Stefan Dickers on George Jacob Holyoake

Conway Hall Ethical Society presents; George Jacob Holyoake was a leader of the Victorian Secular movement imprisoned for Blasphemy in 1842 for an off the cuff reply at a lecture. Holyoake was also a Chartist campaigner for Co-operation Free Speech and a Free and Untaxed Press he was also an early feminist but he fell out with Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh over their militant advocacy of birth control as the solution to poverty. Holyoake’s long relationship with Bradlaugh however was not always hostile and the interactions of the two men are an important part of the story of Victorian radical secularism ’; Stefan Dickers is the Library and Archives Manager at Bishopsgate Institute which houses most of George Jacob Holyoake’s papers along with collections on the history of London the labour movement co-operation freethought and humanism.; Stefan is also secretary of the Archives and Resources Committee of the Society for the Study of Labour History. He is Co-Director of the Raphael Samuel History Centre Chair of the Socialist History Society and sits on the committee of the oral history consortium Britain at Work 1945-1995. Stefan is also co-founder of the Network of Radical Libraries and Archives (NORLA).; Tickets are £5