Despite only packing up from All Night Debate at 3am, we were all up bright and early the next morning to head down to Conway Hall in London for the AHS 2011 convention.
The day started with stalls from various related organisations and then moved into speakers starting with Lord Warner who is chair of the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group talking about his experiences as a humanist, in politics.
Second up was Gerard Phillips, vice president of the National Secular Society. His talk was disappointing, it seemed to be an hour talk compressed into twenty minutes, I’ve literally never heard someone speak so fast when delivering a talk. It was also pointed at the wrong audience a little I think – given we’re all at the AHS conference, we don’t need to be told what secularism is and why we should advocate it – you’re preaching to the converted. Never the less, Gerald is clearly a passionate secularist and having had a chat with him later in the day, he seems like a great guy who really wants the best for the freethought movement.
He was followed by BHA chief executive Andrew Copson who, despite a lack of organisation with getting the slides ready, delivered a concise, informative and educational talk which made for one of the best of the day.
After a break, we welcomed Robin Ince to the stage. Jonni was hugely impressed with his talk and although it was evident he had, as he admitted, written it on a series of postcards in the hour, I really enjoyed it. Robin is also forming part of the line-up of the Enquiry 2011 Conference.
He was followed by Johann Hari, who, for my mind, gave the best talk of the day, reminding us all that despite we have all this nonsense such as faith schools often overly vocal religious people, when it comes down to it – we’re winning; more and more people every year declare themselves as non-religious.
The day was closed off by a speech by Professor AC Grayling and a performance by the BHA Choir. I have to say I was somewhat disappointed by Grayling’s speech – it was good, but then it was good when I heard it two years ago at the AHS press launch and it hasn’t really changed since then.
Afterwards, we all headed to a local pub for some well-deserved relaxation.
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Tags: ahs, convention, conway hall, Leeds Atheist Soc, london
This entry was posted on Friday, March 25th, 2011 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Humanism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.