ATHEISTIC CAMPAIGN.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20789, 24 February 1933, Page 4

ATHEISTIC CAMPAIGN.

FREETHINKERS' INTERNATIONAL. (raoji oua oww cokbesfonukkt.) LONDON, January 6. According to the Labour corerspond«nt of "The Times," the Communists in this country have been preparing for some time past to launch a campaign against religion and the Churches. A provisional council of militant atheists has been formed to arrange an inaugural conference. The "suitable date" chosen for this event is the Easter week-end. Among the objects of this atheistic campaign are the following:— To expose the Churches, tlieir creeds, and the religions ideology they have fostered as, objectively and subjectively, agencies for the defence of the established bourgeois order of society, and, as such, passive or active barriers f.p. the emancipation of the working class! To expose the charity of the Churchy, and the whole pf theireo-called "social welfare" work as demoralising and dsgrading to employed and unemployed alike individually and collectively. To labour actively in all available ways to counteract these and other efforts of the Churches-to create and maintain sectarian divisions in the ranks of th? workers. Christian Missions. To expose and oppose persistently tife insidious, demoralising, and reactionary Imperialist policy of the Christian missions tq tfie "heathen." To combat actively every attempt to adulterate socialism with religion or ti* prostitute science to the ends of lus Churches and religion. As a prima means to both these ends, to promote and encourage by every available means the study and development of the historical materialism indelibly is- i sqciated with the names of Mar's, Engels, and Lenin; and to vindicate it against all misrepresentation. To vindicate the policy of the U.S.S.K. in regard to religion and the Churches, and to. urge the universal adoption by the working-class movement of the principles upon which that pplicy is based —namely, the complete separation of Church and state and the complete exclusion of religion from the school. ..... ""% A curious request was carried out after the death of Mr George Webb, one of the oldest pensioners of the London Fire Brigade. Mr Webb lost a finger a$ a fire, and he had it carefully proserved with the instructions that it should bo buried with him, as "he came into the world whole, and he wanted to go out whole.''