Peter Leslie Brearey (23 December 1939 – 7 May 1998) was a British secularist,

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

, and journalist, and editor of '' The Freethinker'' from 1993 to 1998. He was born in

Dewsbury Dewsbury is a market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire, England. It lies on the River Calder, West Yorkshire, River Calder and on an arm of the Calder and Hebble Navigation waterway. It is to the west of Wakefield, ...

. Although his family background was Church of England, Brearey rejected religion as a teenager. He was a member of the Young Communist League and subsequently the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...

. He remained a

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

for the rest of his life, but had moved away from the CPGB towards the

Socialist Party of Great Britain The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is a small socialist political party in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1904 as a split from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), it advocates using the ballot box for revolutionary purposes and ...

. He started his own newspaper, the ''Dewsbury Sentinel'', at the age of sixteen, and went on to work for many local newspapers and contribute to hundreds of publications. He was news editor of the ''Wakefield Express'', editor of the ''Ossett Observer'', and founding editor of ''Healthview'', newspaper of Yorkshire Regional Health Authority. He also wrote an opinion column for the ''Pontefract and Castleford Express'', one edition of which (from 1985) was cited by Granville Williams in a discussion of the decline of local newspaper journalism:

In stark contrast to the politicised headlines and stories in most of the national press attacking the miners, the P&C went in for straight reporting. The paper did have an opinion column though, written by Peter Brearey, with the headline "A Time For Calm After The Storm" which argued it was a time for reconciliation, to get the pits working again and make the Five Towns a centre for investment.

An activist in the National Union of Journalists, his book for young journalists, "Never Say Scoop", was published in 1981. He was editor of '' The Freethinker'' (this had been a childhood ambition) from 1993 until his death from cancer at the age of 58. According to the ''Dictionary of Atheism, Skepticism & Humanism'', Brearey "brought color and life to the journal". In ''New Humanist'', Jim Herrick wrote that "his acceptance of the ''Freethinker'' editorship could be seen as the culmination of his career. His editorship was innovative yet faithful to the past." Keith Porteous Wood, then General Secretary of the National Secular Society (of which Brearey was a vice-president), noted that Brearey "kept the magazine as much as possible away from involvement in arguments in the movement, saddened by the energy they dissipated." A couple of months before his death he and his wife had moved to

Orkney Orkney (), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago off the north coast of mainland Scotland. The plural name the Orkneys is also sometimes used, but locals now consider it outdated. Part of the Northern Isles along with Shetland, ...

. He was buried in the garden of his house on Sanday to the singing of '' The Red Flag''.

Works

*''Never Say Scoop'' (1981) Cleckheaton: Kirklees Monographs

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brearey, Peter 1939 births 1998 deaths 20th-century atheists British atheism activists English atheists English male writers English Marxists Freethought writers Marxist journalists People from Dewsbury