the5 March 2021 | £2.00Friend ‘The cultural legacies of colonialism need to be held accountable.’ Nim Njuguna’s letter to a white anti-racist ally Please help Zimbabwe get through Covid Covid 19 has had a signifi cant impact in Zimbabwe - including lockdowns, school closures, inadequate access to healthcare, food insecurity, water and electricity shortages. In all, there has been a signifi cant deepening of inequalities. On the plus side, the rains have been good, and the 2021 harvest (in May) looks promising. Friends of Hlekweni funded a successful series of Alternatives to Violence (AVP) peace workshops last year with more planned. Work is well underway on a Zimbabwean schools Peace Club manual. Can you please help Friends of Hlekweni to target funds on the needs our partners tell us about, eg: • 20p buys a child a hot meal at lunchtime when schools are open • 75p buys a protective face mask and a bar of soap • £20 buys a memory stick, solar torch and data for a secondary student learning at home • £25 buys a robust desk or chair • £600 funds an AVP course for 25+ participants. FRIENDS OF HLEKWENI R/C 112659 (exact wording/spacing) Co op Bank, Sort code 08 92 99 a/c 65319891 or send a cheque to FoH, Quaker Centre, 1 Oakley Gardens, Milton Keynes MK15 9BH. Please Gift Aid if you can. Young people from Bulawayo celebrate www.friendsofhlekweni.org.uk [email protected] their success in an AVP course. Quaker Action on Domestic Abuse A new Facebook group, open to all Meetings, Friends and Attenders, to: 4 create a UK network 4 raise awareness amongst ourselves 4 encourage local and national action 4 increase the impact of our actions Between us, we can make a difference! Follow ‘Quaker Action on Domestic Abuse’ on Facebook Email: [email protected] Convened by Gloucestershire Area Quaker Meeting the INDEPENDENTFriend QUAKER JOURNALISM SINCE 1843 5 March 2021 | Volume 179, No 10 www.thefriend.org News 4 Peace campaigning and more Rebecca Hardy Letters 6 Home delivery 8 All over Samuel Robins’ shop Robert Ashton Thought for the week 9 Keeping it to yourself Abigail Maxwell An incomplete project 10 Letter to a white anti-racist ally Nim Njuguna Monumental failure 12 The long end to plantation slavery Fred Ashmore Review 14 Wilding Simon Webb Review 16 How Long, How Long Must We Wait? Hugh Dennis Friends & Meetings 17 ‘Being aware of injustice and doing little about it condones that injustice. Friends kept slaves until John Woolman persuaded them that it was wrong to do so. Should we not ask ourselves if we are in a parallel situation today?’ Meeting for Sufferings’ Statement of Intent on Racism, 1988 From Quaker faith & practice 23.36 commanding officer at the and final. We have no News Harrogate college, where more info on whys and new recruits are trained, wherefores, but we suspect [email protected] told The Guardian last it’s that the CPS cannot year that many came from justify such another troubled backgrounds. colossal waste of public ‘A third of the college money persecuting us, Army criticised for everyday militarism, with are what you’d describe especially at this time. misusing ‘language of the army seeing young as really disadvantaged, ‘For now, all of us will female empowerment’ women as a vulnerable excluded from school, be claiming back all our A teenage Friend has group who they can target.’ behavioural issues, train tickets to Chelmsford criticised the UK army Farah, seventeen, a perhaps brought up by that cost us an arm and for misusing the language PPU member in Essex, grandparents,’ he said. a leg, some of us will be of female empowerment echoed these sentiments The army was criticised working with These Walls to target pro-military and highlighted research in 2019 for its ‘Snowflake’ Must Fall to call out racist messages at girls and in 2006 that found that campaign aimed at reporting systems and I young women. one in seven women in the reversing the long trend am personally going to be The army has been British armed forces had of falling recruits. The doing more workshops on advertising three of its experienced a ‘particularly campaign controversially sustaining our resistance, online gatherings as upsetting’ experience of targeted ‘snowflakes’, mixing radicalism and ‘inspirational, empowering sexual bullying. ‘In 2016, ‘selfie addicts’ and ‘phone anti-racism with the Work female discussion events’. a female army officer was zombies’ which helped That Reconnects.’ Quaker Anya Nanning recorded telling women the military hit its annual The ‘Stansted Fifteen’ Ramamurthy joined other joining up that they target for recruits for the protestors won their Peace Pledge Union (PPU) “should all be aspiring to first time in six years. appeal in January campaigners in arguing meet the male standard”. In 2020 it also relaxed against terrorism-related that this was ‘patronising’, This toxic and male- its recruitment criteria, convictions for stopping ‘insulting’ and ‘misleading’. dominated environment making it easier for a deportation flight from The events run by the will never be somewhere I overweight or unfit people taking off in 2017. The fourth infantry brigade turn to feel empowered as or those with asthma and Court of Appeal said: ‘The are aimed at fourteen- to a young woman,’ she said. eczema to join. appellants should not have sixteen-year-old girls and, The UK is the only been prosecuted [under later, women in their late country in Europe to No Supreme Court for this act]… There was, in teens and early twenties. recruit people as young ‘Stansted Fifteen’ truth, no case to answer.’ ‘I’m appalled that the army as sixteen into the armed The Crown Prosecution is claiming to empower forces. Nearly thirty per Service (CPS) has Fundraiser for Quaker women. The army is not cent of those enlisted in confirmed that it will not garden a space where anyone 2018 were sixteen- and be taking the successful Richmond Meeting has is empowered,’ said the seventeen-year-olds. appeal won by the launched a fundraiser to nineteen-year-old member Recruits are also more ‘Stansted Fifteen’ earlier raise money to restock its of Tottenham Meeting. likely to come from poorer this year to the Supreme Meeting house garden. ‘By its nature, the army is backgrounds, such as Court. Quaker Lyndsay Antonia Swinson, violent and abusive. You on the edges of cities in Burtonshaw, a member from the Meeting, told are stripped of your rights, the north of England, of the group, shared the the Friend that the your personality and your according to the Child news on social media on Pledges4Plants initiative self. Not empowered! Rights International 25 February. ‘No more involves local Friends This is yet another case of Network (CRIN). A trials!’ they tweeted. pledging ways to ‘bring The Brighton Quaker cheer and camaraderie in told the Friend: ‘We were these dark lockdown days’. WORDS told the Crown will not She said: ‘The series ask permission for the kicked off in January Court of Appeal to certify with a dramatic reading, ‘Really disadvantaged, a point for consideration via Zoom, of Robert by the Supreme Court. Burns’ poem “Tam O The Crown will not pursue Shanter” by Richmond excluded from school, the case in the Magistrates’ Friend Ella Swinson Reid, Court,so we are not being who was brought up in behavioural issues.’ prosecuted further for Scotland. February sees How a commanding officer describes a aggravated trespass and a timely “Introduction third of new army recruits. the appeal is successful to Mindfulness”, while 4 the Friend 5 March 2021 in March Friends will be “connection point” for NUMBERS treated to a suitably spine- sharing ideas and assisting chilling lecture on “What collaborative working.’ Makes A Gothic Novel?’’’ The TPNW was ratified She added: ‘All proceeds on 22 January when will help restock the Honduras became the 1 in 7 garden with suitably fiftieth state to sign the Quakerly plants, including treaty in October 2020, The number of women who said they had a ‘particularly the “Compassion” pink meaning that the bill came upsetting’ experience of sexual bullying in the UK army. climbing rose; the yellow into force as international “Peace” rose, olive trees for law. The UK government breakout rooms. We have company’, including Peace; “Quakeress” (daisy- is still refusing to engage lots of offers for this from Rowan Williams, like flowers); Lavender for with the treaty. weighty Friends from Matthew Fox and Gynthia silence and calm; Salvia Children from London. We really hope Bougeault. In ‘The Quaker for thoughtfulness; and Nailsworth Meeting also that this new meeting Way’ (available at https:// Quaking grass (Briza celebrated the ratification will help bring London tinyurl.com/nomadjk), media).’ of the UN treaty, which Friends together – and Jennifer Kavanagh talks has now been signed London Friends Together of her journey from her Peace billboard in by more than eighty is the name we have given Anglican childhood Manchester city centre countries. Clerk of the the new meeting.’ roots to discovering Billboard posters Meeting Colin Gerard The meeting is seen the Religious Society of highlighting the said: ‘This is a big step as a particularly good Friends as an adult. She United Nations Treaty forward in ridding the opportunity as LQ also discusses ‘how to be on the Prohibition world of the threat of consider new ways of part of a Christian religion of Nuclear Weapons nuclear weapons. It is governing themselves. A without being a Christian, (TPNW) have been a shame that the UK small organising group of how to have a church posted in Manchester government has refused to Fred Ashmore and Leasa without a leader, and what city centre, thanks sign, and the next step is Lambert (clerks of LQ), not to call the queen’.