Secularism

For the right to criticise religion!

Author: 
Ruben Lomas

A meeting of the Atheism, Secularism and Humanism Society at Queen’s Mary’s University in east London on 18 January, discussing “Shari’a Law and human rights”, was cancelled after a man burst into the room, filmed all the attendees and proclaimed he would “hunt down” anyone who insulted the Islamic prophet Mohammed.

Charles Darwin, revolutionary - AWL London forum

Date: 
19 March, 2009 - 19:30 - 21:15
Location: 

The Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, Kings Cross, London

Description: 

2009 is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his On the Origin of Species - a book about which Karl Marx wrote that it "contains the basis in natural history for our views".

Yet since then, many right-wing movements have tried to claim Darwin and Darwinism.

At a time when Darwinian ideas about evolution, and scientific rationality more generally, are under attack from politicised religion, we are holding this meeting to celebrate this great thinker, explore his ideas and discuss their implications for Marxists.

Speaker: Les Hearn

A Hymn for the Godless

Author: 
Sean Matgamna

A Hymn for the Godless
(After listening to a recording of poems by
Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Once, God and Kate Ni Houlihan* were one.
I know Truth, negating Truth, as drought,

The Connolly Association and its Work: a Critical Memoir

Author: 
Sean Matgamna

There are striking parallels between the SWP's attitude to Islam over the last period and the way the Communist Party used to relate to Irish Catholic immigrants in Britain. I had some experience of that.

For a while, over forty years ago, I was involved in the work of the Communist Party among Irish people of devout Catholic background in Britain, people from the nearest thing to a theocracy in Europe, where clerics ruled within the glove-puppet institutions of a bourgeois democracy.