'Folk with the same religious beliefs often come to quite different political decisions.'
Body politic: Friends should be careful how they campaign, says Clive Ashwin
‘This understanding of political campaigning points to a mistaken presumption.’
The first thing I remember being told about Quakerism, more than sixty years ago now, was when an elderly Quaker advised me that Quakerism was not about politics.
I was quite a political animal at that time. I had served in the Mediterranean during the disastrous Suez campaign. I was actively involved in Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which I saw as an inevitable corollary of the Quaker Peace Testimony. My Meeting was on the route of the marches against the atomic weapons research establishment at Aldermaston, and I organised accommodation for the marchers at our Meeting house. I tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade the Meeting to raise money to buy a serviceman out of his military contract. My political commitment was so deep and outspoken that I was cautioned by an elder that I could become a divisive force in the Meeting.
Today I am still a quite political animal, but now I recognise the deep wisdom in the words of that elderly Friend who advised me of maintaining the distinction between faith and politics, and I am becoming concerned at the way in which the two are increasingly confused and conflated within religious communities, including the Quakers.
This issue is best approached by looking at specific examples, one in particular. There is a body called ‘Quakers in Britain’ which is the name used by Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) to pronounce and campaign on political matters, in the light of guidance from Yearly Meeting, Meeting for Sufferings, and related committees. I shall italicise the body called Quakers in Britain to distinguish it from the Quaker community living in Britain.
Quakers in Britain conducted a vigorous and outspoken campaign in opposition to a bill called the Policing, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (PCSC), recently turned into an act of parliament. Throughout the stages of the bill, Quakers in Britain played a prominent part in the media, and on the internet, opposing it, with repeated claims that it was, among other things, designed to prevent legitimate protest and end, or curtail, freedom of assembly and peaceful demonstration.
Parliamentary bills are not easy reading, but it seems clear from the published versions that this was not the intention or purpose of the bill. Rather, it attempted to address one growing phenomenon: the tactics of self-selected groups of demonstrators. These protestors are so convinced of the urgency of their cause that they feel they have the right not only to make their feelings known by demonstration, but to bring the normal life of their fellow citizens to a halt. They do this by blocking roads, destroying property, obstructing public transport, and even bringing whole towns or cities to a standstill in order to draw attention to their views. The cost to the public purse in terms of regulating these activities and rectifying damage often runs into millions of pounds. One purpose of the bill was to bring legislation up to date to deal with these new departures in the dynamics of political protest.
Similarly, a novelty of modern demonstrations is the unprecedented availability of cheap, portable public address apparatus. These large speakers systems are so loud that they can make any neighbouring enterprise inoperable – whether that be a shop, a school, a public building, a retirement home or a private residence. The bill attempted to put reasonable limits on the volume and duration of noise levels that demonstrators can employ.
These measures have, I feel, been widely misrepresented, including by Quakers in Britain, as an attempt to bring an end to public demonstrations. Clearly it was not. In fact, the bill explicitly emphasised, and upheld, its recognition of the democratic right to peaceful protest and demonstration.
Anyone outside the Quaker community might get the impression that those of us in Britain who espouse and follow the Quaker faith were unilaterally and adamantly opposed to the bill and all its intentions. But I do not know that this was remotely the case. In fact, it is possible that most people who identify with the Quaker community in Britain would actually reject the position that was expressed by Quakers in Britain.
Some of the key BYM staff members working on the campaign openly affirmed that they were not Quakers. Advertisements for appointments to Quakers in Britain that appear in the Friend also make clear that ‘You do not have to be a Quaker in order to apply for this post’. How can someone who has not committed themselves to a faith group act as a mouthpiece for the community they claim to serve?
This disturbing state of affairs has arisen from a growing disjunction. On the one hand we have Quakerism as it is understood and followed at the level of the individual in a Local Meeting. On the other, we have Quakerism as seen through the lens of BYM and its associated bodies. We have seen repeated expressions of this growing unease in the letters pages of this magazine.
Is Quakers in Britain beginning to resemble a kind of Frankenstein’s monster, created with the best of intentions, but now ranging over the media landscape at will with little or no real connection with or responsibility for the faith community it claims to represent?
More fundamentally, this understanding of political campaigning points to a mistaken presumption: that having a particular religious faith results in categorical consequences in political choices and actions. Folk with the same religious beliefs often come to quite different political decisions.
Our political choices and views must, of course, be determined in relation to our personal interpretation of the faith which we espouse. But it is profoundly mistaken to believe that such choices or views are the inevitable and unavoidable consequences of a faith for all those who follow it. Any attempt to impose a uniform political doctrine upon a faith community will end by destroying the very community it claims to represent.
In the words of the eighteenth-century MP Edmund Burke: ‘No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. Surely the church is a place where one day’s truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of [hu]mankind.’
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