Creating a true peace
Earlier this year Keith Scott won the Wilson/Hinckes Peace Award for his contribution to and work with the Woking debates. He writes about putting faith into action.
When I came to Woking in 1999 the first group I joined was the Woking Community Play Association, a group that writes and stages dramas about the local community. After some years I became chair and we decided we wanted to do a play about the Ockenden Venture, a refugee charity that was founded in 1951 in the town. It is an amazing story of heroism, sacrifice, inspiration and determination. It took three years to bring the play to fruition. About 150 local people were involved in creating it, with the help of ten professionals, making it a true community event.
I have been a Quaker since my early twenties. I was attracted to the Religious Society of Friends by a commitment to following one’s own truth. I found the silence of Meetings wonderful and the spoken contributions inspiring. Only gradually did I come to accept the peace witness, which Quakers have followed since the 1660s.
In Woking Meeting I found I could contribute as I had not before, which gave me the confidence to develop in other ways. In 2012 I felt that we needed a more visible peace presence in Woking. I read about the Hexham Debates, which had been held for some years in the North-East of England, and was excited by the idea of having open, informed discussions about peace issues. I took the idea to Woking Action for Peace, who enthusiastically embraced the idea. We set up a committee and drew up a programme for six debates in 2013. We had no idea if we would get enough people along to make it worthwhile, or whom we could get to speak. Nevertheless, we booked a room in the town centre on a Saturday morning and managed to get an impressive range of speakers, beginning with Bruce Kent, vice-president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
In the following years we have had two people to introduce the topic, which has added an extra dimension.
I have been amazed at how people have been willing to give their expertise and time and who have travelled considerable distances to speak at these debates. We meet from 11am to 12.30pm. The speakers introduce the topic for the first twenty minutes or so and then they are ‘open to the floor’ and everyone is encouraged to speak for up to three minutes. Questions are fed back to the speakers, who sum up at the end of the debate. We have always feared the debate would dry up – but it never has and sometimes it has reached an amazing depth. We do not seek primarily to change people’s minds but hope that by coming we will all be opened up to new perspectives and explore new ways forwards.
Although a peace group began the debates, they cover social, environmental and political issues, as we believe that only by creating a just world can we come to a true peace. The debates have attracted between thirty and ninety people and are funded by donations people give as they leave. We cannot ever know their true value but we have had valuable local press coverage, warm feedback and a mailing list of over 170 people. I would encourage you to arrange a similar range of debates. I hope to divide this prize into three: a third towards a peace pole; a third towards helping the Syrian families settle in Woking; and a third towards the next Community Play, a play on Ethel Smyth, the composer who wrote the suffragettes’ ‘March of the Women’. I will finish with the words of Joyce Pearce, the founder of Ockenden, from her strategy of hope: ‘We do not accept that our world has to be one of suffering and strife, for we have seen the beauty and the unity that will transform our global home.’
This article is a revised version of a talk given at Westminster Meeting.
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