Friends hold commemorative vigil

John Henry Barlow has been remembered at a peace vigil

A Quaker co-founder of Woodbrooke, John Henry Barlow (left), was remembered this month with a peace vigil outside his former home. 

The witness marked the anniversary of a blue plaque erected by Birmingham Civic Council ten years ago. The commemoration honours him as a ‘Quaker statesman and man of peace’. The vigil was attended by some of his descendents and Caroline Cadbury, chair of Bournville Village Trust.  

‘John Henry Barlow was not only the first director of George Cadbury’s Bournville Village Trust, guiding its early development for over twenty years, but helped, with George Cadbury, and John Wilhelm Rowntree to found Woodbrooke College,’ the Quaker’s grand-daughter Carol Saker, who co-organised the event, told the Friend. 

‘As clerk of Yearly Meeting throughout world war one, John Henry Barlow held the Society of Friends together… avoiding schism over the strongly differing views over conscription, pacifism and an absolutist position,’ she added. ‘He also led opposition to the government’s Defence of the Realm Act, which banned the publication of any anti-war pamphlets, by agreeing that Friends would nonetheless continue to publish anti-war leaflets, for which he was eventually brought to trial at The Guildhall.’ 

Joining with his cousin, John Emmott Barlow MP, the Quaker was also instrumental in getting the ‘conscience clause’ included in the 1916 Military Service Act, which was making conscription compulsory. 

‘This clause enabled pacifists to abstain from conscription on grounds of conscience, and subsequently led to the founding of the Friends War Victims Relief Committee, later becoming the Friends Ambulance Unit,’ said Carol Saker.

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