Call for equality continues to resonate

Friends met to review the first Quaker Equality Week

Twenty-seven Friends met at Central Manchester Meeting House on 20 June to review the first Quaker Equality Week.

Area Meetings represented included East Cheshire, Hardshaw and Mann, Lancashire Central and North, Manchester and Warrington (M&W), and North Wales. Suzanne Ismail and Maya Williams of Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) also took part.

Among the topics discussed were what issues to tackle next and how best to take the campaign forward. Attendees considered Minute 36 of Britain Yearly Meeting 2015. This is a call to equality, asking Friends and Meetings to engage with the evil of social and economic injustice that creates a world in which the wrong things are valued.

Organiser Elizabeth Coleman told the Friend: ‘Much of our activity in future months will be to work to try to ensure that Minute 36 leads to action, and our final minute asked Manchester and Warrington Social Justice Group, together with other Friends, to consider how Minute 36 can be made a reality in our Meetings.’

‘We intend that much work will be done before the next major gathering – the Road Maps to Equality conference in Birmingham on 24 October.’ Elizabeth told the Friend that Lancaster Quakers were well represented, and spoke of their Living Wage campaign.

Quaker Equality Week took place from 6 to 15 March 2015. More than eighty Meetings across the country took part in the M&W Area Meeting initiative. Activities ranged from vigils to letter-writing workshops (see the Friend, 20 March).

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