the Methodist Church, serving in 1953–54. Soper took up many radical causes. As well as being a socialist, he was a teetotaler, a vigorous opponent of blood sports (he was President of the League Against Cruel Sports from 1967 to 1997) and gambling (he criticised the British Royal Family's association with horse racing), and most notably, a pacifist. He joined the Peace Pledge Union in 1937 and preached pacifism throughout the Second World War, being deemed so effective that he was banned from broadcasting on the BBC. After the War he became a regular broadcaster on BBC's Thought for the Day. He was critical of Reverend Ian Paisley and the Free Presbyterians in Northern Ireland. Activities He was active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from its beginnings, and was president of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in England for many years until his death. For twenty years he wrote regularly for the socialist magazine Tribune, and in 1958 was elected as an alderman (Labour) of the London County Council. After the abolition of the LCC, he became an alderman on the Greater London Council (1964–65) and accepted the offer of a life peerage from the Labour government of the day, and so was created on 12 May 1965 Baron Soper, of Kingsway in the London Borough of Camden, being the first Methodist minister to sit in the House of Lords, an institution whose existence he opposed (he referred to it as "proof of the reality of life after death") but which he was able to use as a platform for the expression of his views. In 1967, Soper lamented that "To-day we are living in what is the first genuinely pagan age—that is to say, there are so many people, particularly children, who never remember having heard hymns at their mother's knee, as I have, whose first tunes are from Radio One, and not from any hymn book; whose first acquaintance with their friends and relations and other people is not in the Sunday School or in the Church at all, as mine was". Retirement After he left circuit ministry he became a supernumerary (retired) minister based at Hinde Street Methodist Church in Marylebone. In 1978 he spoke in depth about his time as a controversial figure on a soapbox at Hyde Park Corner and his hopes for the future in the BBC radio programme Quest into 1978 with priest