Humanists helped build the United Nations, argued over its direction for decades, and still speak up at it today. On UN Day, we look back through our archive at the part humanists have played.

On 24 October 1945, the Charter of the United Nations came into force. Its opening words, ‘We the peoples of the United Nations’, set out an organisation meant to serve people everywhere, not just the governments that signed it. Humanists were among those who helped shape it and its agencies.

For United Nations Day, we’ve gone back over 80 years of humanist magazines and newsletters, now held in the New Humanist archive, to find out how humanists helped build the UN, how they pushed it to do better, and how Humanists UK carries that work on today.

1942: ‘Not a word about Christianity’

The name ‘United Nations’ was first used during the Second World War, for the Allies fighting the Axis powers. In 1942, Britain’s ambassadors to the United States and Spain, Lord Halifax and Sir Samuel Hoare, framed the Allies’ cause in terms of ‘Christian civilisation’ and ‘Christian brotherhood’. When MPs challenged this in the House of Commons that October, the Foreign Office defended it. The President of the Rationalist Press Association, Surgeon Rear-Admiral Charles Beadnell, wrote to the minister, Richard Law, to object.

The ideals of the United Nations, he argued, were shared by people of every religion and none. Calling them Christian risked alienating friends and allies from Turkey to China, and much of the Commonwealth, where Christians were a minority. And the Atlantic Charter, the statement of war aims drawn up by Churchill and Roosevelt, said nothing about Christianity.

‘There is not a word about Christianity in the Atlantic Charter.’

Charles Beadnell, President of the Rationalist Press Association, in a letter to Foreign Office minister Richard Law, 26 October 1942

1945–1949: Humanists at the founding

When delegates met in San Francisco in 1945 to agree the UN Charter, the agnostic anthropologist and campaigner Eslanda Goode Robeson attended, representing the Council on African Affairs, which campaigned against colonial rule.

Humanists went on to lead two of the UN’s new agencies. The biologist Julian Huxley became the first Director-General of UNESCO in 1946, and later the first President of the British Humanist Association, now Humanists UK. In his founding essay for the organisation, he wrote that UNESCO’s outlook ‘must, it seems, be based on some form of humanism’.

The nutritionist John Boyd Orr became the first Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization in 1945, setting out to end hunger as a cause of war. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949, and later presided over the second congress of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), now Humanists International.

‘Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.’

Constitution of UNESCO, 16 November 1945

1953: A court for the world

Humanists didn’t just cheer the UN on. They wanted it to work better. In June 1953, the Ethical Union, the organisation that became Humanists UK, published its own amendments to the UN Charter, for the British Government to put forward at a review conference expected in 1955.

It proposed that member states commit to removing the major inequalities between nations within 50 years. It also drafted a whole new chapter for the Charter, setting up an International Criminal Court, alongside a civilian international police force that would inspect disarmament treaties and supervise elections.

The review conference never took place, and the Ethical Union’s court would have judged states rather than individuals. But the idea of a permanent international criminal court came back: 45 years later, in 1998, states agreed the Rome Statute, and the International Criminal Court came into being in 2002.

‘There shall be an International Criminal Court…’

The Ethical Union’s draft amendment to the UN Charter, News and Notes, June 1953

1954: The right to complain

As the UN drafted the treaties that would turn the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into law, the Ethical Union asked the UK Government to back a right of individual petition: the power for a person whose rights had been violated to complain to the UN directly.

The Foreign Office said no. In its reply, printed in News and Notes in December 1954, it argued that states, not individuals, were the proper subjects of international law, and that a right of petition might become an instrument of political agitation.

Seventy years on, the UK still hasn’t signed up to the individual complaints procedure under the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: when the UN Human Rights Committee last reviewed the UK, in 2024, it asked the Government to reconsider. Individuals can take their own case to the European Court of Human Rights, a right the UK accepted in 1966, and that is part of why Humanists UK defends the European Convention on Human Rights today.

1956–1987: Freedom of belief, for everyone

In 1956, the UN was about to begin a worldwide study of discrimination in matters of religion and belief, using Article 18 of the Universal Declaration – the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion – as a starting point. The Ethical Union, which planned to submit evidence, asked its members for suggestions and offered some British examples of its own: bishops sitting in Parliament by right, a daily act of Christian worship in state schools, and the BBC’s refusal to give non-Christian views a fair hearing.

Seventy years later, Humanists UK is still campaigning to remove the bishops from the House of Lords and to replace compulsory worship with inclusive assemblies.

‘Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.’

Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, quoted in News and Notes, May 1956

Progress came slowly. In 1987, Humanist News welcomed a report to the UN Commission on Human Rights by Elizabeth Odio Benito, drawing on evidence from the IHEU. It recognised that freedom of belief protects non-religious beliefs too, naming agnosticism, free thought, atheism, and rationalism.

1969–1982: ‘Better to talk than fight’

By the late 1960s, the UN was struggling with the arms race, Biafra (the breakaway region of Nigeria where civil war and blockade had caused famine), and the Middle East, and many people had grown cynical. The Humanist urged its readers to resist that. As long as power politics governed the world, its November 1969 editorial said, the UN could be little more than a talking-shop, ‘but it is better to talk than fight’. It called the work of the UN’s food and health agencies ‘Humanism in action’.

On 24 October 1970, the British Humanist Association held its annual dinner on United Nations Day itself, with the science writer and humanist Ritchie Calder as guest of honour. Drawing on 25 years of work with the UN and its agencies, he argued that hunger and pollution weren’t unsolvable, but needed the steady application of reason.

When British humanists drew up a calendar of humanist special days in the 1970s and 1980s, United Nations Day was on it, alongside World Humanist Day, Human Rights Day, and Evolution Day.

2026: At the UN today

In 2012, Humanists UK, then the British Humanist Association, was accredited to speak at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and it is still the only national humanist organisation with that status. It first spoke there in March 2013, and has intervened at the Council’s sessions, held three times a year, ever since.

Humanists UK now speaks regularly at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, holding governments, including the UK, to their human rights commitments. In recent years it has:

• called on countries including Iran, Pakistan, Somalia, the Maldives, Mauritania, and the United Arab Emirates to repeal their blasphemy and apostasy laws, or to stop punishing ‘offences’ under them with death
• repeatedly raised the case of Mubarak Bala, President of the Nigerian Humanist Association, who was freed in August 2024 after nearly four and a half years in prison for ‘blasphemous’ Facebook posts
• urged the UK Government to close illegal religious schools and legally recognise humanist marriages
• argued in June that ‘religious freedom’ can’t justify conversion practices
• challenged, at the Council’s latest session, misleading claims about the European Court of Human Rights, which since 1980 has found only 13 times that a UK decision to deport or extradite someone would breach the Convention

Speaking at the Council in June, Laura Newlyn, Policy and Campaigns Manager, set out the principle behind much of this work:

‘We uphold the right to freedom of religion or belief – or FoRB – for all, but this right cannot be invoked to justify abuse.’

The arguments humanists made in 1942 still hold: human rights belong to everyone, whatever they believe, and no single religion speaks for humanity. Eighty-one years after the Charter came into force, Humanists UK will keep making that case wherever it is needed, in Geneva as much as in Westminster.

Find out more on Humanist Heritage

Human Rights

Eslanda Goode Robeson (1895–1965)

The early twentieth century

I am willing and eager to surrender as much of my personal sovereignty as is necessary, in order to secure as much freedom as possible, not only for…

Science

Julian Huxley (1887-1975)

The early twentieth century

What the sciences discover about the natural world and about the origins, nature and destiny of man is the truth for religion. There is no other kind of…

Human Rights

John Boyd Orr (1880–1971)

The early twentieth century

The big problem of today is how shall we adjust these tremendous new forces so that they can be harnessed to serve mankind, so that they can be…

Education

Constitution of UNESCO

1945

Constitution of The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Explore more on Humanist Heritage

Today, 21 October, would have been the 93rd birthday of Maureen Duffy (1933–2026): novelist, poet, campaigner, and the first President of the Gay Humanist Group, now LGBT+ Humanists. It is the first since her death in May, so we are remembering one of Britain’s most prominent humanists, and the ethics of compassion that shaped everything she wrote.

Duffy wrote more than 30 books and was a humanist for the whole of her adult life. She was one of the first women in British public life to be open about being a lesbian, and a patron of Humanists UK until her death. You can read her full life story on Humanist Heritage.

Maureen Duffy and The Microcosm

Born in Worthing in 1933 and raised in poverty by her mother, Duffy won a scholarship to grammar school and went on to study English at King’s College London. Her novel The Microcosm (1966), set around the Gateways Club in Chelsea, was the first British novel to depict a whole community of gay women. It was banned in Ireland, South Africa, and the Vatican. In 1967, weeks before the Sexual Offences Act partially decriminalised sex between men, she spoke openly on BBC television about being a lesbian.

‘We’re part of society, part of the world whether we or society like it or not, and we have to learn to live in the world and the world has to live with us.’

Maureen Duffy, The Microcosm (1966)

First President of the Gay Humanist Group

In 1977 Mary Whitehouse won her blasphemy prosecution of Gay News and warned of a ‘homosexual humanist lobby’. Duffy replied with a broadside in verse, The Ballad of the Blasphemy Trial. In 1979 activists including George Broadhead decided that if such a lobby was so feared it had better exist, and founded the Gay Humanist Group. Duffy became its first President.

Her inaugural address at Conway Hall in March 1980, Separate Development? Out of the closet, into the ghetto, said the group’s purpose was not ‘simple church bashing’ but ‘to speak up wherever necessary from the rationalist stance’.

‘As war is far too important to be left to the generals, so morality is far too important to be left to the theologians.’

Maureen Duffy, inaugural address to the Gay Humanist Group, Conway Hall, 17 March 1980

She remained President as the group became the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) in 1987. A year later, as President of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, she carried a motion at the Trades Union Congress condemning Section 28 as an attack on free expression.

How humanism shaped Maureen Duffy’s thinking

In the same address Duffy set out what she called the ethics of compassion, her answer to what it means to be a humanist:

‘I would define it as a fluid morality, based on a perception of fellowness, fellow feeling, fellow suffering. It is immensely appealing to a writer because it requires a continuing act of the imagination in order to identify with others and it also needs the continuing exercise of the reason if there is to be some bony structure to it, for it not to become mere sloppiness.’

Maureen Duffy, Separate Development? (1980)

Imagination and reason, working together, run through all her writing. ‘The true humanist,’ she said, ‘is always an existentialist, in the sense that he believes nothing is given except oneself and that every decision has to be lived and relived.’

She extended that compassion to other animals. A vegetarian from 1967, she wrote Men and Beasts: An Animal Rights Handbook (1984) and the novel Gor Saga (1981), filmed by the BBC as First Born.

Maureen Duffy in New Humanist

Browsing through the New Humanist archive (which every New Humanist subscriber can access online) shows her humanism in action over three decades:

• 1972: a leader, with Brigid Brophy, of the campaign for a Public Lending Right, she wrote in to explain what authors would earn when libraries lent their books. The campaign won the Public Lending Right Act in 1979.
• 1973: in a letter headed ‘Everybody’s Lib’, she insisted that ‘Homosexuals may be male or female’.
• 1978 and 1989: she signed public statements against the blasphemy law.
• 1990: as GALHA President, she presented a portrait of E. M. Forster to Conway Hall.
• 2002: she backed the campaign to open BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day to non-religious speakers.

Reviewing her novel Restitution in 1999, Peter Faulkner wrote that ‘Duffy never suggests that anyone’s life is easy – at least if lived with a sense of responsibility to others.’

A lifelong friend of Humanists UK

When GALHA became part of Humanists UK in 2012, Duffy became a patron. In 2023 her humanist mass, Missa Hermana, set to music by Dolly Collins, had its first performance at Conway Hall. In 2025, aged 91, she won the Royal Society of Literature’s first Pioneer Prize. She died on 27 May 2026, aged 92.

Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK, said:

‘Maureen was a brilliant writer and an irreplaceable pioneer of our movement… She embodied the very best of humanist values – using reason, creativity, and empathy to build a fairer world. Everyone should know her name.’

She ended her 1980 address with the words of Matt, the central character of The Microcosm, leaving the safety of the rock pool for the open sea:

Discover more LGBT+ humanist history and other famous humanists on Humanist Heritage.

From the archives, on Humanist Heritage

Read Maureen Duffy’s 1980 address in full

Separate Development? Out of the closet, into the ghetto – her first speech as President of the Gay Humanist Group, and her case for an ethics of compassion built on imagination and reason.

Read the address →

Conway Hall, London, 17 March 1980

Humanist campaigning against so-called conversion therapy has gone on display, showing decades of political inaction on banning it. Conversion practices, known as ‘conversion therapy’ or often colloquially ‘praying the gay away’, are harmful, discredited practices aimed at changing who LGBT+ people are or who they love. Humanists have been campaigning against them for decades, and last night Queer Britain unveiled a new exhibit highlighting the fight to ban them.

A humanist history of fighting harmful ‘conversion therapy’

LGBT+ Humanists was founded in 1979 as the Gay Humanist Group, in the wake of the prosecution Gay News and its editor Denis Lemon, who was found guilty of ‘blasphemous libel’ in the first case of its kind for more than 50 years. It later became known as the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA).

Its first President was the novelist, poet, and campaigner Maureen Duffy, one of the first public figures in the UK to come out as a lesbian. Today would have been her 93rd birthday. She sadly died in May this year.

LGBT+ Humanists has campaigned against conversion practices since long before the issue was on the political agenda. In 1993, after a member in Sheffield spotted a newspaper advert for ‘anonymous Christian telephone counsel’ aimed at people ‘inclined’ to homosexuality, it warned lesbians and gay men about the service. Its secretary, George Broadhead, called it ‘dangerous and spurious’.

In 1995, after Channel 4 screened Witness: Better Dead Than Gay, about Simon Harvey, a young gay Christian who died by suicide, LGBT+ Humanists members wrote to the Health Secretary, Stephen Dorrell, demanding action against Christian ministries that sought to ‘cure’ gay people. 

Why haven’t conversion practices been banned already?

More than 30 years after LGBT+ Humanists wrote to the Health Secretary, conversion practices are still legal across the UK.

In June, the UK Government finally published a draft Conversion Practices Bill for England and Wales, following eight years of promises from successive Prime Ministers. A joint committee of MPs and peers began its pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill on 12 October.

Humanists UK supports a ban that protects all LGBT+ people (including trans people), covers both medical and non-medical settings (including religious ones), and has no loopholes for supposed ‘consent’. Government analysis of the National LGBT Survey shows that faith groups are the most common setting for conversion practices, and a report by the charity Galop this summer found that more than a quarter of the cases it examined involved religion-based practices, including coerced prayer and exorcisms.

Nick Baldwin, Coordinator of LGBT+ Humanists, said:

‘I’m so proud of the humanists who came before us, who were warning about the dangers of conversion practices more than 30 years ago, long before most politicians would listen. As someone who’s experienced these practices firsthand, I know too well the pain and the trauma they cause.

‘As a church member I went to my minister in my thirties and said I thought I might be gay and that I didn’t want to be. He then took me through months of “prayer counselling” in order to “eradicate my homosexual tendencies”. It took me many years to understand that there was another way of looking at the world and for me to learn to accept and celebrate being the person I am, gay and proud.’

Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK, said:

‘Humanists have always stood for the right of every person to live and love as they choose, and these documents show our movement putting that into action decades ago. Our members were naming the harms of religious conversion practices when few others would, and we are grateful to Queer Britain for preserving that history. 

‘But I wish the display depicted a battle won, rather than the campaign we continue to run to this day. Decades on, after promise after promise from successive governments, conversion practices remain legal in the UK, and LGBT+ people are still being harmed by them. The draft Bill is a long-overdue step, and now Parliament must finish the job.’

The Isle of Man’s Assisted Dying Bill has been granted Royal Assent more than 18 months after Tynwald, the island’s parliament, passed it. Terminally ill adults who have lived on the island for at least five years, and who are expected to have 12 months or less to live, will be able to request an assisted death under strict safeguards. Humanists UK, which has campaigned alongside Manx campaigners for many years, welcomes this long-awaited milestone.

Tynwald passed the Bill in March 2025, making the Isle of Man the first part of the British Isles to pass an assisted dying law. The law was brought forward by Dr Alex Allinson, a former Member of the House of Keys (MHK). Humanists UK presented to Tynwald ahead of the Bill’s Second Reading in 2023, and has worked closely with local campaign group My Death, My Decision Isle of Man through the Assisted Dying Coalition. 

The Isle of Man follows Jersey, whose assisted dying law received Royal Assent in July. Terminally ill people in England and Wales still have no such choice, after the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill narrowly fell at its Second Reading in the House of Commons in September.

Humanists UK Chief Executive Andrew Copson said:

‘This is a historic day for the Isle of Man, and above all for the terminally ill people and families who campaigned for so long to see it. Terminally ill Manx people will soon have a compassionate choice at the end of life, under strict safeguards.

‘The Isle of Man and Jersey have shown that a safe assisted dying law, with strong safeguards, can be passed in the British Isles. Dying people in England and Wales are denied the same choice.’

Vicky Christian, Organiser of My Death, My Decision Isle of Man, said:

‘Today I feel above all a huge sense of relief. Tynwald made the right decision, and after a long and anxious wait, dying people on the Isle of Man will finally have the choice so many of us have campaigned for.

‘As a humanist, I believe each of us should be able to make our own decisions about the end of our lives, guided by our own values. We are especially proud that the law will cover people with a prognosis of 12 months or less. We campaigned hard for that, because it means people facing a terminal illness won’t be forced to endure months of suffering before they can even ask for help.’

Pembrokeshire County Council has dropped its plan to remove the Church in Wales status from Ysgol Cilgerran after the Church threatened legal action over the school site. The council had wanted to make the Welsh-medium primary school a community school with no religious character but yesterday backed down. Wales Humanists is disappointed by the decision and is calling on the Welsh Government to review faith-school provision in light of falling pupil numbers and a changing religious landscape. 

In May, the council voted to end the school’s Voluntary Controlled (VC) status. The Church in Wales objected strongly. It threatened legal action and said it would not make the school site available to a new community school. Faith schools are often on church land, but councils build and maintain the buildings with public money. 

The council’s own report shows why the change was proposed. Pupil numbers are falling across the Preseli area, including at Cilgerran, which raises questions about the school’s long-term future. The report also said the school’s VC status rules out a federation with nearby community schools. The council said the plan was dropped because of opposition during the consultation and because of the legal dispute with the Diocese of St Davids. 

According to the 2021 Census, almost half of people in Pembrokeshire have no religion. Across Wales, ‘no religion’ is now the largest response to the Census religion question. Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Education and Regeneration, Cllr Paul Miller, said: ‘The challenges have not gone away, there’s no hiding from the fact there are fewer children around.’

Nathan Stilwell, spokesperson for Humanists UK, said:

‘We’re greatly disappointed by this decision. These are public schools, built and maintained with public money, and the council’s own report shows that the school’s religious status was making it harder to plan for its future.

‘Wales has fewer children and fewer religious families than ever before. Councils need to be able to plan schools that welcome every child equally, without the threat of legal action from churches. This is why we are asking the Welsh Government to review faith-school provision across Wales.’

Najmeh Amini, a 23-year-old accounting student, has been sentenced to death in Iran for ‘insulting the prophet’ over a post on social media. Humanists UK has condemned the sentence and called for it to be overturned.

Amini was arrested during the nationwide protests in January, which the Iranian authorities put down with a deadly crackdown. In a separate case, she was also sentenced to 12 years, six months, and one day in prison on charges including acting against national security and spreading propaganda against the state.

Under Iran’s penal code, insulting the Prophet Muhammad is punishable by death. According to Iran Human Rights, nearly 600 people have been executed in the country so far this year. Death sentences for blasphemy are rarer. The last known executions for blasphemy took place in May 2023, when Yousef Mehrad and Sadrollah Fazeli-Zare were hanged over their activity on social media.

The news comes a week after Anojan Sivarasa, a 24-year-old Sri Lankan migrant worker, was sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia over a comment on Facebook. Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court has today set aside the death sentence. However, it is not clear if there will be further legal proceedings or whether Sivarasa will remain in detention, and for how long.

Humanists UK has long raised Iran’s use of the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy at the UN, and in 2022 urged the UN Human Rights Council to keep up the pressure on Iran to abolish it. Humanists UK is a founding member of the End Blasphemy Laws campaign.

Richy Thompson, Director of Human Rights and Advocacy, said:

‘Najmeh Amini is a young woman who faces execution for words she posted online. No one should be punished for what they say about religion, let alone put to death for it. This sentence is cruel, and it must be overturned.

‘Cases like Najmeh’s and Anojan Sivarasa’s show why blasphemy laws must go, wherever they remain. We urge the Foreign Secretary to press Iran to overturn death sentences imposed under its blasphemy laws, release those detained under them, and work towards the repeal of these unjust laws altogether.’

Humanists UK sounded the alarm over the rising threat of Christian nationalism during this year’s party conference season. Humanists UK engaged with MPs, peers, members, and the public to warn against the cynical exploitation of religion to smuggle bigotry and division into the political mainstream.

Working alongside our dedicated party-political humanist groups, we advocated for a more secular and rational approach to politics. At the Liberal Democrats party conference, our team joined the panel of two fringe events held by the Humanist and Secularist Liberal Democrats (HSLD), and the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum on Christian nationalism. We held our annual well-attended Humanists UK drinks reception which saw Tom Gordon MP speak alongside Humanists UK Chief Executive Andrew Copson and Chair of HSLD Jenny Wilkinson. At Labour, we raised Christian nationalism at our exhibition stand alongside our campaign for legal recognition of humanist marriages. Our evening drinks reception at Labour saw Lizzi Collinge MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group, speak alongside Lauren Edwards MP, sponsor of the recent Assisted Dying Bill, Laura Kyrke-Smith MP, Sam Carling MP on behalf of Labour Humanists, and Andrew Copson. At the Green Party Conference, Green Humanists had an exhibition stand and held a conference social.

A key theme across conferences this year was the pressing need to defend democratic institutions and inclusive education from the creeping influence of far-right religious extremism. Humanists UK warned delegates that Christian nationalism, a movement many thought could never take root in Britain, is increasingly being used to promote exclusion, roll back human rights, and push for compulsory Christianity in schools.

Humanists UK also called for the legal recognition of humanist marriages without delay. Humanist marriages can be recognised in England and Wales by the UK Government laying an order, under powers from the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013. We have been campaigning relentlessly for the Government to make use of said power.

Humanists UK Chief Executive Andrew Copson commented:

‘Christian nationalism is politics dressed up as piety. We used to dismiss this as a uniquely American problem, but we are now seeing the weaponisation of faith in our own political discourse. Whether it is calls to impose a single religious identity on our inclusive schools, or the hijacking of shared symbols to promote blood-and-soil nationalism, it is a direct threat to our diverse, tolerant society.

‘That is why it was so vital for us to be present at party conferences this year. By working across the political spectrum alongside our dedicated party-political groups, we will continue to champion equality, reason, and freedom of religion or belief for all.’

The party-political humanist groups, Labour Humanists, Green Humanists, Conservative Humanists, and the Humanist and Secularist Liberal Democrats, are independent humanist groups within the political parties themselves. They bring non-religious people together in each of those respective parties to advocate for humanist issues and a more secular and rational approach to politics.

Humanists UK attends all the major party conferences to meet with parliamentarians, advocate for humanist issues, and to engage with our party-political members and supporters. We were also at the Liberal Democrat, Labour, and Conservative conferences.

Conservative humanists

Labour Humanists

humanist and Secularist Liberal Democrats

green humanists

Reform UK has pledged to suspend the UK’s asylum system for five years if it wins the next general election. Under the plans, announced today by party leader Nigel Farage, all asylum applications in progress would be declared void. Asylum tribunals, safe and legal routes, and resettlement schemes would be scrapped. Around 90,000 people with outstanding appeals would be deported without their cases being heard. Humanists UK has condemned the proposal, warning that it would abandon the UK’s long tradition of protecting people fleeing persecution.

The announcement follows Reform UK’s pledge in August 2025 to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), repeal the Human Rights Act, and disapply the 1951 Refugee Convention. Humanists UK condemned those plans at the time, warning that they would put the rights of everyone in the UK at risk. It also raised the alarm over the Conservative Party’s commitment to withdraw from the ECHR, and recently challenged misleading rhetoric about its role in immigration and asylum cases, amid the Labour Government’s proposals to limit the application of Article 8 – the right to respect for private and family life – in immigration and deportation decisions.  

The UK has a long history of offering sanctuary. In 1938 and 1939, the Kindertransport brought around 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, to safety in Britain from Nazi Germany and the territories it controlled. After the Second World War, British lawyers played a leading role in drafting the ECHR, and in 1951 the UK became the first country to ratify it. The UK was also among the first signatories of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which established that no one should be returned to a country where they face persecution.

Non-religious people face widespread discrimination and persecution around the world.  In some countries, leaving religion or criticising it can be punished by death. 

Humanists UK Policy and Campaigns Manager Laura Newlyn said:

‘In 1938, this country opened its doors to thousands of children fleeing the Nazis. After the war, we helped write the rules that say no one should be sent back to persecution, torture, or death. Suspending asylum for five years would tear up that legacy. It would risk sending people back to the dangers they fled, including people persecuted simply for what they believe, without even hearing their case. That is cruel, and sets a dangerous precedent: that some people are “less than” because of their immigration status.’

‘Human rights are the minimum standards we all need to be able to live with dignity. They belong to everyone, regardless of who they are or where they come from. Once we accept that some people can be denied those rights, we undermine the protections that every one of us depends on.’

New research from the think tank Theos shows that the most religiously active group in the UK is also among the most supportive of Christian Nationalist ideas. The report, Beyond ‘Christian nationalism’, argues that Christian Nationalism is driven more by culture and identity than by Christian belief. Humanists UK has welcomed the research. But it says the report’s own figures, and recent events in the UK, point to the conclusion: Christian Nationalism cannot be separated from Christianity.

The survey sorted people into five groups based on how they see the link between Christianity and being British. Theos defined two of them like this: 

‘Identity Integrationists see Christianity as fundamental to Britishness and want to defend the nation’s Christian heritage from what they see as invasive and threatening influences.

Belief Integrationists want to see Christianity integrated with Britishness but, for the most part, because they want to promote the Christian faith rather than preserve Christian values.’

In other words, Theos presents identity integrationists as the group that comes closest to Christian nationalism. It presents belief integrationists mainly as people who want to promote their faith, while acknowledging that a sizeable minority of them hold Christian nationalist views. It then argues that Christian nationalism is more about culture and identity than about faith, describing Identity Integrationists as the most nominally Christian of its five groups. 13% of identity integrationists attend Church weekly, only slightly higher than the 11% recorded for the population as a whole. For belief integrationists, weekly attendance was found to be 31%. (Incidentally, actual recorded church attendance among the population as a whole is 5% monthly.)

But many belief integrationists are still Christian nationalists too! In this group:

• 51% agree that you need to be Christian to be ‘truly British’, compared with 17% of all adults.
• 66% agree with the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory, compared with 37% of all adults.
• 62% say Britain needs ‘strong man’ leaders who are prepared to break the rules, compared with 36% of all adults.
• 53% believe god has a special plan for Britain, compared with 16% of all adults.
• 25% say political violence is sometimes necessary, the highest of any group and compared with 16% of all adults.

It is also the case that identity integrationalists are by several measures much more Christian than the population as a whole:

• 81% identify as Christian, the highest of any group and far above the 46% of all adults.
• 49% definitely believe in god, compared with 30% of adults overall.

Neither top-line description therefore fully holds up. Belief integrationists’ faith goes hand in hand with strongly nationalist views rather than standing apart from them. And identity integrationists are more Christian than average on every religious measure in the report.

Humanists UK has also worked out where churchgoers sit, using Theos’s published data. Around half of the UK’s weekly churchgoers fall within the two groups most sympathetic to Christian nationalist ideas. Yet those groups make up only a quarter of the population. The report itself notes that the more Christian someone is, the more likely they are to want Christianity and national life bound together in some way.

Christian Nationalism: A rising threat

Recent events in the UK show the same link between faith and nationalist protest. In September, masked members of the group Patriot Platform blocked roads in Dover and Portsmouth while chanting ‘Christ is King’. The group’s leader, Danny Tommo, has described it as a ‘pure Christian national resistance movement’. He has said that every member is ‘encouraged to go to church’ and that members have held gatherings inside churches. Preachers also spoke from the stage at the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally in London in September 2025. A month later, a group calling itself the ‘King’s Army’ targeted London’s gay district in Soho.

This fits with research elsewhere. A 2018 Pew Research Center study of 15 Western European countries, including the UK, found that churchgoing Christians were more likely than non-practising Christians to hold nationalist views and both groups are more likely to express nationalist views than religiously unaffiliated people.

Richy Thompson, Director of Human Rights and Advocacy, said:

‘We can’t tackle Christian Nationalism by pretending it isn’t Christian. Many of the people most drawn to Christian nationalist ideas go to church, they pray, and they say their faith matters to them. The groups on our streets chanting “Christ is King” while wearing all-black uniforms and balaclavas tell us outright that they are Christian.

‘Christian Nationalism aims to roll back freedom of thought, expression, and choice in our country. It has thugs as well as intellectuals, but they are united in their beliefs. Dividing them into different types risks creating a “respectable” Christian Nationalism that people can sign up to while distancing themselves from its rougher side. We will keep working with people of all religions and none for a country where everyone belongs equally, whatever they believe.’

Humanists UK has expressed concerns about Conservative plans to reject statutory citizenship education in primary schools and wider proposals on ‘political impartiality’ that could create a chilling effect on the teaching of settled science and human rights.

In her speech to the Conservative conference in Birmingham on 6 October, Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott unveiled a ‘pledge to parents’ under which a future Conservative government would reject plans to make citizenship statutory in primary schools, ban schools from holding ‘culture’ or ‘identity’ days, and add a political impartiality obligation to the Teachers’ Standards. 

Teachers would face annual training on ‘contentious issues’ such as climate change, sex, and gender, and Ofsted would inspect lessons for impartiality, referring ‘serious breaches’ to the Teaching Regulation Agency. The pledge also includes a commitment on the hijab in schools, which Humanists UK has responded to separately.

Concerns about citizenship

In November 2025, the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review recommended that the core elements of citizenship – democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and civic responsibility – become statutory in primary schools, and the UK Government accepted the recommendation. Humanists UK had called for exactly this in its submission to the review.

Trott said that the more time children spend ‘on this extra stuff, the less time they’ve got to learn the important stuff’. Humanists UK said that learning how democracy works and how to weigh evidence is not ‘extra stuff’, and noted that the UK Government’s own cohesion strategy, Protecting What Matters, identifies citizenship education as a tool against extremism.

Climate change is a fact, not an opinion

Naming climate change as a ‘contentious issue’ risks treating settled science as a matter of political opinion. Humanists UK previously led a successful campaign to stop state schools in England presenting ‘intelligent design’ as a scientific alternative to evolution. Ofsted inspecting individual lessons for ‘bias’ could make teachers reluctant to teach anything a parent might object to, including LGBT+ issues. Section 28 was rarely if ever enforced, but for 15 years teachers avoided the subject altogether: the threat of inspection and referral is enough to do damage.

Where closer scrutiny of teaching materials could help

Parts of the Conservative proposals – in particular the commitment to publish the materials used in PSHE and to give Ofsted a clearer remit to inspect lessons, assemblies, and external resources – could be useful if they were applied even-handedly to faith schools. Humanists UK has repeatedly uncovered and reported to Ofsted resources in state-funded religious schools that promoted sexist, homophobic, or otherwise unacceptably biased viewpoints to children:

• In 2018 we revealed that a state-funded Charedi girls’ school in Hackney had redacted GCSE history textbooks to remove mentions of gay people and of women socialising with men; Ofsted subsequently rated the school ‘inadequate’. 
• In 2021 we exposed A Fertile Heart, a Catholic relationships and sex education resource taught that men were ‘created to initiate sexual relationships’ and women to be ‘receiver-responders’, and that gay and lesbian people must abstain from sex. The then Schools Minister Nick Gibb eventually condemned it, but said the Government had no power to withdraw it, and faith schools remain legally able to teach RSE in line with their religious ethos.
• In 2023, we highlighted Ofsted findings against Muslim schools that told pupils of the ‘negative impact of homosexuality’.

Richy Thompson, Director of Human Rights and Advocacy, said:

‘Citizenship education is how children learn what democracy is, what their rights are, and how to tell a good argument from a bad one. Nobody wants to see teachers pushing party politics in the classroom, and the law already forbids it. But we are concerned that treating climate science as “contentious” and asking Ofsted to police lessons for “bias” could lead to teachers quietly dropping anything that might attract a complaint – the kind of chilling effect that Section 28 had for a generation.’