10 November 2017 £1.90 theDISCOVER THE CONTEMPORARYFriend QUAKER WAY Conscience and dissent Interview: Gillian Allnutt the Friend INDEPENDENT QUAKER JOURNALISM SINCE 1843 Contents VOL 175 NO 45 3 Thought for the Week: Do not kill War is not the answer I am more and more Oliver Robertson a Christian… Suffer 4 News dishonour and disgrace, but never resort to arms. 5 Conscience and dissent Be bullied, be outraged, be Jane Dawson killed: but do not kill. 6 Peace and war Wilfred Owen Bob Johnson Letter to his mother 7 The white poppy May 1917. Jane Mace 8-9 Letters 10-11 Nuclear weapons are BAD, aren’t they? Paul Ingram 12 Poem: Dust to Dust Bill Bingham 13 Taking a stand Ian Kirk-Smith 14-16 Interview: A wreath of knitted, crocheted Gillian Allnutt and fabric white poppies. Jonathan Doering Assembled by Barbara Curtis, of Nelson Meeting, New Zealand. 17 Friends & Meetings Photo: © 2016 Barry-Martin/FWCC. Cover image: Woodland near Les Éparges, France – the site of a fierce battle during world war one. Photo: Antonio Ponte / flickr CC. The Friend Subscriptions Advertising Editorial UK £86 per year by all payment Advertisement manager: Editor: types including annual direct debit; George Penaluna Ian Kirk-Smith monthly payment by direct debit [email protected] £7.25; online only £69 per year. 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AThis is important to remember, because very often a large step for peace, such as attempting to disarm warplanes at a BAE Systems base or sailing into a nuclear test zone to try to prevent a nuclear detonation, is a long way along a path that began with the simple step of refusing to go along with the crowd. Nonviolent resistance is all about achieving your goals without resorting to violence. It is often assumed to be idealistic and unrealistic, as the situations that tend to get raised when discussing alternatives to military action are at the very extreme end of the spectrum, where nonviolence seems useless: enemies with no limits to their brutality and no willingness to compromise. Nonviolent resistance is also assumed to be idealistic and unrealistic because people don’t know much about it – ask them and they may be able to name the Indian campaign for independence led by Mohandas Gandhi or the American Civil Rights Movement, but they probably don’t link these all together (even though Martin Luther King Junior took direct inspiration from Gandhi’s example) and almost certainly don’t give them the title of ‘nonviolent action’. This is a pity, because nonviolence works. In a book analysing every violent and nonviolent resistance campaign between 1900 and 2006 (and there were 323 of them), Erica Chenoweth and Maria J Stephan found that nonviolent campaigns were significantly more likely to achieve their outcomes than violent ones – over half of all nonviolent campaigns were successful, with almost eighty per cent at least partially successful. In contrast, just one quarter of the violent campaigns were successful. Nonviolent campaigns, also, tend to involve a far larger number of people than violent campaigns, so there is less risk of a minority imposing its ideas on the majority. In contrast to assumptions about nonviolence being useless against repressive regimes, successful nonviolent campaigns have taken place in countries all along the freedom- repression spectrum. And nonviolent campaigns are considerably more likely to lead to stability after victory, and avoid a relapse into conflict or civil war. Some of this may seem like common sense – if you use participatory methods that empower the masses in your campaign, people are probably more likely to support and be familiar with democracy as a legitimate way of resolving differences; if you are trying to change the hearts and minds of the population, rather than cow them with weaponry, then they are more likely to want to stick with whatever you set up afterwards. But it is valuable to have the numbers and the figures to back up the ideas, and to show that this isn’t something that has just happened once or twice over the last century, but a method that has been used, successfully, again and again and again. So, whatever we remember on Armistice Day or at any other time, let’s remember not just what happened, but also what worked. Oliver Robertson Mid-Thames Area Meeting Oliver is development manager at the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the ecumenical Christian peace charity the Friend, 10 November 2017 3 News reported by Harry Albright [email protected] Quakers send white poppies to Scottish politicians QUAKERS IN Scotland have joined with the inevitable. It is important to hold witness to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, devastating effect of war on all nations, as well as to the Peace Pledge Union, and the Edinburgh Peace and civilians, communities, children and families – the Justice Centre to send nearly 200 white poppies to white poppy represents this.’ Scottish MEPs, MSPs in the Scottish Parliament and Britain Yearly Meeting said in a statement: ‘Quakers Scottish MPs in Westminster. have compassion for all those affected by war, Mairi Campbell-Jack, Scottish parliamentary including injured and disabled military and civilians engagement officer for Quakers in Britain, said: everywhere, and their families… In these sombre days ‘Quakers are led by faith to believe that war is not of Remembrance, many wear red or white poppies.’ Paul Oestreicher to Banner kits Northern FRIENDS give peace lecture Peace Board (NFPB) member Allison Challen has put together a new QUAKER PAUL Oestreicher will be giving the set of one-person peace Lord Mayor’s Annual Peace Lecture on 13 November banner kits that include at Coventry Cathedral. The lecture is entitled ‘Justice the fabric and instructions. and peace – can we have both?’ The kits are available for Paul Oestreicher, who is also an Anglican priest, £10 each from the NFPB. is a former director of the International Centre for Reconciliation, based at Coventry Cathedral. Remembrance In 2011 he gave the keynote speech on the abolition of war at the World Council of Churches International peace vigil Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) in Kingston, Jamaica. FRIENDS will be among A lifelong pacifist, he was co-founder of the those joining a silent vigil Anglican Pacifist Fellowship in New Zealand. on 11 November (11am David Fish, of Coventry Meeting, said: ‘Coventry to 11:45am) in London’s Quakers are so pleased to welcome Paul back to Trafalgar Square outside Coventry to give this keynote annual lecture. the National Gallery. The ‘The lecture will be part of the annual Coventry vigil, offering a witness to Peace Festival and is timed to coincide with peace, will follow on from Remembrance Sunday and a visit to Coventry by the two-minute silence delegates from Kiel city council as part of the ongoing at 11am organised by the reconciliation work.’ Royal British Legion. Allison Challen. of one the peace banners. Photo courtesy An example ‘Quaker Quicks’ for 2018 QUNO’s ‘Negotiator’s Toolkit’ John HUNT PUblishing is THE QUAKER UNITED experts voices in a number of launching a new series of Quaker books, Nations Office (QUNO) has climate change-related sectors. called ‘Quaker Quicks’. The first three created ‘A Negotiator’s Toolkit’ The summaries are based on titles will be Quaker Roots and Branches to support climate negotiators in presentations given at a side event by John Lampen, What do Quakers their work to engage government in May 2017, during the climate believe? by Geoffrey Durham and The officials with reasons for urgent, change conference in Bonn. The Guided Life by Craig Barnett. The rights-based action on climate toolkit, which is a working draft, series will be launched at the Quaker change. The booklet offers can be downloaded from the Bookshop in 2018. eight summaries compiled from QUNO website. 4 the Friend, 10 November 2017 Report Conscience and dissent Jane Dawson writes about the ‘Remembering Muted Voices’ symposium ansas City, Missouri was once the western those who died, in every nation’. Quaker silence and frontier of the United States. The sprawling Mennonite prayers were included. Mississippi flanks its border with the state of Initially America was reluctant to enter the war. The KKansas. It marks a boundary, the former division explosion of the military infrastructure during and between the Northern states (the Union) and the slave- immediately after the war fuelled an economic boom. owning states of the South. This overcame the natural isolationism of the US, As the gathering point for pioneer trails out to the making it politically expedient to become a player on west of the US, Kansas City has always been a melting the world stage.