Latest News
American Friends win landmark environmental victory
A Quaker group has succeeded in stopping an American bank from investing in a controversial mining practice. EQAT – Earth Quaker Action Team – has been working since 2010 to deter PNC Bank from financing mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia.
Quaker Trust confirms end of controversial funding
The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT) has announced that it will not fund the campaign group Cage again. The decision was announced on 6 March and follows a request from the Charity Commission to JRCT and the Roddick Foundation for ‘unequivocal assurances’ that they ‘have ceased funding Cage and have no...
Quaker students in living wage campaign
Ten Friends are among those campaigning for the University of York to become a Living Wage-accredited employer. The university’s Labour Club, Socialist Society, Liberal Democrats and Greens have joined Friends in demanding that all university staff be paid a living wage.
Anti-fracking Friend arrested in Downing Street
Banbury Quaker Paul Mobbs was arrested on Thursday 5 March for blocking the entrance to Downing Street. He had hoped to make a citizen’s arrest of members of the government. Paul wanted to perform a citizen’s arrest because he believes that members of the government are guilty of misconduct...
QARN welcomes Detention Inquiry report
The findings of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into the Use of Immigration Detention in the United Kingdom Report have been welcomed by the Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network (QARN) as ‘a starting point for change’. Sarah Teather MP chaired the Inquiry. Its findings were released on 3 March and listed four...
FAU records made more accessible
Personnel records of the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) in the first world war are now available online. The records are free to access and cover FAU membership between 1914 and 1919.
New booklets highlight housing concern
The Quaker Housing Trust (QHT) has published two booklets in advance of the general election to highlight a concern over housing in Britain today.
Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and Cage
The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT) has defended its past funding of the campaign group Cage. In a press conference last week Asim Qureshi, research director of Cage, accused the security services of contributing to the ‘radicalisation’ of Mohammed Emwazi, the British militant who has featured in a number of...
BYM and ForcesWatch in joint statement
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has joined charity ForcesWatch in criticising a recent government resource for schools, that they feel promotes ‘military values’. The organisations used a written report and a graphic to argue that the British Armed Forces Learning Resource (published in September 2014 by the prime minister’s office) is...
Climate change highlighted
There are approximately two decades left to achieve the large-scale decarbonisation necessary to avoid dangerous climate change, Irish Friends were told recently in Cork by a leading researcher on climate change.