Letters - 11 February 2022
From Citizens and connection to Health inequality
Citizens and connection
I share Rob Paton’s interest in the Citizens Climate Lobby (7 January). Citizens UK is a grassroots movement that works by building connections between people with power and those who are regarded as powerless. The idea of connecting people is key. The central ethos of Citizens UK is that campaigning must include winning people over to your cause, reaching out to everyone’s humanity and empowering them to make a difference for good. It is crucial to see people with power, not as enemies, but as potential partners, who in even small ways, could contribute to the change you seek. It is also crucial to help people with little power to find their voice, so they can share their lived experience.
Citizens is probably best known for the Living Wage Foundation (LWF), which started as one of its campaigns. In 2012, when the LWF became independent, I attended a huge meeting where chief executives and cleaners shared the platform and talked about the benefits of the living wage from their different points of view. This was Citizens’ principles in action. A lesson in democracy and equality.
As Rob Paton says in his article, adversarial thinking is so often our default stance. Yet how can we expect to win our leaders over if at the back of our minds we see them as our foe, when really we want them to be helpful, positive and constructive? There are many good ways to campaign; however, in the end people need to sit down together and reach agreement. Citizens UK was started by a Quaker, Neil Jameson, and many Meetings are involved because they have an affinity with this approach. Maybe there is a group in your area.
Ruth Tod
Holocaust Memorial Day
I was surprised and saddened to see no reference to Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January) in the 28 January edition of the Friend. Quakers were firm in opposing fascism and doing what they could to help European, and British, Jews at a time of overt, violent and vicious antisemitism.
Hatred on religious grounds is increasing, actively fomented by some politicians, across the world. Failing to remember the holocaust at this time shows not just a lack of respect for those murdered but plays into the hands of those who seek to normalise hatred.
I hope next year that such a significant date will not be overlooked.
Kath Worrall
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