F. J. GOULD AND THE LEICESTER SECULAR SOCIETY: A POSITIVIST COMMONWEALTH IN EDWARDIAN POLITICS

Abstract

AbstractThe mid-nineteenth century is still seen by many historians as a period during which radicalism in Britain was comparatively dormant. This period is generally contrasted with the disturbances of the Chartist years and the increasingly militant stance of labour at the end of the century. Though the eighteen-fifties and sixties are generally portrayed as an era of dissolution for both the Chartist and Owenite movements, there were also attempts to regroup both personnel and ideas within new ideologies and movements. One of the most important of these was Secularism which evolved from the ideas of the ex-Owenite and cooperator George Jacob Holyoake in 1851. Holyoake had grown dissatisfied with the confrontational tactics of the Owenite and Infidel preachers of the 1840s who sought to ridicule Christianity from the public lecture platform. He argued that this approach had been counter-productive leading to needless prosecutions and that surely there was more concrete and important work to be done by o...