(Jack) Coates wrote to the Rationalist Press Association's (RPA) Literary Guide, advocating a form of scientific humanism, which he associated with Bertrand Russell, H. G. Wells[1] and Julian Huxley: The great work of the modern period, these eminent thinkers argue, is the framing of constructive moral and social policies.
[5] In early 1932 the Conway Hall plotters met at Joad's house, where they decided to form an independent group, the Federation of Progressive Societies and Individuals.
The Vice-Presidents included Wells, A. S. Neill, Bertrand Russell, Barbara Wootton, Miles Malleson, David Low, Vera Brittain, Cyril Burt, Norman Haire, Aldous Huxley, Kingsley Martin, Harold Nicolson, Beverley Nichols, Olaf Stapledon, Geoffrey West, Rebecca West, Leonard Woolf and J. C. Flügel.
The influence which they exert upon legislation is negligible, and the cerebrations of statesmen proceed to their indifferent ends unaffected by their activities.According to Joad, progressive opinion had "crystallised" around a set of positions: That the economic arrangements of the country should be planned and not haphazard; that war debts should be cancelled, tariff barriers removed, national armaments abolished, and armed force pooled in a collective international police controlled by the League of Nations; that the divorce laws should be changed out of all recognition, birth control information and appliances made available for all, the congenitally unfit sterilised; that the censorship should be abolished, Dora liquidated, Sunday rescued from that dead hand of the nineteenth century; that rural England, what is left of it, should be preserved; that national parks should be established and citizens be given access to mountains and moorlands, irrespective of the needs of “sportsmen”.
Joad's letter went on to note that this progressive agenda was not reflected by the "old-fashioned" media, but that "the times ... are serious": Economic breakdown and international anarchy threaten to destroy civilisation, which, if it persists, seems increasingly likely to pass into the control of those who regard the traditional ideals of democracy - freedom and equality and the right of citizens to live their lives without moral, religious, or political interference - with amused contempt.
Joad identified "vanity, the lack of discipline, the overdeveloped individualities of progressives" as obstacles to organisation, but "danger may effect union where common sense has failed."
Joad concluded: "it is precisely this danger which has called into being a Federation of Progressive Societies to give unity and cohesion to those woefully impotent forces."
Initially supported by the Fabian Nursery and the Promethean League, and briefly by Youth House, the FPSI soon found itself without any federated organisational members.
The Progressive League provided a platform for the advocacy of ideas such as world government, Freudian psychology, sex, free love and nudism (hence it was nicknamed by opponents the "Federation for the Promotion of Sexual Intercourse").