People are asserting a simple truth: the right to live freely belongs to everyone. What we are seeing now is a political flashpoint, years in the making, as Iranians intensify their defiance of religious fundamentalism and the violent dictatorship. humanists.uk/2025/10/27/t...

Despite executions, mass arrests, and intimidation, Iranians continue to resist. These are the largest protests the country has seen since the killing of Mahsa Amini, the Kurdish-Iranian woman killed by security forces for wearing a hijab 'improperly'. humanists.uk/2022/11/28/i...

Another great African American humanist writer from the period! As Anthony Pinn put it: 'Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes — they were all critical of belief in God. They provided a foundation for nontheistic participation in social struggle.'

We stand with all those in Iran who are calling for freedom of thought, conscience, and belief. Their struggle is a reminder that these freedoms are not luxuries, but the foundations of a humane society and a democratic state.

History suggests that meaningful change rarely comes from those in power deciding to relinquish it voluntarily. As in Iran today, it comes when ordinary people show extraordinary courage, even when the outcome remains uncertain.

In secure democracies with protections for human rights, principles such as freedom of thought and freedom of belief can feel abstract and easy to take for granted. In Iran, people are risking their lives for them: students, workers, parents, and others refusing to surrender their moral agency.

Protests that began over inflation now echo the wider resistance which followed the killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022, challenging the authority of the Islamic Republic

The theocratic regime has responded brutally. Officials have also issued threats of execution against those labelled ‘enemies of god’

Lorraine Hansberry features in our @humanismedu.bsky.social school resource on remarkable humanist women! It also includes the Victorian novelist George Eliot, groundbreaking scientist Rosalind Franklin, and explorer and journalist Lady Florence Dixie.

understandinghumanism.org.uk/stories-of-h...

In 1967 Diane raised a half-glass on the terrace of Parliament because with the Abortion Act “the job was only half done”. She spent decades working to finish the job, which she said she didn't expect to live to see. Because of her legacy, we will raise that full glass in our lifetimes, I am sure.

My last phone call with her was as fortifying as every conversation in the last twenty years since she mentored me in public speaking and media when I first joined @humanists.uk. She was urging me to carry on fighting for full abortion decriminalisation and a practical assisted dying law. We will.

Diane didn't just work for abortion rights but human freedom across the board. When I interviewed her a couple of years ago for "What I Believe", she identified women’s rights, trans rights, anti-racism, and choice (in abortion and assisted dying) as the current frontiers of human freedom.

Diane's tenacity and eloquence led directly to one of the most significant pieces of liberalising legislation in the humanist revolution of the 1960s. The world is a better place because of her. She was the last of the humanist heroes of that generation and everyone at @humanists.uk will miss her.

When campaigning for abortion rights, she had death threats, red paint ("babies' blood") poured over her car, letters put through the letterbox against her "whoremongery" and placards denouncing her as antichrist. Her reaction in her own words was "It just made me brazen". I love that reaction.

People are asserting a simple truth: the right to live freely belongs to everyone. What we are seeing now is a political flashpoint, years in the making, as Iranians intensify their defiance of religious fundamentalism and the violent dictatorship. humanists.uk/2025/10/27/t...

Despite executions, mass arrests, and intimidation, Iranians continue to resist. These are the largest protests the country has seen since the killing of Mahsa Amini, the Kurdish-Iranian woman killed by security forces for wearing a hijab 'improperly'. humanists.uk/2022/11/28/i...