious individuals and organisations on the basis of the common values of all people of good will. He was so active both within and beyond the Humanist movement that it used to be said he belonged to more organisations than he knew.

He took a leading part in most of them – including the Friends of Austria, his local Labour Party, the League of Nations Union and then the United Nations Association, the British Association for Counselling, the Campaign for Moral Education, the Social Morality Council and so on. He customarily became the chairman of any committee he belonged to, and he repeatedly organised conferences and produced reports on social and moral issues of topical importance.

Blackman helped, along with the Dutch philosopher and humanist leader Jaap van Praag, to found the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). And, by bringing together ethical and rationalist organisations, he also helped to form the British Humanist Association (BHA).

Blackham spent his last years cultivating his garden, but continued to serve as president of the BHA and lecture at the South Place Ethical Society, and, in 1984, gave the Conway Hall Memorial Lecture “The Way I Think”.

Blackman was married twice, and is survived by an adopted son from his first marriage.

You can read a review of the humanist campaigner and writer Barbara Smoker’s tribute to Blackman – Blackham’s Best, a collection of his words and thoughts – by clicking here.

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