George Jacob Holyoake

Born in Birmingham in 1817, George Jacob Holyoake grew up in a working-class family and began laboring young, later educating himself while moving into radical politics. He first became known as an Owenite lecturer and journalist, and his imprisonment for blasphemy in the early 1840s made him a widely discussed public figure.

Holyoake is especially remembered for coining the term "secularism" in 1851, giving a positive name to a movement centered on ethics and public life apart from religious authority. He also became an important writer and organizer in the British co-operative movement, and accounts of his career regularly connect him with the early Rochdale store and the wider spread of co-operative ideas.

Across a long career, he wrote extensively, edited journals, and argued for reform in plain, accessible language. He died in 1906, leaving behind a legacy tied to freethought, public education, and the hope that ordinary people could build fairer institutions together.