In my talk at the last Humanist meeting I discussed two contrasting aspects on the topic; involuntary retirement in the mining industry starting in the mid-eighties, and the same process as applied to higher education, particularly the universities.

The closure of the coalmines over a comparatively short period in the eighties created a massive social and economic problem: in the first phase, we are looking at over 280,000 mining jobs lost, plus the 'knock-on' effect on jobs dependent on the coal industry.

Whole villages and towns in Durham, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, South Wales and Kent were affected creating a post-industrial wasteland where shops, small businesses, even pubs, closed. I had the experience of working in some of these areas as a Probation Officer before the closures, and also visiting the same areas after this social catastrophe had occurred.

We must understand the character of a working mining community: virtually all the men of working age were down the pit, the women did not have jobs and looked after the family and household. The men were hardworking, proud, independent despite working in atrocious conditions and in many cases in real danger. Even in the modern pits, conditions compared with surface jobs were extremely unhealthy, with the heat, dust, and men working in three-feet high seams for eight hours at a stretch.

However, by the nature of the work, these communities were very close-knit, looked after each other, worked and played together, and generally were very self-sufficient. The majority of young men followed their fathers and brothers down the pit, although a very small percentage did go on to higher education.

What was the result of the closures? As already indicated above, it was catastrophic in all these communities, covering quite large geographical areas -- mining was the only industry, and virtually all other jobs were dependent on that industry.

Men had no other qualifications or experience. Since the Thirties they had never known unemployment and suddenly there were no jobs. The family structures and mores collapsed and the communities died. We had the period of the miners strike, their only recourse in an attempt to stop the closures but in the end to no avail. We had during this period the solidarity of the miner's wives who played a major role in this bitter and often disgraceful (on the part of the authorities) dispute.

So we had all these proud, independent men - involuntarily retired, and in the majority of cases with no chance of redeployment or retraining - to use the common phrase, 'on the scrap-heap'. Many, as a result suffered psychiatric illnesses to varying degrees and a sense of utter hopelessness manifested itself in all these communities. Attempts by the government to create new employment, as in the electronics sector in South Wales, had little impact as most of the jobs were either for highly technical, or for production-line staff mostly women.

The majority of the ex-miners eventually ended up on invalidity benefit (now called incapacity benefit) as a result of physical or psychosomatic illness; and many are still on it to this day.

Another sad aspect to this social disaster was an increase in crime and anti-social behaviour especially amongst the young men, this a direct result of virtually no work in the area. Also it escalated into a serious problem of substance misuse with widespread heroin addiction in the younger population. Who can be judgmental with regard to these developments, taking into account what had happened to these communities?

We now come to higher education. Rather a stark contrast to the situation of the miners however, a process that also involved involuntary retirement albeit in different circumstances.

Over the past two decades we have seen major changes in employment practices, especially within the university sector. Previously we had had the system of 'tenure' for university teachers, a system where, once appointed, there was a guaranteed career structure for the full working life. It was also quite common for university teachers to move to other universities, often at the later stages of their careers. This system has now almost ceased to exist, apart from some of the ancient universities where even there it is declining.

In the current world of higher education, with the creation of new 'universities' week by week, and with the avowal of the present government to give 50% of all young people the opportunity of a university education, we have completely different method of funding, administration, standards and the way to assess research.

I am not going to discuss here what I think of the current situation in the university sector, but to analyse the factors which have had a significant effect in producing a climate of involuntary retirement and considerable redundancies throughout the system.

First of all, with the system of tenure almost eradicated most university contracts are on a one, two, or three years' basis. Although many of these contracts are extended there is no career security, and the sector is now run like a commercial business. Virtually all new university posts, and also many that are vacant because of retirement, are filled by young PhDs and are paid at the bottom of the scale (there is a considerable difference between the salary at the bottom end, and that of someone appointed, say as a reader). We now have the situation where the overriding factor is finance, whether in teaching or in research. As a result, we are now seeing the closure of major departments, such as chemistry, physics, modern languages and philosophy, many in the older universities, a situation almost unthinkable a few decades ago. In some of the new universities mainly the ex-polytechnics the financial situation is so bad that if they had been a commercial organisation, they would have been declared bankrupt. As a result some have had to merge, with many redundancies amongst the lecturing staff, most of them involuntary, which has resulted in strikes and boycotts called by the unions. It is not just the new universities. Bristol only a few years ago was over ten million pounds in the red.

So we have the position at present where many university teachers in their early and mid-50s are being involuntarily retired (it may be described euphemistically as 'enhanced early retirement') and of large numbers of younger staff being made redundant in the newer sector as a direct result of badly planned and unnecessary expansion. From being a university system that is admired and highly respected throughout the world we have now, as a result of disastrous and misguided Government intervention a stratified system of varying quality and a plethora of colleges granted university status with no regard for future standards. It amounts in fact to a total disregard of what a university should be. The question asked now by most employers of note is not if you have a degree, but which university you obtained it from.

is the title of a leaflet that was put before the Norwich Primary Care Trust, and later before the General Medical Council (who have suspended me at the instigation of my younger ex-colleagues with pensions²). The title on the obverse is the same as the one for this meeting Premature Retirement, since this is the process that is being imposed, by means of ageism, on us doctors. It is the enemy of re-deployment, as it is the medical profession who need to turn from disablement to rehabilitation in order for the public to find work which is within their physical and mental ability. I call this Occupational Medicine, which aims to encourage prolongation of healthy, productive life in place of disablement . . . and in place of the earlier retirement to a home-in-the-sky of the theists.

Early retirement means different things to different people.

The first speaker on this subject chose to base his talk on the miners who lost their jobs in the Thatcher era and he produced a picture of doom and gloom and ghost towns.

I grew up in a village where a large majority of working men were miners. Often these men were sons of miners who themselves were sons of miners. In those days most children finished school at the age of fourteen years and were directed by their parents into certain employments. Much talent was lost and many failed to reach any potential they may have had.

Reading newspaper reports, watching TV programmes and listening to the radio however closely does not substitute for personal knowledge and some deep thinking beyond that served up to us by the media, and also diminishes the concept of the individual.

For some miners, losing their jobs was a challenge which they accepted. Only recently The Times reported a company about to be floated on the market, a company begun by a group of ex miners.

These men ordinarily would have completed their working lives as miners, more than likely suffering silicosis in their later years. Now they as company directors...

The loss of the mining industry, far from emasculating the men, empowered their wives who suddenly wakened to political reality, went out and found education for themselves. And today some of those women are now serving Councillors in their local boroughs. So -- not all gloom and doom by any means.

The second speaker took as his standpoint, his own not-so-early retirement which he termed 'medical disablement'.

I had very different views on this but as I did not have a script I cannot quote verbatim and in any case I have given sufficient thought to this subject latterly that it could constitute an article on its own.

What I would like to stress is that people are individuals and react very differently to both retirement and early retirement and I would urge everyone to question the general media reportage of such where not self-evident and follow with good deal of serious thinking. Refuse to become a mere statistic. If some people have axes to grind then let them grind them or even offer to help finding an alternative tool but refuse to join them with outdated axes of your own.

² Editorial Dealing in disability. A continuation from Dr Shipman? EHA Bulletin 73, 2005may.

I often wondered whether there aren't any ex-Muslims who rejected the religion of their childhood in the same way as I rejected the Catholic religion in my late teens. Well I never met any such ex-Muslims personally, but surely there must be many who don't believe in that nonsense, but maybe they are afraid to say so publicly.

Thanks to the Freethinker magazine I now found a website of people who left Islam and encourage other doubting Muslims to do likewise. In some countries (and even in some democratic European countries where there are aggressive Muslim organisations) it is too dangerous to criticize Islam openly, but thanks to the Internet some people now dare to speak out, as they can do so incognito. They deserve our support.

I recommend you have a look at the following website: www.faithfreedom.org

Alex Hill

The 'holy' writings on which so many religions pin their faith have often been interpreted to justify horrible acts of cruelty against infidels or heretics. The biblical religions have a long history of cruelty from which some have slowly emerged to establish more benign approaches to their systems of control over human behaviour. But, for the moment, let us ignore the historical past and talk about 7th July 2005 when Londoners were selected as the latest victims of a wave of global terrorism which derives from an interpretation (or misinterpretation as some would say) of 'holy' writings.

It is quite clear that much of the wanton cruelty associated with modem terrorism comes from the manner in which the perpetrators are recruited and taught by Islamic 'scholars'. Despite all the brashness and independence we associate with youth, we know that young minds, even those that have all the trappings of a good education, are vulnerable to the persuasive forces of religious teachers. Teachers with fanatical interests in their religion are in a very powerful position to persuade those vulnerable young minds to adopt extreme views which lead to murder and suicide in the name of an assumed cause. The war in Iraq may be unjust and may well have exacerbated the current wave of terrorism but the rhetoric of justification only uses this and other theatres of unrest as cover for a more deeply rooted motivation.

How do these religious teachers derive their extreme views? What understanding do they have of God; what theological principles do they use in their corrupting ways? - Imams have their beloved Koran, believing it to be the very word of God, and they may use the words of its Suras to enlighten or to confuse their pupils according to their own interpretation. Fanatical teachers of all faiths use the holy words of ancient writings to manipulate young people into following their own warped understanding of religion in relation to the drama of the human condition and the political affairs of our complex world. Imams may teach their children the importance of good behaviour to one another, but how do fanatical teachers persuade or advise their vulnerable youth to behave towards those outside their faith, to infidels or apostates, or towards those against whom they merely have a grudge? They might refer to Sura 8, for example, where God says, "I will cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, strike off every fingertip of them".

Most Muslims, like members of other faiths or no faith at all, are peaceful members of our diverse community but surely such words can be used to bolster up the latent fanaticism that underscores most religious belief systems. Under the influence of corrupt teachers it is easy for intelligent young people, bursting with energy and pride in their way of life, to slip into the fanatical behaviour we have come to recognise in the widespread acts of modern terrorism.

The recent acts of murder witnessed on and below the streets of London were, we are told, carried out on innocent people of all faiths. This seems to imply that it might be acceptable to use the same techniques on people who are not innocent? Which potential victims are innocent and which are not innocent? This is a curious and invalid distinction because in the matter of murder all victims are innocent! It would be no better if our recent terrorist events in London had been perpetrated on bus loads of policemen, army recruits or politicians rather than the general public. All victims of murder are innocent ... guilt lies squarely with the murderer not the victim.

But where do we look for guilt in the process of terrorism? Of course, the man who carried the bomb onto the tube or bus was guilty of murder. But the process of modern terrorism is complex. It involves teachers who use the words of sacred texts to persuade young people into this tragic way of life, they preach sedition from their far off pulpits or from those on our very doorstep. Until we know more about what drives the process I think it is fairly safe to assume that there must be a shared guilt of murder between the people who planted the bombs, the seditious teachers who corrupted their minds for their own fanatical pleasure, those who aided and bankrolled the process and, last but not least, the writers of those curious words of so-called 'sacred texts'.

Right at the very heart of understanding what causes young men and sometimes young women to carry out murderous acts of religious suicide is the system of teaching from which they draw their inspiration. Faith schools are supported by our political leaders to encourage the teaching of religion to young school children. They operate outside the new framework of toleration. They manipulate young minds into a host of doctrinal beliefs based on the assumption that religious teachers have access to the mind of God and are carrying out his instructions bolstered with the writings of sacred texts and traditional dogmas. All religious teaching is at fault whether it is the black magic of Angola, the arrogant claims of papal infallibility, the illogical claims of the chosen race or the ultimate word of a Koranic God.

Now that so many young suicide bombers have come to believe that Paradise is their reward it is difficult to imagine how it will all end. Idealists may claim that the ultimate aim of religious education is to generate a sound moral citizenry constrained to believe in particular sets of theological principles and doctrinal truths. In reality it produces, at best, an unacceptable social divisiveness and, at worst, the murder of young children possessed by devils or a group of hypnotised bombers smilingly passing through King's Cross Station on their way to paradise.

Anthony Constable

RUSH BY 'HEAVEN-OR-HELL' CON-MEN TO DISSOCIATE THEMSELVES
Your articles (Guardian Monday July 11 2005 pages 1 and 18) report firstly Fr Paul Hawkins "We can name the people who did these things as criminals or terrorists. We cannot name them as Muslims" and lastly Karen Armstong's title "The label of Catholic Terror was never used about the IRA". The injustice would be naming Catholics in Northern Ireland without naming Protestants but it was wrong in not including with Moslem all others who publicly use the promise/threat of heaven-or-hell for political ends, especially murderous ones. So-called Moderate Muslims always stop short of effectively neutralising their murderous brethren by renouncing their own promises of rewards in heaven for the faithful.

(unprinted)

A psychologist at Tel Aviv University³ has traced the background of every suicide bomber in the Middle East since 1983 and has apparently claimed they don't have to be Islamic extremists or even radicalised by faith. Michael Bond, who reported the findings, admits the London bombers were all Muslims, as are the vast majority of attackers in Afghanistan and Israel. Yet many of the suicide bombers in Lebanon in the 1980s were from secular Christian backgrounds, he writes, and one of the modern pioneers of suicide terrorism, the Tamil Tigers, are secular Marxist-Leninists.

The key, as Bond reports, lies less with the bombers themselves than with the organisations that recruit and prepare them. Virtually every suicide attack in modern times has been conceived and managed by militant groups, and they all employ the same methods. First, find people, usually young and male who are sympathetic to the group's cause and organise them into small units. Second exploit their motivation for the cause using religious or political motivation, emphasising the heroic nature of their mission and the nobility of self-sacrifice. Third, have all members of the unit make a pact declaring their commitment to what they are about to do.

Added to the above comes the statement that young Muslim men especially can come to empathise strongly with Muslims abroad who think they are suffering injustice at the hands of the west. The similarity here, it seems, lies with the Animal Rights Activists.

³ Ariel Merari, as reported in NewScientist 23jul2005.

A reference in the report that follows to 5 distinct sects in Japan, all having allegiance to Buddha, is a reminder of a spectrum of belief extending throughout Buddhism. This serves to demonstrate locality and timing features of religions which are already familiar to the west from experience with monotheism. If there is any one sect with a major claim for freedom from religious superstition then it, Theravada, is represented by followers of the early written canon. Though the Hindu reincarnation theory, a form of metempsychosis or transmigration of a 'soul', was then seen as inescapable in some form; it was considerably played down in Theravada Buddhism⁴.

For metempsychosis, though, there is the same damning failure of objective evidence which is a feature of monotheism's heaven-or-hell prediction. Subjectively the goal of resignation is not via unrestrained optimism as in Christian belief but an unrestrained pessimism. Both systems could be described as built upon dissatisfaction with the natural human condition.

⁴ see Was the Buddha the First Humanist? in EHA Bulletin 63, 2004jul (supplementary pages, not available on website), which derives from Rhys Davids' Buddhism. London: The London and Norwich Press, 1912.

PLEASE WORSHIP WITH YOUR HAT OFF AND QUIETLY said the notice at Sanjusangendo, which houses a remarkable collection of 1000 images of Kannon (a sort of Buddhist Goddess of mercy), about half an hour's walk from Kyoto station and conveniently close to the National Museum. I don't know about the hats, but with coachloads of tourists walking along the wooden floor it wasn't exactly quiet, if more so than the Sistine Chapel in Rome which when I visited it 12 years ago was more like the concourse at Waterloo station. The images of Kannon are arranged in six long rows, with in the centre a much larger one, ten feet high, and all made of wood covered with paint or lacquer and then gold leaf. This strange, silent army of figures is rather unnerving.

Earlier that day I had taken a bus to the north-east outskirts of Kyoto, which took me into the adjacent Shiga prefecture to Mount Hiei, headquarters of the Tendai sect. A few traces of snow were visible at Enryakuji (the final -ji means "temple"), where you can see a portrait gallery of Buddhists "saints". The founders of later sects, such as Honen and Nichiren, studied here - these later sects in some cases came into violent conflict with Tendai.

Next day to Nagahama on the eastern shore of Lake Biwa, to visit a railway museum based on the old (1884) station. No captions in English here, so I struggled to read an explanatory board about electrification. Was there a "battle of the systems" (direct versus alternating current) such as there was in the UK in the late 19C, with some famous names backing the "wrong" system? That evening we (K, one of her English students and I) went to a traditional restaurant for dinner, making our way past cherry trees in full bloom and illuminated at night. The restaurant has a garden with a stream running through it: high up in the foliage of the overhanging trees were what appeared in the darkness to be white paper bags, until they shifted slightly and beaks could be seen: roosting herons!

On my last day in Kyoto I left my luggage at the hotel and walked to the rather staid National Museum, which is just the other side of a busy road from Sanjusangendo. There are more Buddhist images to look at, with English captions, including a wooden statue of a priest with a bosatsu (bodhisattva) emerging from his head - presumably an attempt to represent vividly some spiritual event. A notice explains the three main strands of Buddhism: orthodox worship of the Buddha in his various manifestations (Yakushi, Nyorai, Maitreya); Esoteric Buddhism, brought from Tang dynasty China by Kukai; and Jodo "Pure Land" Buddhism which worships Amida Buddha and looks towards a western paradise.

K. Charles Rudd

In response to such designation, applied by the EHA Chairman to the Glossary "Ealing-speak"...⁵, the following extract has been made of the portions more deserving of that label.

ACTIVE SCIENCE

Although all of us should think scientifically only a very few, whether or not professionally engaged in research, may have a 'eureka moment' which – if accepted as fact by the latest, widest possible consensus of experts – changes our understanding of nature (our human reality).

ALPHA

An earlier term for subjective thinking, borrowed from Christian evangelism, where enquirers are made to feel wanted.

'ARTIFICIAL' SELECTION

by popular choice, is the concept falsely applied by relativist philosophers in describing an active scientist's contribution. (Selection by God in designing the universe is the concept adopted by theists as explaining the appearance of nature). BUT see 'NATURAL' SELECTION.

CONCEPTS

A term which has been found to be more helpful than 'knowledge' or 'information' since it covers FACT, fiction and fallacy and thus avoids unfruitful controversies surrounding the term TRUTH. Also it seems to be more correct psychologically. There are two basic types, namely personal CONCEPTS and collective human CONCEPTS.

COMBINED HUMANISM

as practiced in Ealing anyway, seeks to unite the positive aspects of essential humanism and of traditional, or tolerance, humanism. The necessity of doing so is a conclusion which follows from there being two distinct points of view; personal (or subjective) and collective (or objective).

NATURAL SELECTION

refers, in Darwinian terms, to selection of the species but may be applied also to the selection via the widest possible, up-to-date consensus of relevant experts on ideas about NATURE (contrast 'ARTIFICIAL' SELECTION based on popular choice).

PASSIVE SCIENCE

A synonym for accepted fact.

Seven new terms, neologisms avoided, out of 46 total in the Glossary is surely not an excessive share, if I am to make any claim to original thinking comparable to that of our two prior sources of inspiration, Arthur Atkinson and Derek Hill. In addition, as is natural, all 3 of us show idiosyncrasy in a usage of words that at times shows some departure from the most usual meanings. The Glossary seeks to cover this too, as far as it is feasible and this, certainly, accounts in part for the large total.

Raymond Carlisle

⁵ Glossary. Ealing speak ... in Combined Humanism in Ealing. Norwich Print Shop 2005 pp xiii-xvi.

The glossary shown here, the so-called 'Raymond-Speak', has been compiled by the Editor of the EHA Bulletin, Dr. Raymond Carlisle. The definitions shown above reflect his personal opinion and are not necessarily accepted by any other members of the Ealing Humanist Association.