Let's Talk About Peace

23 November 2018 £2.00 theDISCOVER THE CONTEMPORARYFriend QUAKER WAY Let’s talk about peace the Friend INDEPENDENT QUAKER JOURNALISM SINCE 1843 CONTENTS VOL 176 NO 47 3 Thought for the Week: Windrush exploration Our community Alison Leonard To make a safe home for small 4-6 News children, to comfort one person 7 Are we aroused to action? in sorrow, to do one’s work as efficiently as possible, to listen with Barbara Forbes understanding, to be gentle with the 8-9 Letters old and courteous to the young – these are the humble tasks to which 10-11 Not a notion but a way most men and women are called. Henry S Thompson They build the home or the meeting 12 France Yearly Meeting or the community which is the first step towards the Kingdom of Heaven Richard Thompson on earth. The second is to be aware 13 A journey into Uganda of greater tasks and to be ready to be used in solving them – ready, not Louise McCann worried or anxious or envious, but 14 Support and nurture content to wait, exercising a ministry Jane Muers of prayer to sustain the healers and the reconcilers already at work in 15 Let’s talk about peace their thousands Rebecca Hardy Olive Tyson 1966 16 q-eye: a look at the Quaker world 17 Friends & Meetings Quaker faith & practice 10.18 Cover image: A tree of peace created by children at a recent event at Friends House. Photo: Anne van Staveren, Quakers in Britain. See page 15. The Friend Subscriptions Advertising Editorial UK £88 per year by all payment Advertisement manager: Articles, images, correspondence types including annual direct debit; George Penaluna should be emailed to monthly payment by direct debit [email protected] [email protected] £7.40; online only £71 per year. or sent to the address below. For details of other rates, Tel 01535 630230 contact Penny Dunn on 54a Main Street, Cononley To contact the editorial team, 020 7663 1178 or [email protected] Keighley BD20 8LL please call 020 7663 1010 the Friend 173 Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ • Tel: 020 7663 1010 • www.thefriend.org Sub-editor: George Osgerby [email protected] • Journalist: Rebecca Hardy [email protected] Production and office manager: Elinor Smallman [email protected] • Advertisement manager: George Penaluna [email protected] • Subscriptions officer: Penny Dunn [email protected] • Environment correspondent: Laurie Michaelis [email protected] • Arts correspondent: Rowena Loverance [email protected] Clerk of trustees: Paul Jeorrett • ISSN: 0016-1268 • The Friend Publications Limited is a registered charity, number 211649 • Printed by Warners Midlands Plc, The Maltings, Manor Lane, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH 2 the Friend, 23 November 2018 Thought for the Week Windrush exploration ith great absorption and considerable shame, I’ve been reading stories of the Windrush generation: how they were called to serve the ‘mother country’, and how that turned out. Why ‘shame’? In 1965-66, I was a child care officer Wfor the London Borough of Hackney, where many West Indians settled after coming over in the previous decade. I visited Afro-Caribbean families in their rough terraces and windblown high-rise flats, and, qualified by nine years in a girls’ boarding school and four years at university, I had the power to inspect their child care practices and, if necessary, take their children into care. The social work profession was in its infancy, and it took only my decision and that of one senior officer to embark on such drastic action. I’d had one day’s training in ‘West Indian culture’. I knew nothing of slavery and little about patterns of migration. I was terrified. Fast-forward a few years, and I discovered Quakers and joined them. Brought up in a staunch Conservative family who believed in king/queen, country and empire, I now met people who interpreted the swathes of pink on the world map in terms of unbalanced power relationships, and took steps to right some wrongs. In the following years I met such heroes as Adam Curle, Diana and John Lampen, and Friends who worked for Quaker Cottage and Quaker House in Belfast, the Quaker Bolivia Link, the Quaker Congo Partnership – so many things. I learnt what racism was, and found it in my background. In the last two and a half years, I’ve seen racism in Britain rediscover its voice. One member of my original family has gone UKIP; a dear neighbour, after I’d confessed that I came from a family who thought English people could run other people’s countries better than they could themselves, said, well, sorry, but he agreed with my family, not with me. So, this is Brexit. The UK government’s position is embattled at every turn, wracked with ignorance even of the details of its own border with Europe, in Ireland. No one has any idea of the outcome. But I guess that in the long term it may usher in, for Britain, an era of humiliation. Our politicians’ proud stance will reveal itself as the hutzpah of a few has-been islands off a minor western continent, as the real power moves eastwards – that is, if climate change has not wrought a more global resolution. How can we, as a spiritual community, respond to this shift in our national self- worth? We may dread the social upheaval it will bring, and the loss of our treasured liberal values. But were these not largely a mask, while colonial realities still power our smartphones? I think we’ll need to start with that most difficult of spiritual virtues: humility. Our culture, during the last 500 years, has exploited other cultures and lands for its own purposes. We must step back, and let others try their hand. It will be extraordinarily painful, but it needs to be faced. I will start with my Windrush exploration and hope to go on from there. Alison Leonard Hebden Bridge Meeting the Friend, 23 November 2018 3 News Kindertransport anniversary marked at Friends House AS 1,000 guests gathered at Friends House in London for a Kindertransport eightieth anniversary commemoration, survivors of the rescue operation called for a new Kindertransport for today’s child refugees. The Quaker-hosted event on 15 November was organised by the peer Alf Dubs and Barbara Winton, whose father Nicolas Winton organised Kindertransports that saved 669 children from Czechoslovakia. Sixty ‘Kinder’ guests attended, many of whom signed a statement urging the government to ‘match the efforts of the Kindertransport by committing to Passage. Safe Photo: Dinendra Haria for resettle 10,000 child refugees over the next ten years 10,000 children to safety in ten months on the eve of from Europe and conflict regions’. world war two. The Kinder, who were amongst 10,000 mostly ‘Our history shows us we can and must do better. Jewish children brought to the UK from Nazi- There are thousands of highly vulnerable child refugees occupied Europe as unaccompanied child refugees, are in Europe whose lives are on hold because they don’t supporting the ‘Our Turn’ campaign, led by refugee have access to secure accommodation or education.’ charity Safe Passage and Alf Dubs – who at the age of Speakers and guests at the commemoration included six arrived alone on the Kindertransport from Prague. the Chief Rabbi, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Beth Gardiner Smith, CEO of Safe Passage, said: the immigration minister, Esther Rantzen, David ‘Through Freedom of Information requests, Safe Attenborough and Vanessa Redgrave as well as council Passage has discovered the UK has resettled just leaders from across the country, who have pledged twenty unaccompanied children from conflict zones over 700 places for child refugees if the government in the past two years. The Kindertransport brought provides the funding. Dismay at theft of white poppy wreaths FRIENDS WERE dismayed when Meanwhile, Worthing Quakers acknowledgement of the British two white poppy wreaths from the also had a white poppy wreath Legion, we have laid a white poppy centenary of Armistice Day were stolen from the local war wreath for the last two years. Each stolen from local war memorials. memorial. time the wreath has been removed Bath Quakers had their white The PPPU said it was ‘disgusted in the days after the event. poppy wreath stolen for the fourth but not surprised’. ‘We are hurt by this action and time, according to the Peace Bath Quakers Jane Stephenson would like to take the opportunity Pleadge Union (PPU). and Lin Patterson had a letter to explain the origins and purpose Their two wreathes had been published in the Bath Chronicle of the white poppy.’ detached, with the white one being before the incident, in the days The letter goes on to detail removed, leaving the red one leading up to 11 November. the historical background of the behind. It said: ‘With the respectful symbol. Nobel Prizewinner speaks to Paris Peace Forum THE Quaker Council for European Affairs conflict resolution and said leadership is not enough, (QCEA) took part in the Paris Peace Forum this it also takes will to stop war. month. Olivia Caeymaex, from QCEA, answered questions The event included a talk by this year’s Nobel Peace on Radio France International about what happenes Prizewinner Nadia Murad Basee who spoke about at a peace forum and what constitutes ‘peacemaking’. 4 the Friend, 23 November 2018 reported by Rebecca Hardy [email protected] BYM will not invest in firms that profit from ‘occupation’ Britain Yearly Meeting beliefs compel us to speak out example in the illegal exploitation (BYM) has become the first faith about injustices wherever we see of natural resources in occupied group in the UK to announce it will them in the world, and not to shy Palestine, and the construction and not invest any of its centrally-held away from difficult conversations.

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