Stonehenge protest. Photo: Courtesy Just Stop Oil.
2024 news round-up
Rebecca Hardy rounds up a lively year of Quaker news
2024 was a lively Quaker year, with Yearly Meeting swiftly followed by Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC)’s World Plenary in South Africa, as well as ongoing celebrations for George Fox’s 400th anniversary.
In a year that also included a UK general election, with a new Labour government, and a new US president elected, Quakers barely paused for breath. The Society had dramatic changes of its own, including the decision to lay down Meeting for Sufferings and move to a continuing Yearly Meeting. Friends also agreed to the principle that attenders could take on roles on central committees (except for as Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) trustees).
War and peace
The year was dominated by conflict in Gaza and Ukraine. In February, Friends marked the two-year anniversary of war in Ukraine with an extended international worship for peace. ‘The war continues,’ said Julie Harlow, a Quaker in California, who set up the Meeting after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. There was ‘a new sense of sadness and anger that the war in Ukraine seems to drag on endlessly. And that the atrocities in Gaza and Israel have taken attention away from this other horrific war’.
As the war continued, a group of Quakers marked the International Day of Peace in October by creating a Meeting of Friends of Ukraine.
There was similar despondency about the situation in Gaza. By April, American Friends Service Committee in Gaza had provided life-saving aid to more than 475,156 displaced people in the areas of Deir El-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah. It pledged to reach tens of thousands more people.
When the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled ‘there is a plausible risk Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza’, BYM told Rishi Sunak, the then-prime minister, to ‘suspend all UK arms sales and military support to Israel immediately’, or ‘risk complicity in genocidal acts’. After Meeting for Suffering’s discernment, BYM aligned itself with the ruling in October, agreeing that ‘apartheid’ is an accurate description of the situation in occupied Palestine, and acknowledged that there is a ‘plausible risk of genocide’ in Gaza.
BYM welcomed the new UK government’s suspension of some arms exports to Israel in September, but called for a full ban. Meanwhile the Northern Friends Peace Board (NFPB) compiled a book of reflections on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and Quakers witnessed for peace at the Telford Arms Fair; the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall; Menwith Hill; RAF Croughton; and other locations. When Friends joined peace camps at RAF Lakenheath to protest against the return of US nuclear weapons, there were renewed calls for the government to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Friends welcome new government
In July, BYM joined
twenty-two other signatories in congratulating Keir Starmer on his appointment as prime minister, after a dramatic general election in which the Labour Party won a landslide victory.
The letter urged him to tell the House of Commons that all ministers and MPs must follow the Nolan Principles of standards in public life, and that he should act decisively on any breaches. The new prime minister was also encouraged to put in place the new Ethics and Integrity Commission, and enforce an immediate halt to arms transfers to Israel’s government.
Paul Parker, recording clerk for BYM, said the change of government was ‘an opportunity to rebuild trust in our democracy’ and ‘clean up’ politics.
Pledging to uphold the six Quaker MPs elected to parliament, BYM said: ‘Our Friends serve in difficult times.’
The Quaker MPs included: Steffan Aquarone (Lib Dem MP for North Norfolk); Ruth Cadbury (Labour MP for Brentford & Isleworth); Carla Denyer (Green Party co-leader and MP for Bristol Central); Josh Fenton-Glynn (Labour MP for Calder Valley); Catherine West (Labour MP for Hornsey & Friern Barnet); and Yuan Yang (Labour MP for Earley & Woodley).
Carla Denyer, a former member of Young Friends General Meeting, became Bristol’s first Green MP when she defeated Quaker Thangam Debbonaire in the newly-created Bristol Central seat. Meanwhile, Yuan Yang, a former journalist, became the UK’s first Chinese-born MP.
Quakers worked hard in the run-up to the general election, with Meeting houses hosting local hustings for other organisations, including in Bournemouth, Boscombe, Brighton, Cardiff and Stevenage. Norwich Friends invited local parliamentary candidates to a ‘Question Time’, focusing on peace and the environment.
Friends respond to racist violence
The summer was also overshadowed by racist, anti-migrant and Islamophobic violence which erupted in parts of the UK. Quakers across the country reached out to local mosques to show solidarity, and to support those affected. With riots in many UK towns and cities, and mosques and Muslim businesses attacked, Friends worked with migrant support groups to sow seeds of peace. BYM said it was ‘shocked and saddened’ by the violence: ‘We hold in the Light everyone feeling scared right now… We know that hate doesn’t just erupt and that its seeds are often sown in advance. We know that there will be no quick and easy solutions, this requires long-term work and commitment.’
In light of the violence, Northern Friends Peace Board (NFPB) and BYM staff held an impromptu online space where Friends considered the roots of ‘hurt and alienation… and building bridges of understanding’. NFPB supported BYM’s new Quaker Peacebuilding Network, which includes online meetings for Friends to share ‘experiences, difficulties and dilemmas’ and develop ideas. Many of NFPB’s members had been ‘very shaken by recent events’, said Philip Austin, convenor of NFPB. ‘Many of the towns and cities where there has been the worst violent and racist unrest in the past ten days have been in the north of England.’
He also urged Friends engaged in witness in areas of conflict to ‘pay attention to their own safety as well as compassion for all affected’.
The Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network (QARN) also responded to the events by posting safety-planning guidance for people feeling unsafe.
The riots came in the same month that BYM said the UK must do more to tackle racism, in a review by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
Quakers continue climate witness
As the year wound on, Friends rallied to call for urgent action on the growing environmental catastrophe facing the planet. Quakers backed campaigns including Insure our Future, Stop Ecocide International, and Make Polluters Pay, while others joined the Quaker-founded climate choir.
There was controversy in June when a Quaker was one of two Just Stop Oil (JSO) protestors arrested for spraying orange powder paint on Stonehenge on the eve of the summer solstice. ‘The paint is made of cornstarch, which will wash away in the rain,’ JSO said – unlike ‘the catastrophic consequences of the climate and ecological crisis’, it added.
Friends joined hundreds in the international Global Week of Action for Peace and Climate Justice in September, pressing for finance to help countries cope with climate breakdown. The world’s militaries were responsible for 5.5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, campaigners said.
In Scotland, Quakers in Edinburgh called for a treaty on the nonproliferation of fossil fuels. ‘Show leadership on climate justice,’ BYM told the new Labour government, backing a letter from faith leaders for the ‘Make Polluters Pay’ week in early November. The letter was handed in to David Lammy, foreign secretary, at a multifaith vigil outside the Foreign Office, urging him to take the initiative at COP29 by contributing new funding – in grants, not loans – to the International Loss and Damage Fund. ‘When we factor in Britain’s colonial past, the UK is the fourth largest contributor to climate change,’ it said, noting how two fossil fuel giants, Shell and BP, enjoy ‘record-breaking profits’, while ‘many British households are struggling to heat their homes’.
Yet when the COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, ended in November, the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) said, overall, ‘the negotiations did not advance productively’, reporting ‘deep polarisation’, especially on climate finance. Negotiators had agreed to triple finance to developing countries, from the previous goal of US$100 billion annually, to US$300 billion annually by 2035. But critics slammed them for falling short of the US$1.3 trillion developing countries had asked for, and only pledging this as a target, with money from unverified sources.
On a more positive note, Friends celebrated in the summer when the government dropped a contempt case against Trudi Warner, who held a sign defending climate activists outside a London crown court in 2023, affirming jurors’ right to act on their conscience. By the end of 2024, however, BYM was still highlighting concerns about draconian sentences handed out to peaceful protesters, including five JSO demonstrators sentenced to four and five years in prison in August. ‘Britain leads the world in cracking down on climate activism,’ BYM said, highlighting ‘dozens of Quakers prosecuted for trying to draw attention to the climate emergency since the Police, Crime and Sentencing Act was passed in April 2022’.
