Nicolas Walter - Walter The Rationalist, Humanist and Secularist

Walter The Rationalist, Humanist and Secularist

In Britain, Walter's humanism is perhaps better known than his anarchism.

Walter was appointed Managing Editor of the Rationalist Press Association in 1975, but his progressive disability and the fact he was not, as Bill Cooke puts it, "a born administrator" led to difficulties.

Walter was editor of New Humanist magazine from February 1975 until July 1984, when Jim Herrick took over.

In the aftermath of the 1989 fatwa on Salman Rushdie and his book The Satanic Verses, Walter (along with William McIlroy) reformed The Committee Against Blasphemy Law. It issued a Statement Against Blasphemy Law, signed by over 200 public figures. Walter and Barbara Smoker were attacked while counter-demonstrating during a Muslim protest against the book in May 1989. Walter's book "Blasphemy Ancient and Modern" put the Rushdie controversy into historical context.

Walter also served as company secretary of GW Foote & Co., publishers of The Freethinker, and was a vice-president of the National Secular Society.

Walter occasionally wrote or spoke about how secular humanists might face death – he had done so himself. In a letter to The Guardian in 1993 (16 September, p. 23), he explained:

All of us will die, and most of us will suffer before we do so. "The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play may be", said Pascal. Raging against the dying of the light may be good art, but is bad advice. "Why me?" may be a natural question, but it prompts a natural answer: "Why not?" Religion may promise life everlasting, but we should grow up and accept that life has an end as well as a beginning.