BHA chief executive first to address rally of nearly 20,000 protesting against the Pope’s state visit

Andrew Copson, BHA Chief Executive, gave the first speech to open the rally protesting against the State Visit of the Pope to the United Kingdom, to a crowd of nearly 20,000 people. The rally was held opposite Downing Street at just after 4pm today, and followed a march by the protestors which began at Hyde Park Corner earlier in the afternoon.

See notes for other speakers.

BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson gave the following speech:

‘Just a few days before the Pope’s visit began a representative of his organisation called our country ‘a moral wasteland’.

The day before the pope’s visit began one of the Pope’s closest aides said that landing at Heathrow was like landing in a ‘third world country’.

On the first day of his visit the Pope himself condemned our secularism.
Last night, in Westminster Hall, speaking to the political elite of our country, the Pope questioned whether secular democracy alone could have any values at all.
Britain is not a perfect country.

It’s true that as a matter of national policy we don’t use our status as a nation to lobby at the UN against the human rights of women or the human rights of lesbian and gay people.

It’s true that our state doesn’t use its recognition as a state to lobby against the use of condoms, even in places suffering epidemics of AIDS.

It’s true that our country has never, as a matter of national policy, concealed the sexual abuse of children and frustrated justice for survivors of sexual abuse.
But I don’t think this makes us a moral wasteland, and I’d rather be a citizen of Britain than of the Holy See.

You will hear more about all of these actions of the Pope and the Holy See from our other speakers today but I just want to mention what it is that we who are here today support – the values that get us marching.

We support equality.

We support human rights.

We support secular and liberal democracy.

And we support justice, even if that justice is inconvenient for the power and reputation of churches and clergy.

Those are real moral values – values to live by in the twenty first century and the values you are supporting by being here today.’

ENDS

Notes

Other speakers at the rally:
. Barbara Blaine, SNAP, the Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests
. Clara Connolly, Women Against Fundamentalism
. Andrew Copson, British Humanist Association
. Sue Cox, sex abuse survivor
. Professor Richard Dawkins, scientist
. Dr Ben Goldacre, journalist
. Johann Hari, journalist
. Father Bernard J Lynch, an openly gay catholic priest
. Maryam Namazie, One Law for All
. Pragna Patel, Southall Black Sisters
. Terry Sanderson, National Secular Society
. Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner

For further comment, contact Andrew Copson on 07534 248596.

The British Humanist Association is the national charity representing and supporting the interests of ethically concerned, non-religious people in the UK. It is the largest organisation in the UK campaigning for an end to religious privilege and to discrimination based on religion or belief, and for a secular state.