Born, April 1817; aged eight began work with his father at a local foundry; began evening classes at the Birmingham Mechanics Institute in 1836 where he first came under the influence of the ideas of Robert Owen; member of the Chartist movement in Birmingham, although remained an supporter of moral force and refused to engage in rioting in Birmingham in 1839; applied to become a lecturer at the Birmingham Mechanics Institute, 1840, but was rejected and became a Owenite social missionary, first in Worcester and later, in a more important position in Sheffield. During this time, he began contributing articles highly critical of Christianity to the periodical The Oracle of Reason, and, when the journal's editor Charles Southwell was imprisoned for blasphemy in 1842, Holyoake became its editor. However, later that year, faced with charges of condemning Christianity at a lecture in Cheltenham, he was also charged and imprisoned for six months. On release from prison, Holyoake formed a journal The Movement, later becoming The Reasoner, which was to remain one of the most important periodicals of the nineteenth century, championing Chartist principles, political reform and the emerging secularist movement. Holyoake was to remain the figure-head of the secularist movement until he was replaced by the more militant Charles Bradlaugh in 1858. The Reasoner was also to remain one of the major mouthpieces for the Owen-inspired co-operative movement. Holyoake died in 1906. His publications include: Self Help by the People (1858), The Workman and the Suffrage (1859), The Liberal Situation (1865), The History of Co-operation in England (1877) and Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life (1892).
From the guide to the HOLYOAKE, George Jacob (1817-1906), 1831-1985, (Bishopsgate Institute)
