Issue 23-05-2014
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Conscience not creed
This year we’re beginning to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war. I was once asked by a national newspaper whether Quakers were pacifists as quite a few had refused to enlist in that war, believing that warfare was wrong. I tried to point out...
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Judith Kirton-Darling
‘I remember when I was at QCEA I went to a meeting of the Council of Europe… and at dinner I was sitting at the table with a very elderly German lady and she asked where I was from. I said I was from the European Quakers and she burst...
Series - Conscription and conscience: Part two
Everyone knows what Quakers did in the 1914-18 war. Inspired by their historic Peace Testimony they were united in opposing it. While soldiers joined up to kill the enemy, Quakers chose to bind wounds rather than inflict them, to cure rather than kill, except that it was rather more complicated...
White Feather Diaries project launched
Friends from all over Britain converged on Friends House on 15 May to celebrate the launch of a major Quaker project. Quakers in Britain chose International Conscientious Objectors Day to introduce the four-year project to tell the suppressed stories of world war one: Cranks or heroes? Telling the untold stories...
Relatives remember COs
Conscientious Objectors (COs) of the first world war were remembered at a moving ceremony in Tavistock Square on 15 May, International Conscientious Objectors Day. Several hundred people gathered for a ceremony that included speeches, songs performed by the choir of a London school, the ‘naming of first world war conscientious...
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‘Day to remember’ at Friends House
David Blake, head of library and archives of Friends House Library, described 15 May as a ‘day to remember’ when he introduced an event in the afternoon to launch two books on the history of conscientious objection in Britain.
Quakers at Burghfield blockade
Quakers were among an eight-strong group of protesters who blocked a main entrance into the Atomics Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Burghfield, Berkshire, on Monday 19 May. The group sat down in the gateway at 7.20am and chained themselves together. Other protestors stood alongside them, offering support and liaising with police,...
Remembering forward
More than two hundred people from twenty-seven countries attended the recent conference ‘Why War?’ in celebration of forty years of Peace Studies at Bradford University. In 1974 the first postgraduate students arrived at Bradford’s new Department of Peace Studies, which was established by Quakers. The conference was organised by Caroline...
More engagement
It has been said many times in the Friend (often by self-identified nontheists) that the way to deal with ‘the nontheism question’ is to engage with it, and that is why I attended the recent Nontheist Friends’ Network (NFN) conference at Woodbrooke – despite holding more of the George Fox view...
Eye - 23 May 2014
Lessons from Woodbrooke Geese by Joan Patton The vocal geese by Woodbrooke lake Call loudly to each other – and may disturb our peace! But they do communicate! —maybe to argue, chastise or say, ‘I love...
Letters - 23 May 2014
Quaker Friends of Israel Like Sarah Lawson (2 May), some of the members of the Central England Peace Committee felt uneasy about the high-profile Quaker position on Israel, Palestine and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). We agreed that while the sufferings and tribulations of the Palestinians are clear and apparent, as...