An evening of stories and laughter: Barbara Smoker Centenary Memorial
Barbara Smoker, the humanist activist and SELHuG founder, was remembered in style at an event at Conway Hall to celebrate the centenary of her birth on 2nd June. Hosted by the National Secular Society which Barbara was President of for 25 years and chaired by its current President, Keith Porteous Wood, the event brought people from the world of humanism and secularism, from the Shaw Society in which Barbara played such an important role, from Conway Hall Ethical Society and, wonderfully, from a large section of her family!
Her nephew Mark Smoker presented his portrait of Barbara – very recognisable with her white hair and disarming smile and another nephew, Anthony Costello, the paediatrician known for his work on public health, gave a funny and irreverent talk which Barbara would have enjoyed. Together the speeches, including one from fellow former NSS President and SELHuG Secretary Denis Cobell, and from Asad Abbas, former Secretary of the Bromley Group, celebrated Barbara’s many successes and contributions to public life.
Below is the tribute we gave at the memorial event:
SELHuG’s tribute to Barbara Smoker
May 2023
The South East London Humanist Group wanted to pay tribute to its most important member, Life President and one of the group who founded it over 60 years ago: Barbara Smoker. So we are glad to have the opportunity tonight to be here with you and speak in her honour.
People joining South East London Humanists in the last 10 years will remember Barbara as the white-haired woman with trenchant views who continued to attend often, even when deafness made it very difficult for her to hear.
She led the group for many decades with the support of Denis and others including James Dobson, Colin Swinburn and Asad Abbas, and left a legacy of humanist and atheist campaigning that started in southeast London but had national impact. Humanist celebrants today take it for granted that they can lead a funeral without the cross taking centre stage at the crematorium, but we wouldn’t if it hadn’t been for Barbara. Finally we can take same-sex marriage for granted, another area where Barbara led the way.
She was an arch activist, tireless in pursuit of the causes she believed in and we have heard how fearless she was in standing up for freedom of speech, the campaign for nuclear disarmament, a woman’s right to choose abortion, the right to assisted death and many more human rights causes.
She had the skills of a journalist, able to research and analyse complicated social issues and then communicate her findings to lay audiences. She was quick-witted and able to deal with sarcastic interviewers: she describes in her autobiography when the presenter of the TV programme After Dark said to her, “Perhaps you will eventually revert to the religion of your formative years’ and she retorted: “That of course is quite possible. It is what is called ‘senility’.”
She was a remarkable woman. At a time when the norm was still for women to get married and have children, she didn’t bother with any of that. When it was normal to keep up appearances, to get dressed in the morning and look busy, Barbara revelled in keeping her own hours and wearing a dressing gown all day if she felt like it. She lived life on her own terms. She was so intellectually robust that once she had thrown off Catholicism, she made mincemeat of other patriarchal and conservative taboos. She joked about sex and could discuss the ethics of terminating a pregnancy in the case of severe disability without sentimentality – something which brought her tons of hate-mail, even before social media.
What a role model. A role model to other women especially, but to people in general because she thought for herself, she worked out what mattered in life to her, and then lived by those principles. And strove to take other people with her, to make the world a better place.
Barbara continued to support South East London Humanists to the end, including attending our Thought for the Day demo – which was a chapter in a much longer campaign she herself had led in earlier decades – and handing in a letter to the BBC.
On behalf of the group I would like to say that we are indebted to Barbara for leading and building a humanist community in our part of London as well as leading the way in so many areas of human rights and social justice.
Photos: Barbara talking about her just-published memoir at one of our meetings in The Rose pub, Deptford.
