In 1932 decorated submariner turned free-lance journalist Bernard Acworth proposed the formation of an anti-evolution society that would confine itself "as far as that might be possible, to the scientific rather than to the philosophic and religious plane". The proposal was seconded by barrister and amateur ornithologist Douglas Dewar, and the Evolution Protest Movement was formed at a meeting between them and five like-minded conservative evangelicals with electrical engineer, physicist and Victoria Institute president John Ambrose Fleming as president, Acworth as chairman and Dewar as secretary-treasurer.