Eye - 16 September 2016

From conscientious objection to Sunday sailing

We will not fight

A five-scene play that tells the story of conscientious objector John Hubert (‘Bert’) Brocklesby during the first world war has been made available on YouTube.

Bert, who became a Quaker later in life, was a lay Methodist preacher and passionate in his opposition to war. He was one of a group of British pacifists sentenced to be shot as deserters in the spring of 1916, a sentence which was commuted to ten years penal servitude.

The play, We will not fight, was performed in May by UnderConstruction Theatre, with a disused courtroom in Oxford Town Hall as a stage.

It recreates key events during this time in Bert’s life, including his military service tribunal.

Susan Smith, of Oxford and Swindon Area Meeting, told Eye: ‘UnderConstruction Theatre’s director Lizzy McBain and her four actors had rehearsed and put together the play in only two days. The play was adapted from an earlier script produced by the Amnesty International group in Canterbury.

‘[It] was commissioned by Commemorating Peacemakers, a small Oxford-based group of activists committed to telling the story of resistance to the first world war. The production was funded by the WF Southall Trust, the Radley Trust, Oxford Local Meeting, Oxford and Swindon Area Meeting, Fellowship of Reconcilation, and Movement for the Abolition of War.’

The trailer can be seen at http://bit.ly/WWNFtrailer, from which Friends can click through to see the full forty-minute performance.

Bert Brocklesby is one of the conscientious objectors whose diaries make up the White Feather Diaries project, produced by Britain Yearly Meeting to mark the centenary of world war one.

Aspirations

comedian Josie Long reflected on faith in the Church Times (19 August): ‘I’m an atheist now. I stopped believing in God when I was a teenager, although I’d aspire to be a Quaker, because I hear they let atheists in. I have a huge respect for people of faith, and for the fellowship they have, and many Christian ideas still live with me. But on an ontological level, I’m not with it; plus I have a problem with the lack of women in Christian theology…’

Sunday sailing

An unusual way of wending your way to Meeting was spied by Nick Francis, of West Wiltshire & East Somerset Area Meeting, in an edition of BackTrack, a historical railway journal.

In an article entitled ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’ Miles MacNair writes about ‘a retired seaman called Joseph Taylor who lived in Middlesbrough around 1845-6’.

‘A devout Quaker, every Sunday he would take his family to the Friends Meeting House in South Stockton in his small railway wagon, a distance of approximately four miles. No other traffic ran on the Stockton & Darlington Railway on Sundays and the line was virtually level, with no overbridges or other overhead obstructions, and so, if the wind was favourable, he would dispense with his horse and erect a square sail on a short mast to provide motive power for the journey.’

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