‘This didn’t feel like an instruction but a prompting.’ Photo: by Tasha Jolley on Unsplash
Core studies: Fred Ashmore hears London Friends begin to address reparations
‘We emerged with a rich harvest of ideas.’
It seems a long time since Yearly Meeting (YM) in May. There all Meetings were asked to consider the minutes seriously. London Quakers didn’t get round to running an event to talk about what came out of YM22 until the end of October. But it was worth waiting a bit to get such a good day.
We titled the day ‘Learning from this year’s Swarthmore Lecture’. We knew that the talk had been a really good one, with plenty of challenge and bite about issues that really tax Quakers. These included racism, privilege, equity, reparations, colour blindness – you name it. We showed the recording of the lecture before the formal opening of our Meeting, and it was well worth hearing again to set the tone and stimulate thought. Helen Minnis is such a good speaker, and what she had to say contained lots of nuggets, including the subhead of our Meeting: ‘What truths are obvious but unseen?’
Our presentations started with Siobhán Haire talking about her experience as clerk of YM22. We were deeply grateful for her insights and perceptions. Maybe she too found it helpful to be asked to go back to that experience with the perspective of a few months thinking. Of the minutes which YM22 agreed, the first that she quoted was Minute 17: ‘As well as individual faith and waiting, we have been reminded of the importance of the practice of stillness, of waiting, of not knowing, as a community.’ She reinforced this with a valuable quotation from the minute from Junior Yearly Meeting (JYM) to YM22: ‘A significant undercurrent of JYM is the question of how best to take action, and the effects of rushing into what we believe is right, without taking the time to listen.’
The minute that really gripped me when I heard it was Minute 27, and it was one of the factors that prompted our Meeting: ‘We have heard that love and justice also require us to consider deeply how the Society of Friends in Britain might make financial and other reparation for our part in the wrongs of the transatlantic slave trade.’ This didn’t feel like an instruction but a prompting of love and truth to begin a process of importance to our Society of Friends.
Olivia Hanks of Quaker Peace & Social Witness followed. She talked about the idea of climate reparations, and how Friends are working to help our world discern how to put it into practice. Olivia helps run Woodbrooke’s courses on climate justice, and taking part in those seems one important option for preparing oneself for effective action.
Our third speaker was Richard Reddie, the director of diversity and inclusion for Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. Richard spoke fascinatingly, and with the authority of decades of experience about reparations, including how they have developed since he was involved in the work. For him, reparations are an idea whose time has come, no longer something from an activist fringe but a core part of the work of most churches.
He had plenty to tell us about, including ways in which reparations could become a reality, particularly in relation to Jamaica, where his family comes from. It is a country from which unimaginable sums were extracted during the slave era, and which is still monstrously burdened by international debt. Did you know that many of the best schools in Jamaica are Quaker schools? News to me, too. Where might partnership with the Quakers of Jamaica lead?
We ended presentations with a trio of speakers from the Quaker Africa Interest Group (QAIG). These Friends work patiently and persistently with partners in Africa. QAIG members have much to share with other Friends. The recent statement by QAIG (see 15 September) repays study.
We broke into workshop sessions to talk about the processes to which we may feel called. Ideas gathered from these are appended to the following minute, which we agreed at the end of the day.
And now, we await the workings of the spirit. We hope we can show that we truly support the discerned minutes of Yearly Meeting 2022, as well as learning from this year’s Swarthmore Lecture.
Fred is from Kingston & Wandsworth Area Meeting. See https://bit.ly/LQRepIdeas for London Quakers’ ideas on progressing this issue.
Minute of the Meeting.
Some twenty-five Friends joined this day event to listen, learn and discuss the significance for all of us of the outcomes of this year’s Britain Yearly Meeting. These outcomes included the Minutes of BYM, the Epistle and the Swarthmore Lecture which several of us listened to before the Meeting started.
We heard presentations from Siobhán Haire, talking about this year’s BYM, from Livvy Hanks of QPSW talking about climate reparations, and from Richard Reddie about reparations today. Three speakers from QAIG informed us about their work in patient persistent partnership with Friends in Africa. After a break, three groups gathered to thresh the ideas of financial reparations, of other forms of reparation and about the Quaker processes which might lead us forwards.
We emerged with a rich harvest of ideas and many clear recommendations for action, with a sense of urgency; the time to act is now, though we recognise the need for action to be grounded in discernment.
Key discernments include the crucial importance of partnership in reparations, working together with local partners to learn from them. Most such partners will be black-led. Richard Reddie reminded us of the rich history of Quaker links with Jamaica and the existence of numerous Quaker schools there. It appears that exploring these links might lead us forward fruitfully.
We ask our clerks to forward this minute to the Area Meetings of London, with a request to send it up to Meeting for Sufferings with specific recommendations for action.
