Dear prime minister
Malcolm Elliott and members of Leicester Meeting urge Friends not to forget old-fashioned methods of advocacy
Friends are concerned about advocacy and how best to ‘speak truth to power.’ There are many ways in which we can do this. The internet and ‘new media’ have introduced revolutionary forms of communication – but some old-fashioned ones still have their place.
The Quaker Peace Group in Leicester Meeting, deeply worried about deteriorating relations between the West and Iran, has sent a letter to the prime minister and the local paper. We hope other Meetings will voice their fears about the situation and invite them to make use of our letter:
The last Labour government attempted to defend the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, capable of being launched against us in forty-five minutes. As we know, these grounds proved to be untrue but resulted in enormous suffering for the people of Iraq and the death, injury and trauma continue to this day. Their economy and society were substantially ruined.
There is an ominous similarity between the claims made about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and the unsubstantiated assertion that Iran is about to produce atomic weapons. Even if this were so, there would be no reason for us or the Americans, both atomic powers, to threaten military action against Iran. Other states, including Israel, possess atomic weapons but we do not threaten hostile action in consequence. It is reported in our press that a large number of people in Iran do not support the government of Ahmadinejad and would welcome a change in their country’s regime. However, threats against their country will only strengthen the president’s standing among his own people.
Military intervention would risk a repetition of the humanitarian, economic and social disaster that resulted from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and it might well ignite the whole powder keg of the middle-east.
We therefore urge you to make plain that her majesty’s government has no intention of using military action against the people of Iran. We implore you not to countenance any such course of action but to seek a worldwide implementation of the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty, thus reducing fear and contributing to a safer and saner world.
Signed: Malcolm Elliott and forty-five members of Leicester Meeting
