The sad demise of the secular Tory bloggers

As we enter Conservative conference week it's sad to see the apparent demise of the small strand of Tory bloggers who adopted a consciously secular and humanist tone to their writing.

We have lost Martine Martin's blog as she has decided to stop blogging now she has a job in Westminster. This prompted to me to look up the other secular Tory blogger on my links list, Jeff Peel, only to find his wordpress blog "the way it is" seems to have bitten the dust.

This is all very sad because we need a healthy secular voice inside the Conservative Party, who in my experience, and from their recent history, are incredibly intolerant of a multi-belief society and many Tory activists seem rather keen on using the power of the state to force a cultural and political primacy of Christianity down our necks, whether we like it or not. It was the Conservatives who implemented compulsory Christian worship in schools and cross-party Humanist groups in parliament find it hard to recruit and retain Conservative members.

Are there any secular humanist Tory bloggers out there? By this I don't mean Conservative supporting bloggers who pre-dominantly write about the interaction between religion and politics from a secular standpoint, although that would be an intriguing find. But any Tory bloggers who have "outed" themselves as atheists and who occasionally cross swords with the religious authoritarians in their own party. Is there any secular life out there in the Tory blogosphere?

Comments

[The Morningstar]

While my Conservative party membership is going to lapse any day soon, I am an atheist and blogger from the right. I will happily argue with any policy from across the political spectrum that seeks to push religion on people.

[The Labour Humanist]

morningstar

hi, perhaps i could add you to a (disgruntled) conservative humanist blogs??

do you know of any other right of centre atheist bloggers in the uk??

[The Morningstar]

If I find any I'll send them your way, plus I'll post on my blog linking to this page.

[The Labour Humanist]

cheers!

[Matt W]

Are there any among the humanist affiliated Conservative politicians - the BHA is claiming about a dozen iirc. No idea whether any are bloggers.

[Jeff Peel]

Your comments are well made. However, we have now created a new Conservative Humanist blog www.conservativehumanists.org.uk that will hopefully become a more permanent site. We are hopeful that as soon as we are 'official' within the Conservative Party (shouldn't be too long according to recent correspondence from the Party Chairman) the site will get a lot more content. We are also affiliated with the BHA.