Friends urge government to use ‘pathways to peace’
‘What seeds can be sown now that do not leave a legacy of further decades of enmity or create ever-greater tension and mistrust between nuclear powers?’
Quakers have written to the government to caution against deploying inflammatory action in the push to help Ukraine’s defence.
The Northern Friends Peace Board (NFPB) wrote to the foreign secretary Liz Truss on 13 May urging the need to create ‘pathways to peace’.
Noting Quakers’ ‘distress at the terrible toll’ of the continuing war, the letter calls for the government to consider what actions are most likely to create ‘grounds for reconciliation’.
‘What seeds can be sown now that do not leave a legacy of further decades of enmity or create ever-greater tension and mistrust between nuclear powers?’
NFPB said that ‘we owe it to current and future generations’, particularly with the prospect of climate breakdown.
Tim Gee, of Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), told Quakers at a Zoom gathering last week that the FWCC is also speaking strongly for words and not weapons, which was echoed by the American Friends Service Committee.
Other pacifists have also cautioned against resorting to knee-jerk militarism in a push to defend Ukraine. Last month the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) challenged a call from Liz Truss to increase British military spending and send warplanes to Ukraine.
The PPU said that it works with peace activists in Russia who report that ‘Putin repeatedly uses the presence of NATO weapons in Ukraine to argue that Russia is under attack from the West – making it harder for anti-Putin activists to mobilise Russian public opinion against war’.
Instead it said that governments around the world should be pushing for a ceasefire and negotiations. Serious funding for renewable energy would end reliance on Russian fossil fuels and weaken Putin, it said.
The group also highlighted research by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) revealing that in 2021 global military spending passed $2 trillion a year for the first time.
It also showed that NATO’s military spending was more than seventeen times as high as Russia’s during 2021 and that the UK has the fourth-highest military spending in the world.
You need to login to read subscriber-only content and/or comment on articles.