Nicholas Walter
From Philosopedia
Nicholas Hardy Walter (22 November 1934 - 7 March 2000)
Walter was born in London, the son of Walter Grey Walter, a neurophysiologist and cybernetics pioneer.
He served in the Royal Air Force, where he learned Russian, and studied history at Exeter College, Oxford (1954 - 1957). He then became deputy editor of Which? (1963-1965), press officer for the British Standards Institution (1965-1967), and chief sub-editor of the Times Literary Supplement (1967-1974).
For a decade Walter was an editor of the New Humanist, a British freethought activist, and head of the Rationalist Press Association from 1975 to the end of 1999.
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On Blasphemy
In Blasphemy in Britain (1977) and Blasphemy Ancient and Modern (1990), he argued that the legal dodo of blasphemous libel was not dead in England, that it was reprieved from extinction by Mary Whitehouse, who in 1977 successfully prosecuted Gay News for its publication of James Kirkup’s homo-erotic poem, “The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name.”
He argued, when opponents spoke of “the right not to be offended,” that a world without offense would be a world without speech. Walter wrote from the viewpoint of the blasphemers rather than of the religions they offended or the laws they transgressed, his concentration being Britain although he referred to the United States as well as other countries. “In 1940,” he illustrated, “A. R. Woodhall was sentenced to a month’s imprisonment in Jersey for making a passport photograph resemble Christ on the Cross, but after protest he was released by the Home Secretary after a fortnight.” Similarly, he cited other cases, supplying representative selections of literary texts and allowing the reader to judge their content.
His Outlook
As for Harry Stopes-Roe’s suggestion that humanism is a “life stance,” Walter disagreed (in New Humanist, December, 1988), explaining that, for most, humanism is not a stance and it is not necessarily about life. “It is not in any significant way analogous with religion. Most who call themselves humanists, in fact, see humanism as a rejection of all (not just some) of the essential features of religion; but the people who call themselves religious humanists see humanism as an actual form of religion.” A statement of Walter’s outlook is found in “There is War Between Religion and Humanism” (The Freethinker, January 1996), in which he states the three most important elements of Humanism:
- • that all the factors, interests, criteria of any situation are always subordinated to human factors, interests, criteria;
- • there is no spirit or mind or principle or force or power or pattern behind the universe, no point to it other than what we give it;
- • the rejection of authority.
Because of the wide gap between religion and Humanism, there may be a truce between them, but never peace. Of his outlook, Walter has written:
- My own Humanism is a pretty minimal one. It involves neither religion nor ritual; I am not a religious or ritualistic animal. It is entirely sane; my right-brain is fully occupied with art, music and literature, and humour. It is not a ‘life-stance’ or ‘eupraxophy’; I have no more need for secular than for sacred nonsense. It avoids such terms as ‘spirit’ and ‘worship,’ however defined; I have no need for alien vocabulary. It perceives nothing as ultimately important; as A. J. Balfour said, nothing matters very much, and most things don’t matter at all.
He continued:
- I agree with Freud that religion is a neurosis; but so is psychoanalysis. I agree with the Marquis de Sade that nature is hostile to us. I agree with Matthias Claudius that ‘man is not at home in the world.’ I agree with Max Stirner that there is no such thing as ‘Man,’ only me and others like me. We should exorcise all the spectres which have haunted us, from God to Humanism itself. I am atheist about God, and agnostic about most other things in the same category. Questions about the value of existence or the meaning of life have no value or meaning. There are no categorical imperatives or fundamental principles. The ultimate reality is that there is no ultimate reality. The golden rule is that there are no golden rules. Here I may not share much common ground with some other Humanists, but I can speak for many others.
Typical of his understanding of philosophic naturalism, Nicolas in “Oh, God!” laments in a book review how “so many seemingly intelligent people can talk about such obvious nonsense (as supernaturalism and religion), and that such poor treatment of such important subjects can be produced by a leading journalist, a leading philosopher, and a leading scientist (Russell Stannard, author of Science and Wonders), and circulated by leading periodicals, publishers (Faber & Faber), and broadcasting organisations.”
However, he noted, “The encouraging thing is that most people - including most scientists and philosophers - remain unaffected by such stuff and get on with their lives without worrying about where they came from or where they are going or what, if anything, it all means.”
In 1980, Walter signed the Secular Humanist Declaration.
Anarchism
Although he had been a member of the Labour Party when at his university, he became an anarchist and peace activist by 1959. In 1969 he published About Anarchism, which went through many editions and was translated into several languages. It was re-issued in 2002, with a foreword by his daughter, the journalist and feminist writer Natasha Walter.
Ditheism
Walter is probably the only freethinker in decades who has written about ditheism, noting that Paul Johnson’s The Quest for God fails to discuss “a god of some kind but the God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, not pantheism or deism or ditheism or polytheism but strict monotheism.”
The Final Years
In 1973, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, after which he had to use a wheelchair.
The grandson of S. K. Ratcliffe, Walter has long been on the board of directors of the Rationalist Press Association - he attended only one of four meetings in 1998, however. In December 1999, he wrote in New Humanist:
- This is my farewell to arms. I am at the same time retiring from the Rationalist Press Association and moving out of London, leaving the organisations I have belonged to and dropping the periodicals I have subscribed to, and saying goodbye to my native city and to many of my friends and all of my enemies.
Explaining that he had been a professional humanist for too long and “it is time to take my leave of all this,” he looked forward to becoming “an amateur human being again.” He added that he was sorting papers which have accumulated and which he would give to the South Place Ethical Society library at Conway Hall. He also had thousands of letters to be kept somewhere: “Future archaeologists will wonder at the papyraceous layer deposited by our civilisation, and I am afraid I have contributed more than my fair share to it.”
The cancer returned shortly after his retirement, and he died soon afterwards. Donald Rooum, in The Guardian, wrote an obituary, commenting about his devotion to getting facts written down correctly . Another acknowledgment of his rich life by Dan J. Bye of the Sheffield Humanists includes an obituary by Bill McIlroy, who pointed out that "Nicolas was prickly, even abrasive, at times."
(See entry for bullshitus episcopalis. Also, see Walter’s article, “Are Humanists Human?”, New Humanist, November 1989; “Oh Hell! Christians Deny Christianity Again,” in The Freethinker, February 1996; and “Oh, God!” The Freethinker, May 1996.
A capsule summary of Walter’s philosophic outlook is contained in the entry under Humanisms.
In 1996, mailed a draft of Who's Who in Hell plus $75 for return postage along with an inquiry about the possibility of acceptance for publishing by the Rationalist Press Association, Walter never got around to making suggestions for changes, nor did he return the manuscript and cash - his Humanism: What’s in the Word [1997] covers some similar material. Edward Royle has reviewed the work favorably, but Harry Stopes-Roe has taken issue with some of its contents (New Humanist [December 1997]. Walter has written a history of the RPA, found in issues #2 and #4 of New Humanist [1999]).
