Resistance movement: Rajan Naidu writes from prison

‘It is up to us whether we opt to remain bystanders.’

In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends – Martin Luther King Jr.

I am putting these words together in a small grubby cell – one I am sharing with another prisoner, who is twenty-one years old – in a Victorian wing of a prison. There is no writing surface. My fellow inmates have generally been friendly and well disposed towards me. Being locked up just under twenty-three hours a day has been much lightened by weekly Quaker group meetings. My thanks to Tricia Bradbury for her excellent chaplaincy here.

Routine indignities, privations, and minor (and not so minor) human rights violations tell us that the British penal system is rotten, antiquated and long overdue for thorough, independent review, and radical reform.

On September 14 I was one of fifty-one Just Stop Oil campaigners – five Quakers and three vicars among them – arrested for breaking an injunction. It was brought by North Warwickshire Borough Council, which, paradoxically, makes great play of how ‘green’ it is. The objective of the injunction is to shield fossil fuel corporations operating out of Kingsbury Oil Terminal from protests. But these acts are, in fact, not protests. They are acts of Nonviolent Civil Resistance (NCR) against rapacious corporations. These corporations are, purely for profit, knowingly and significantly contributing to the climate and ecological crisis, and the sixth mass extinction.

We take up NCR because, after decades of protest, rallies, marches, petitions, letters and phone calls lobbying politicians and corporations, there is still no effective democratic pathway that allows us, the great majority, to take back decision-making and policy-making powers. Over years these have been systematically stripped away from us, and transferred to an anti-democratic oligarchy of the wealthy. They are crushingly powerful, corrupt and corrupting, a tiny minority of our global population, the so called ‘one per cent’.

After our arrests I was put on remand for a week at HMP Hewell. On September 20, I was taken, with three fellow rebels, to Birmingham Crown Court, before high court judge Emma Kelly. We were representing ourselves, so each of us was permitted to make a statement in our defence. We chose not to do this but use the opportunity to say why we had done what we did, and that we would, whatever the verdict and sentence, continue. I appealed to the judge and everyone in court to join our struggle for climate-social justice.

My friends were fined and had to pay costs but told they could leave. I, because this was my third breach of the injunction, was sentenced to thirty-four days (which meant seventeen days with ‘good behaviour’) in HMP Birmingham. My release date was October 6.

The fact that we are in a deepening climate crisis has made very little impression on those who have the capability to bring about the healing reforms and structural changes we so urgently need. Rather, they are frustrating and blocking them – at least to judge by their grossly irresponsible actions and inactions.

The global movement for climate-social justice can, I believe, only succeed if it is rooted fast in humane values that will be familiar to Quakers.

Simplicity helps us recognise that selfishness, greed and consumerism are responsible for most of our gravest ills and injustices.

Peace shows us we need each to work on ourselves and with one another if we are to have a society based on nonviolence and the healing of hurts. We need restorative justice to be an integral part of that work.

Truth and integrity must be a basic requirement of decision makers as much as of ourselves.

Community reminds us that we are all in this together. We are all crew. It is up to all of us to build, nurture and lovingly maintain the diverse, friendly, inclusive communities we need.

Equity means recognising and ensuring that the needs of all – especially those who might be vulnerable or feel marginalised – are, as far as possible, fully met.

Sustainability is now a matter of survival. We need to learn, quickly, how to live lightly on this beautiful, finite planet of ours. This will mean learning to identify and reject the corporate ‘green washing’ and neocolonialism that has replaced military occupation and slavery as the scourge of the environment. This especially damages the peoples of the global south.

We need to bring and develop truly democratic processes at every level of society. To that end we need to initiate an era of people’s assemblies and, as demanded by Extinction Rebellion, citizens’ assemblies. Power must be taken back by the people – all the people.

Quakers have immense potential, which I hope will be realised, to contribute very significantly to developing the ethos of the global movement for climate-social justice. We must make sure it is grounded firmly in love, compassion and nonviolence.

In these fleeting moments, there is an opportunity opening up for Quakers to have positive influence and agency far beyond our numbers. People will only listen to us if we are fully and actively with them in the global struggle. That may mean that we are occasionally called to live a little adventurously.

Quakers have to be far more than ‘nice people’ if we are to come anywhere close to being the patterns and examples that our world so badly needs.

Since I have been in prison, I have received many kind messages of support and feel very much held in the Light. I have read the closing minute of the Living Witness Gathering (see 30 September). I hope Local Meetings will make time and space for reading and discussing this highly motivating document. My hope is that it will be a tinderbox of inspiration, a call to action.

We all start off as bystanders to injustices great and small. It is up to us, though, whether we opt to remain bystanders. It is, without a doubt, a great leap of faith, to trust, following discernment and our leadings, that giving up our security – perhaps our liberty and maybe more – can make us all freer. n

Rajan dictated the article over the telephone.

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Comments

I am disturbed by the thought of someone having to spend 23 hours a day in a cell. My understanding is that people can be held in these conditions for months on end. This is an aspect of the prison system which has not changed in years.

By Richard Pashley on 13th October 2022 - 9:17

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Living Witness Gathering at Woodbrooke, 26-29 August 2022

All Change! Making paths on shifting ground

Closing Minute

We are 63 Quakers gathered from across Britain, with a sense of urgency and under concern.

Addressing all Friends, as far as we can reach. We will outline our experience, own our own response, and issue a call to action.

We have heard clearly, with hope and excitement as well as fear and grief, an acute sense that this is an extraordinary time – a time of enormous challenge which can change us profoundly in ways we need to change. It is the great, holy work of our time, it is our privilege to be part of it and we must prepare our spirit for what is coming.

The climate and ecological crisis changes everything.

We value the work which is being done by Yearly Meeting staff and Woodbrooke on climate justice and encourage Friends to participate. We also see clearly that there is a need for grassroots action/response to the climate and ecological crisis in addition to that currently embodied in YM and Woodbrooke structures.

Local and area meetings are aware of the urgency and much is happening, both within Quakerism and beyond. Meeting for Worship isn’t just a place to feel comfortable, but a crucible in which we scrutinize our lives and see how they can be aligned more closely to our faith.

Arising from this gathering we know that there isn’t one right thing to do, the important thing is to do our best, and not give up. We each commit to listen to each other, love and support each other, work and worship together. We will find ways to ground ourselves and heal ourselves, and build resilience and inclusion wherever we can.

We carry forward from this gathering many strands of work, both large and small. We recognise that injustice in the ownership and control of resources raises questions about our entire political and economic system. We commit to work with children and young people; we have a concern to address the current cost-of-living crisis, including offering our meeting houses as warm refuges; we make a commitment to support those taking direct action; we will respond to promptings to work more on food and biodiversity; and we are led to support local communities in becoming carbon neutral, alongside many other ideas and actions.

We believe Faith groups can take a lead which will help the nation listen, and Quakers must play our part in this. We would like to see an Interfaith commitment to climate justice leading up to the next general election so that incoming government is clearly focused on this issue.

The last time Quakerism renewed itself was the 1895 conference which became the basis of 20th century liberal Quakerism. Quakers had to reorientate their faith.

Today, we are a similar position. Rather than evolutionary science tearing up our sense of the past, we hear the prophetic voice of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is tearing up our sense of the future and ending the notion of the inevitability of growth.

The science and the events it chronicles, together with our increasing awareness of the legacy of extractive colonialism, are once again calling on us to renew our faith. This is the context of our gathering. We open ourselves to this pregnant sense of the present. Quakers and Living Witness can be midwives of the spirit.

The universe is participatory, there are no bystanders. Our commitment to climate justice encourages us to see everything we do as something which is of god or against god. We are called to be whole with creation and act on the Truth which we find.

https://livingwitness.org.uk/hd/

By Rajan on 13th October 2022 - 13:58

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Captive State - The corporate takeover of Britain

By George Monbiot. Published 2000.

George Monbiot uncovers what many have suspected but few have been able to prove: that corporations have become so powerful they now threaten the foundations of democratic government. Many of the stories he recounts have never been told before, and they could scarcely be more embarrassing to a government that claims to act on behalf of all of us. Captive State is a devastating indictment of the corruption which which our political leaders have succumbed.

To buy, from an independent bookstore:
https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/George-Monbiot/Captive-State—The-Corporate-Takeover-of-Britain/15162752

Reviews:
https://www.monbiot.com/2003/10/01/captive-state-the-corporate-takeover-of-britain/

By Rajan on 13th October 2022 - 14:06

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The Uninhabitable Earth - David Wallace-Webb

Not all worst case scenarios come to pass, but it is sometimes worth bearing them in mind, just in case we find ourselves getting close to them and still have time to take resolving or evasive action.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

To buy, from an independent bookstore:
https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/David-Wallace-Wells/The-Uninhabitable-Earth—A-Story-of-the-Future/24128122

By Rajan on 13th October 2022 - 14:28

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