Bristol Friends focus on reparations

'The group also hoped to start bridging the gap between their mainly white Quaker Meetings, and local African heritage communities.'

Bristol Quakers have been putting the issue of reparations under the spotlight. More than eighty people joined a two-part reparations workshop at Redland Meeting House on 24 February and 23 March.

Julie Bush, from Redland Meeting, told the Friend: ‘Bristol is an unusual city, both because of its notorious history as Britain’s leading slave port in the early eighteenth century, and because it was the first British city to make a formal commitment to reparative justice for those impacted by transatlantic chattel slavery.’

The aim of the two-part workshop was ‘to bring together a wide range of local people for an extended discussion of a controversial and sensitive subject’. The group also hoped to start bridging the gap between their mainly white Quaker Meetings, and local African heritage communities. This was ‘an essential step towards any meaningful Quaker work on reparations’, said Julia Bush, who paid tribute to the contribution from Esther Stanford-Xosei, a director of the Maangamizi Educational Trust.

During the first workshop, the gathering learnt more about the history of the reparations movement. ‘Esther drew on deep personal experience to explain her belief that reparations means “repair” – leaving the world better through creative healing, restoration and empowerment,’ said Julia. ‘She explained the United Nations model for reparations (2005) and commented on connections to climate justice and repair of the world. In the second session we spent much time sharing information about what is already happening in Bristol, and our hopes and plans for the future.’

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