Friends lobby on anti-democratic bills
'BYM won a major campaigning award in May, together with the other organisations that formed the Police Bill Alliance.'
The year began with a call from Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM), saying there was a ‘pressing need to defend our human rights this year as more anti-democratic measures are in the pipeline’. This included the Bill of Rights and the Public Order Bill.
Friends lobbied hard against the legislation, but the Public Order Bill came into effect in May.
Despite the ‘severe blow’, BYM pledged to ‘continue to work with others to protect and promote human rights in the UK’.
Quakers also campaigned against the anti-boycott bill, joining others in September to hand in a petition at 10 Downing Street urging for it to be scrapped. Justified by the government as being designed to make sure public bodies follow UK foreign policy in their purchasing, procurement, and investment decisions, BYM said that ‘in reality, it will prevent local authorities and universities from making investment and procurement policies that align with their environmental and human rights obligations’.
On a more positive note, BYM won a major campaigning award in May, together with the other organisations that formed the Police Bill Alliance. Nominated for best coalition or collaboration in the National Campaigner Awards – held each year by the Sheila McKechnie Foundation – the Police Bill Alliance was noted for its campaign to amend the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (the Police Bill) 2021, with Jessica Metheringham, a Reading Quaker, cited for her parliamentary work. The alliance ‘led to an extraordinary and unprecedented series of fourteen defeats for the Government in the House of Lords,’ the citation said.
Ultimately, however, the year saw an unprecedented number of arrests and imprisonment for protestors, including journalists, climate protestors – some imprisoned for taking part in slow marches – and defendants banned from justifying their climate witness in court.
