Letters - 22 September 2023
From DSEI arms fair witness to Prisons
DSEI arms fair witness
After attending the No Faith in Arms day at the DSEI (Defence and Security Equipment International) arms fair in London, I am trying to process two unexpected and discombobulating aspects of our day of witness.
First, the turnout: in 2019 approximately 800 Friends joined others from many faiths and none to protest during the week leading up to this despicable event, hoping to physically block the delivery of services and equipment being put in place. Last week saw not many more than fifty, and fewer than 100, Friends at the site. Members of other faiths were also fewer in number, even including a small number of Buddhist monks.
Why the dramatic drop in numbers? Was it the heat (which was intense)? Was it a post-Covid reluctance to travel? Or the war in Ukraine?
DSEI sells deadly weapons and equipment indiscriminately to any regime, no matter what its human rights record. If our Peace Testimony lies at the heart of our Quaker identity, then bearing witness here might be seen as a crucial part of our faith in action.
The second disquieting aspect of the day occurred during our open-air Meeting for Worship at 1pm, when a young Friend contributed – I can’t describe it as ministry – with a call to follow the pre-briefing we had all received. She listed the various injunctions, ‘Do not speak to the police, the police are not our friends’, ‘If questioned, always respond with No Comment’, encouraging us all to echo back what she was shouting.
Many of us had been uncomfortable with the guidance to not speak to the police, and only reluctantly went along with what was being asked of us. To hear the same guidance ‘preached’, with no spiritual context, during a period of very public worship, felt like a line had been crossed. No longer were we worshipping, we were protesting. And how could we ask the police to honour our worship as they stood alongside us, hearing these words?
The organisers, Quaker Roots, have put an enormous amount of careful thought into planning a week of radical protest. May we never lose sight of the spirit-led basis to our witness.
Charlotte Allen
The scent of gentleness
Angela Greenwood (1 September) powerfully gave us this quote from Sufi Elias Amidon: ‘We can learn how to open into openness… by following the scent of gentleness. We can feel this “gentleness” spontaneously and directly in our bodies… Let that gentleness take you. Whatever stories, fears, or grief might trouble your daily life, whatever pains or depressions… give them to gentleness.’ Angela appropriately links this to our Advice to ‘follow the promptings of love and truth in our hearts’.
Recently a Friend and I were sharing how painful it had been for each of us – in different Meetings – when Friends became entrenched in bitter animosity.
She felt what might have gone wrong was that those Friends forgot the Advice: ‘Think it possible that you may be mistaken.’
These embattled situations might never have happened, if those Friends could have allowed gentleness to take them. The significant learning for me is to bear these teachings in mind in my daily life.
It’s a great deal easier to wish that others could consider they might be wrong, and behave with gentleness, than it is for me to swallow my pride, and admit my mistakenness.
Gillie Bolton
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