This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 5, Issue 4, from 1991.
The 110th anniversary of any journal is notable; particularly one which has espoused or pioneered causes while remaining free from advertising interests and organisations. Considering the large number of well-financed and long-established periodicals which have gone under in recent years, The Freethinker’s unbroken publication since 1881 (for most of its history as a weekly) is all the more remarkable. It has survived bans, boycotts, legal action, innumerable financial crises and two world wars (its offices were destroyed during an air raid in 1941).
Although The Freethinker dates from 1881, the origins of freethought publishing (‘the infidel press’) can be traced to the middle of the eighteenth century, when Peter Annet (1693-1769) started the The Free Inquirer. Regarded as the first freethought journal, rather than a pamphlet, it ran for nine issues, resulting in Annet being fined, pilloried and imprisoned for a year at the age of 68.
Throughout the nineteenth century the freethought press operated in defiance of the Church and State. Blasphemy was linked with sedition by prosecuting authorities who argued that an attack on Christianity was an attack on civil government. This did not worry freethinking editors and publishers who regarded religion as superstitious nonsense and a bulwark of rotten politics.
However, it was not only the representatives of law and order who threatened pioneers of freethought publishing. Many Christian organisations, like their present-day counterparts, endeavoured to impose their narrow standards on society and constantly pressured the authorities to take action against ‘the infidels’. There were many victims of these pious informers and self-appointed censors. One of them was Richard Carlisle (1790-1843), who spent nine years in jail for publishing and selling the works of Thomas Paine. During three decades that followed the collapse of Chartism at the end of the 1840s, freethought journals did much to keep the spirit of radicalism alive. They provided an outlet for the advocates of social and political reform and a forum to debate advanced ideas. By 1881, when The Freethinker was launched, scepticism and unbelief were no longer confined to an educated elite.
George William Foote (1850-1915), who founded The Freethinker, declared in his first editorial:
Our principles belong entirely to the regions known and becoming known to man. We have no occult or mysterious sources of information. no profound secrets… No Gods, angels, spirits or devils have ever spoken to us… Satan is as great a stranger as Pluto; Jehovah as empty a name as Jupiter. The separate existence of the ‘soul’ and the ‘future life’ are to us inconceivable… For us the ‘verities’ of Christianity are all fables.
This was strong stuff for Victorian England, and Foote soon discovered that his religious and political enemies were as vindictive as their predecessors who had persecuted Richard Carlisle. Newsagents refused or were afraid to stock The Freethinker. Its suppression was demanded in the House of Commons.
It was not long before The Freethinker was in trouble. Foote published a series of Comic Bible Sketches somewhat disrespectful, but which would not now cause Mary Whitehouse to bat an eyelid. He was tried for blasphemy and sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment, most of which was spent in solitary confinement. On his release he resumed and continued his editorship until his death.
Readers of the first Freethinker were informed that it would ‘wage relentless war against superstition in general and against Christian superstition in particular’. But The Freethinker never confined itself to criticism of religious beliefs and practices. It championed personal freedom, most controversially people’s freedom to control their fertility and plan their families by recourse to effective methods of contraception. This infuriated religious opponents, fearful in case the supply of pew fodder became less plentiful and – horror of horrors – people might indulge in pleasurable sexual activity without fear of unwanted pregnancy.
The Freethinker has always been resolute in defending freedom of expression and in opposing censorship. It has argued the case of Church disestablishment, the right to affirm, and reform of laws relating to blasphemy, school religion, Sunday observance, divorce, abortion and homosexuality.
Spookies have often been in The Freethinker’s range of fire. In 1919, Foote’s successor, Chapman Cohen (1868-1954) wrote:
The present recrudescence of Spiritualism is largely caused by the heavy death-toll of the Great War. There is a quite natural desire among the bereaved to seek consolation through almost any channel…The money the ‘medium’ rakes in is the flow of tears from the sorrowful and distressed, and is one of the shadiest of shady businesses.
At one time The Freethinker was virtually a lone voice speaking out against religious charlatans, and also sects like the Moonies, Divine Light Mission, Children of God and the Jesus Army. The paper was accused of intolerance, but its warnings have been justified by subsequent investigations and court cases.
Is there a role for journals like The Freethinker today? The upsurge of religious fundamentalism, with attendant aberrations like creationism, moving statues, ‘anti-satanist’ witch-hunts and other manifestations of irrationalism, provide an answer to that question.
2025 cover image: https://freethinker.co.uk/masthead/
