Australian Friends fined for tea-party protest

Three 'Quaker Grannies' blockaded a military training session in Queensland, Australia

Three Australian Friends – known as ‘the Quaker Grannies’ – were fined 500 Australian dollars (£238) each for blockading a military training session in Queensland earlier this month.

Dawn Joyce, Jo Valentine and Helen Bayes held a tea party at the gates to the Shoalwater Bay Training Area to create dialogue with soldiers taking part in ‘Talisman Sabre’. The joint United States-Australia military exercise takes place in Australia every two years. Troops from New Zealand and Japan were among 34,000 military personnel taking part this year.

The three Friends were arrested and held overnight by Rockhampton police. Helen Bayes said: ‘The Quakers have a 335-year history of exercising democratic rights to create peace through dialogue. Peace can only be created through peaceful methods, not bombing and killing and making the other lose.’

Jo Valentine said: ‘This is not a game, this is war. Our children are taught to grow up with militarism as the norm and see billions being wasted war making.’

The Grannies belong to Peace Convergence, a coalition of individuals and diverse peace and justice groups which is opposed to the human, economic and environmental costs of war.

Graeme Dunstan of Peace Convergence told the Friend: ‘This national and international assertion of the Quaker peace tradition by these three Friends is not only an inspiration, nationally and internationally, for peace in this time of permanent war, but also an invigoration of Quakerism in this land.’

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