Humanists UK mourns Diane Munday (1931-2026)

Humanists UK is deeply saddened to announce the death of its patron, Diane Munday, who dedicated her life to social reform, most notably as the principal leader of the campaign for the Abortion Act 1967. She was also highly influential in the campaign for assisted dying.

Diane was a committed humanist whose principles guided her long career in activism. She joined the Ethical Union (now Humanists UK) in the 1950s, and was elected to the Executive Committee in 1967. Her commitment to a rational and kind world drove her to challenge prejudice and restrictive laws. Speaking on her journey to humanism on the What I Believe podcast, she said:

‘There was a period in my life in my teens when I just desperately wanted to believe. I thought I was an oddity – that there was something badly wrong with me. I went visiting all the flavours of churches but it wasn’t until quite by accident (at, I suppose, 18 or 19 in the late 1940s) I came across a book by Huxley in the library, that a great feeling of relief came over me. I wasn’t an oddball, I wasn’t alone. There were people who not only thought like me, but wrote books about it.

‘The Ethical Union advertised widely in the 1950s and I joined. When the Ethical Union became Humanists UK I joined the Executive Committee. Those were exciting years, with restrictive laws on homosexuality, family planning, capital punishment, divorce, all coming under successful attack. I am still proud to have been an active part of the movement that so effectively tackled and defeated religious prejudice and power. When my eldest son was called a pagan at our local Church of England village school it was time to turn my attention to campaigning for a state school: it is still here today. As a result of that I was asked to write a regular column “from a humanist view” in the local Thomson evening paper and given free rein to pursue my humanist hobby horses. This provided the sort of notoriety that, when I stood as a candidate for the County Council, opponents were out on the pavements with banners declaring, “She is pro abortion and anti-Christ”.’

Following her own experience of seeking a safe abortion in the early 1960s, Diane became an active and vocal member of the Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA). Her involvement proved pivotal to the campaign that led to David Steel’s Private Member’s Bill, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Bill, becoming law as the Abortion Act 1967. Munday served as ALRA’s Vice-Chairman and later its General Secretary, and together with other humanists, was a co-founder of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS).

A gifted public speaker, she travelled the country, making the case for reform to women’s organisations. As a humanist, she fought to end the dangerous practices of back-street abortions and to make sure that a safe, legal option was available to all women, regardless of wealth. Speaking on what motivated her to campaign and the experiences, values, and principles that informed her involvement, Diane said on the What I Believe podcast:

‘It was the same lack of logic and consistency that I objected to in people’s religious practices. By outlawing abortion, you quite clearly didn’t stop it. You sent it underground, where it became even more dangerous. And it was the fact that because I had a chequebook to wave in Harley Street I could buy a safe abortion, but other women were suffering.’

Diane remained a staunch supporter of women’s right to choose abortion and continued to apply her humanist and rationalist principles throughout her life. She served as a Justice of the Peace on the St Albans Bench for 33 years, was a Director and Trustee of the Rationalist Press Association (now part of Humanists UK), and was heavily involved in the NHS and medical research.

In later years, she became a strong advocate for assisted dying to be legalised, based on personal experience:

‘I write as someone who has had the devastating experiences of caring over many long years for a mother, a father (who attempted suicide with an overdose of Warfarin, was admitted to hospital in a coma and was tube-fed against the wishes of the family and the knowledge he had attempted to kill himself) and a husband who, following a series of strokes spread over 12 years during which I cared for him at home, was not only physically handicapped but had lost speech and comprehension of words. All of these begged (when they were capable of doing so) and pleaded for help to die. I now myself have a diagnosis of Lewy Body dementia with Parkinson’s and have no wish nor intention to suffer as they did.

Speaking about how early lessons in being thick-skinned drove a lifetime of campaigning, Diane said:

‘It made me brazen. I became accustomed to being attacked, knowing that the attacks were unjustified, and just getting on with it… I had death threats, I had red paint poured over my car, I was called names, there were awful letters put through the letterbox. It just made me determined to ignore them and carry on. My upbringing has given me strength. That fortified me when I saw what I believed to be injustice.’

She never stopped making the case for the causes she believed in, whether that meant the continual need to reaffirm the right to an abortion, or the need to establish the right to an assisted death. Speaking last year on the most important campaigns still in front of humanists, she highlighted assisted dying, the rights of transgender people, and the continuing need to advocate for the rights of women and against racism – a testament to her undimmed zeal for progressive social change. Her last interview was in The Guardian as recently as 5 January this year.

Commenting on her death, Humanists UK Chief Executive, Andrew Copson, said:

‘Diane was a giant of the humanist movement for seven decades and a dear friend. Her tenacity, eloquence, and rational commitment to bodily autonomy and personal choice led directly to one of the most significant pieces of liberalising legislation in the humanist revolution of the 1960s. Her later work on the immorality and irrationality of the UK’s assisted dying laws spoke of her lifelong principled commitment to individual rights and compassion. The world is a better place because of Diane’s work, and we send our love and deepest condolences to all her friends and family.’