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Archibald Robertson (atheist)
Archibald Horace Mann RobertsonSome sources erroneously give his second name as "Harold" (1886 – 14 October 1961) was an English civil servant who became a writer on history, social affairs from a left-wing perspective and critiques of Christianity. Early years Robertson was born in Durham in 1886, eldest of the three sons of the similarly named Archibald Robertson and his wife Julia, née Mann. The father was an Anglican clergyman and the master of Hatfield College, Durham, who later became Principal of King's College, London and then Bishop of Exeter. In 1899 Robertson won a scholarship to Winchester College, where it was that he began to doubt the Christian and Tory orthodoxies which were expected of him. This process started with his reading of the history of the French Revolution. Further spurs to his thinking came from Shelley's ''Queen Mab'' with its "devastating notes", J. W. Draper's ''History of the Conflict between Religion and Science'' and, most of all, Belfor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Durham, England
Durham ( , locally ), is a cathedral city and civil parish on the River Wear, County Durham, England. It is an administrative centre of the County Durham District, which is a successor to the historic County Palatine of Durham (which is different to both the ceremonial county and district of County Durham). The settlement was founded over the final resting place of St Cuthbert. Durham Cathedral was a centre of pilgrimage in medieval England while the Durham Castle has been the home of Durham University since 1832. Both built in 11th-century, the buildings were designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986. HM Prison Durham is also located close to the city centre and was built in 1816. Name The name "Durham" comes from the Brythonic element , signifying a hill fort and related to -ton, and the Old Norse , which translates to island.Surtees, R. (1816) ''History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham'' (Classical County Histories) The Lord Bishop of Durh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rationalist Press Association
The Rationalist Association, originally the Rationalist Press Association, is an organization in the United Kingdom, founded in 1885 by a group of freethinkers who were unhappy with the increasingly political and decreasingly intellectual tenor of the British secularist movement. The purpose of the Rationalist Press Association was to publish literature that was too anti-religious to be handled by mainstream publishers and booksellers. The Rationalist Press Association changed its name to "The Rationalist Association" in 2002. History The impetus for the creation of the Rationalist Press Association can be traced back to Charles Albert Watts, the publisher who printed the ''National Reformer'' and a majority of Charles Bradlaugh's books.Colin Campbell. 1971. ''Towards a Sociology of Irreligion''. London: MacMillan Press. In 1890 Watts formed the Propagandist Press Committee, with George Jacob Holyoake as President, in order to circumvent the problem caused by booksellers who ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy and democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow. The Fabian Society was also historically related to radicalism, a left-wing liberal tradition. As one of the founding organisations of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900, and as an important influence upon the Labour Party which grew from it, the Fabian Society has had a powerful influence on British politics. Members of the Fabian Society have included political leaders from other countries, such as Jawaharlal Nehru, who adopted Fabian principles as part of their own political ideologies. The Fabian Society founded the London School of Economics in 1895. Today, the society functions primarily as a think tank and is one of twenty socialist societies affiliated with the Labour Party. Similar societies exist in Australia (the Australi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse working-class candidates, representing the interests of the majority. A sitting independent MP and prominent union organiser, Keir Hardie, became its first chairman. The party was positioned to the left of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Representation Committee, which was founded in 1900 and soon renamed the Labour Party, and to which the ILP was affiliated from 1906 to 1932. In 1947, the organisation's three parliamentary representatives defected to the Labour Party, and the organisation rejoined Labour as Independent Labour Publications in 1975. Organisational history Background As the nineteenth century came to a close, working-class representation in political office became a great concern for many Britons. Many who sought the election of working men and thei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Permanent Secretary
A permanent secretary (also known as a principal secretary) is the most senior Civil Service (United Kingdom), civil servant of a department or Ministry (government department), ministry charged with running the department or ministry's day-to-day activities. Permanent secretaries are the non-political civil service Chief executive officer, chief executives of government departments or ministries, who generally hold their position for a number of years (thus "permanent") at a ministry as distinct from the changing political secretaries of state to whom they report and provide advice. Country Australia In Australia, the position is called the "department secretary", “secretary of the department”, or “director-general of the department” in some states and territories. Barbados Canada In Canada, the senior civil service position is a "deputy minister", who within a government ministry or department is outranked only by a Minister (government), Minister of the Crown. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighting occurring throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died in genocides within the Ottoman Empire and in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war. Prior to 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente (comprising France, Russia, and Britain) and the Triple Alliance (containing Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). Tensions in the Balkans came to a head on 28 June 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Civil Service
His Majesty's Home Civil Service, also known as His Majesty's Civil Service, the Home Civil Service, or colloquially as the Civil Service is the permanent bureaucracy or secretariat of Crown employees that supports His Majesty's Government, which is led by a cabinet of ministers chosen by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as well as two of the three devolved administrations: the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government, but not the Northern Ireland Executive. As in other states that employ the Westminster political system, His Majesty's Home Civil Service forms an inseparable part of the British government. The executive decisions of government ministers are implemented by HM Civil Service. Civil servants are employees of the Crown and not of the British parliament. Civil servants also have some traditional and statutory responsibilities which to some extent protect them from being used for the political advantage of the party ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Democratic Federation
The Social Democratic Federation (SDF) was established as Britain's first organised socialist political party by H. M. Hyndman, and had its first meeting on 7 June 1881. Those joining the SDF included William Morris, George Lansbury, James Connolly and Eleanor Marx. However, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's long-term collaborator, refused to support Hyndman's venture. Many of its early leading members had previously been active in the Manhood Suffrage League. The SDF battled through defections of its right and left wings to other organisations in the first decade of the twentieth century before uniting with other radical groups in the Marxist British Socialist Party from 1911 until 1920. Organizational history Origins and early years The British Marxist movement effectively began in 1880 when a businessman named Henry M. Hyndman read Karl Marx's ''Communist Manifesto'' in French translation while crossing to America. Upon his return to London, Hyndman sought out Marx, then ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Justice (newspaper)
''Justice'' was the weekly newspaper of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in the United Kingdom. The SDF was the Democratic Federation until January 1884. With the name change the organisation launched the newspaper. The paper was initially edited by C. L. Fitzgerald,G. D. H. Cole, ''British Working-Class Politics, 1832-1914'', p.92 and later by H. M. Hyndman, Henry Hyde Champion, Ernest Belfort Bax, then Harry Quelch for many years, and finally Henry W. Lee. It attempted to present scholarly ideas in a serious fashion, featuring work by William Morris, Peter Kropotkin, Edward Aveling and Alfred Russel Wallace. After the SDF became the British Socialist Party, in 1911, ''Justice'' continued as the weekly publication of that party, but in 1916, the group around ''Justice'' split away to form the National Socialist Party. The paper then became the organ of that party, which soon joined the Labour Party and renamed itself the Social Democratic Federation again. In 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New Age
''The New Age'' was a British weekly magazine (1894–1938), inspired by Fabian socialism, and credited as a major influence on literature and the arts during its heyday from 1907 to 1922, when it was edited by Alfred Richard Orage. It published work by many of the chief political commentators of the day, such as George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton and Arnold Bennett. History ''The New Age'' began life in 1894 as a publication of the Christian socialist movement, but in 1907, as a radical weekly edited by Joseph Clayton, it was struggling. In May of that year, Orage and Holbrook Jackson, who had been running the Leeds Arts Club, took over the journal with financial help from George Bernard Shaw. Jackson acted as co-editor only for the first year, after which Orage edited it alone until he sold it in 1922. By that time his interests had moved towards mysticism, and the quality and circulation of the journal had declined. According to a B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Labour Leader
The ''Labour Leader'' was a British socialist newspaper published for almost one hundred years. It was later renamed ''New Leader'' and ''Socialist Leader'', before finally taking the name ''Labour Leader'' again. 19th century The origins of the paper lay in ''The Miner'', a monthly paper founded by Keir Hardie in 1887. Its main purpose was to advocate for a federation of Scottish miners."Hardie, (James) Keir", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography The first issue contained an influential programme for labour, co-authored by Hardie and Chisholm Robertson,David Howell, ''British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, 1888-1906'', p.146 marking Hardie's switch from support for the Liberal Party to advocating independent labour candidacies. The paper was used as Hardie's platform in the 1888 Mid Lanarkshire by-election, following which Hardie became a founder member of the Scottish Labour Party and relaunched ''The Miner'' as the ''Labour Leader''. In 1893 the Scottish Labou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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