Commemoration events

Commemoration events at Yearly Meeting Gathering

Bearing light in commemoration

The second full day of Yearly Meeting Gathering coincided with the one hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of world war one. Friends were able to mark 4 August in a number of ways.

Light and darkness were at the heart of a very simple, creative and moving epilogue on Monday evening led by Young Friends General Meeting.

Young Friends chose to explore the historic words of Edward Grey, British foreign secretary from 1905 to 1916, that ‘the lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime’. These historic words were also the focus of ecumenical and interfaith events across the country that evening.

Several hundred Friends gathered in the large space outside the Big Top, forming a huge human ring, and the epilogue began with torches and lights being switched on by participants. A powerful silence was held throughout the epilogue. No words were spoken. The switching off of lights represented the beginning of the first world war. Finally, lights were switched on by participants to signify the end of the war and the start of peace and a period of hope.

It was a wonderful event and elder Friends expressed a deep sense of gratitude for the imagination and witness of Young Friends present.

One hundred years

A special commemoration took place in the Big Top. Friends of all ages listened to four readings, each representing a different Quaker perspective on the war.

The first was from a leaflet published by the Northern Friends Peace Board in August 1914. The writer lamented that all efforts to prevent war had been in vain, with the government ‘entangled as it has been by secret understandings and conversations’. He wrote that, although he trusted the war would be short, there might be a need for a Quaker corps ‘to share a message of love and good will’. The leaflet also referred to the war as ‘a great crime, against God, civilisation and humanity’.

The second reading was a letter from Andrew Fox, a member of a Quaker medical family. He wrote to his father that the Religious Society of Friends ‘had come to a parting of the ways’. The war, he felt, was forcing Quakers ‘to either stand aside or do what they can’.

‘I think that under certain circumstances, it is one’s duty to take up arms in just cause,’ he wrote. ‘My conscience lets me go, so it is my duty to go.’

Andrew died in October 1915.

The third reading was taken from a letter that appeared in The Times. It was written by British women, to their German and Austrian counterparts.

‘We wish to send you a word at this sad Christmastime,’ they wrote. Adding that ‘our very anguish unites us’, the women declared: ‘Come what may, we hold to our faith in peace and goodwill between nations.’

The final reading was taken from the epistle of the 1915 London Yearly Meeting. It acknowledged that not only fellow Christians, but even members of the Meeting, were actively supporting a war that they detested. ‘Only spiritual power can defend or advance the spiritual causes that matter to the world,’ the Meeting felt.

The commemoration also featured an evocative and much-loved piece of music. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending was inspired by his hearing the guns in France as he sat by the cliffs of Dover.

Friends attending the commemoration arrived to find a white cardboard feather on their seat. They later reflected on two questions –‘What can you do to make the world a happy and peaceful place?’ and ‘What does it mean to be a peacemaker?’ – before writing their answers on the feathers for discussion with their neighbours.

The White Feather Diaries

The White Feather Diaries website went live on Monday 4 August, formally launched at Bath Meeting House.

The guests were welcomed by Diana Francis, a member of Bath Meeting, who comes from a long line of Quaker conscientious objectors (COs). Diana introduced the five people whose stories form the White Feather Diaries: Bert Brocklesby, Hilda Clark, Howard Marten, John Hoare and Laurence Cadbury.

Each of the five approached their opposition to the war from a different perspective. Bert began it as a Methodist preacher, before his war-time experiences led him to Quakerism. Hilda was a pacifist and a doctor, and Howard a very modest man whose experiences were especially severe. John was a bishop’s son who found himself hauled up before his headmaster for becoming a pacifist, while Laurence’s membership of the Friends Ambulance Unit saw him serve at Ypres.

Emma Anthony, descended from COs, told the audience of Hilda’s early involvement with the war.

Hilda was especially concerned with civilian victims of war, and encouraged Meeting for Sufferings to appeal for volunteers to help women and children caught up in the conflict. She and her friend Edith Pye, a nurse, worked in France from the autumn of 1914.

Quaker writer Geoffrey Durham read from Howard Marten’s diary. Howard wrote movingly of the various punishments meted out to COs at Cinder Camp near Boulogne, culminating in his court martial, when he was taken to the centre of a packed parade ground and sentenced to death, which was not carried out.

Several of those present had met, and been significantly influenced by, Howard. Also in the audience for the launch was Marjorie Gaudie, daughter-in-law of Norman Gaudie, one of the Richmond Sixteen group of COs.

‘I’m sure he would have been amazed to think that the story of the conscientious objectors meant so much now. He did what he felt to be the right thing at the time’, Marjorie told the Friend.

The White Feather Diaries launch ended with a period of silence. Those attending left the Meeting house to the sound of a hymn drifting across the rooftops from the vigil at nearby Bath Abbey.

Quaker Service exhibition

Friends visiting the Big Top have also been able to see an exhibition commemorating Quaker Service. This explained the work of the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU), the Friends Relief Service (FRS) and Friends Relief Service Overseas. Photographs on display showed, amongst other things, FAU members receiving training and FRS members sewing the Quaker star to their uniforms. The exhibition also highlighted that Quakers’ war relief work continues to this day, mentioning the work of the Quaker United Nations Offices and Ecumenical Accompaniers in Palestine and Israel.

Short films about the FAU

As night drew in, one of a number of short films was shown on the green in the university campus. Created by Fiona Meadley, the ‘Friends Ambulance Unit projection shorts’ sought to bring to life the Quaker Peace Testimony as experienced during world war one.

A different film was shown each night and on 4 August a group of Friends quietly gathered on the grass to view one of these offerings.

Projected onto a wall, the film used photographs of people, places and activities to evoke a sense not just of who was involved in the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) but of what they would have seen and experienced.

Fiona spoke to Friends about how she, as an artist, had approached the piece. In addition to portraits of FAU members, she unearthed photographs in the Imperial War Museum image archives that corresponded with activities and locations referred to in Unit records.

The resulting film, made all the more poignant by its silence, produced a reflective atmosphere. Images of the faces of FAU members were interspersed with scenes of patients being tended, field hospitals in action and war-torn landscapes surrounding them.

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