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| Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891) |
In 1877 an
organisation called the Neo-Malthusian League was founded in the aftermath of
the prosecution of Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant. Bradlaugh, founder of
the National Secular Society, and Besant, a political radical, were prosecuted
for republishing a book entitled Fruits
of Philosophy, written by an American called Charles Knowlton, which described
various methods of birth control. They were found guilty of publishing obscene
material but were later acquitted on a legal technicality. The Neo-Malthusian
League was founded to campaign for the right to publish information about
contraceptive methods without fear of prosecution, and to advocate for the
reduction of the birth rate by limitation of family size. It grew in influence
under the leadership of three members of the same family, George Drysdale, his
brother Charles Robert Drysdale and the latter’s son Charles Vickery Drysdale.
The League argued that
war and poverty were caused by overpopulation and that it was therefore
essential that the birth rate be reduced. Unlike Malthus, the League advocated
artificial birth control as the best means of bringing this about. Celibacy and
abstinence were rejected as ‘unhealthy’; sexual pleasure divorced from
procreative responsibility was the end they sought. In his book Elements of Social Science, George
Drysdale argued that ‘there could not be greater error’ than monogamous
marriage. The ‘laws of nature’ required
‘a variety of objects’ for sexual desire. Many members of the League believed that the poor must be
put under pressure to reduce the number of children that they had. Annie Besant
said that the first phase of their campaign must aim to ‘stamp with disapproval
every married couple who selfishly overcrowd their home, to the injury of the
community of which they are a part.’ This is certainly an attitude which prevails
in our society today.
By the time the league
was dissolved in 1927 many of its aims were well on their way to being met. Numerous
influential members of the Labour Party were supporters of the League or of other
population control groups such as Marie Stopes’s Society for Constructive Birth
Control and Racial Progress. Activists such as these, supported by many Labour
MPs, were successful in persuading the Labour Party to adopt a pro-birth
control policy in 1926. There was initially some successful resistance from
Catholics in the party but soon both the Labour and Conservative parties succumbed
to the birth control agenda. From 1930 onwards it was permissible for birth
control advice to be given at public health clinics. Birth control ‘clinics’,
founded by organisations such as Marie Stopes and the Family Planning
Association, began to spread, with the express intention of inducing women from
poor backgrounds to use birth control. This was the beginning of a network of
‘clinics’ which now not only seek to prevent new life coming into existence but to destroy it during its earliest and most vulnerable stages. The organisations
which now perform thousands of abortions every year are often the very same
organisations that began by advocating birth control.
Further Reading
Ann Farmer, Prophets and Priests: The Hidden Face of the
Birth Control Movement, (London, 2002)
