Letters - 17 July 2015
From taxes for peace to Gift Aid
Taxes for peace
Many thanks to Joshua Habgood-Coote and Joel Wallenberg (10 July) for reminding us of the ‘cotax issue’ – the conscientious objection to paying taxes for war purposes. This issue rightly caused our Yearly Meeting (YM) deep heart-searching in the 1980s. The 1987 minute quoted in the article was closely linked to the original request made in 1982 by Friends House staff that their employers, the Yearly Meeting, withhold tax. Much discussion and engagement with the authorities took place: Quaker faith & practice 24.19 records our position in 1991 in a letter from Meeting for Sufferings to the Inland Revenue.
I think, however, that a misunderstanding remains about what the Yearly Meeting minute actually said and about the action taken by Meeting for Sufferings on our behalf – I say this as the YM clerk at that time, with some responsibility for drafting the minute! The YM was not urging Friends as a whole ‘to demonstrate their concern through action…through a conscientious objection to paying taxes…’ It was actually supporting and endorsing the right of individuals, if they were so led, to follow their consciences and make the request that their employers withhold their taxes. The YM showed its willingness to suffer the consequences of following this path, but it was not simply about refusing to pay on its own account. This subtle distinction was often not appreciated at the time and I hope we might recognise the difference now.
Alan Quilley
Israel
I am writing this a few minutes before the one-minute silence called by the prime minister to mark the 26 June massacre in Tunisia. David Cameron referred to the pain, anguish and agony of families caught up in these terrible events.
At a time of even more severe cuts to public services in the UK, our arms industry continues to be subsidised by our taxes. A new report from Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) reveals that the UK licensed more than £4 million of arms sales to Israel in the four months following last year’s devastating attacks on Gaza.
These sales were approved despite the government’s own admission that it had already licensed equipment that could have been used by the Israeli military in Gaza. The sales were also approved in defiance of the government’s own export guidelines; if these guidelines were properly applied the result would be a de facto embargo on arms exports to Israel.
The UK is also importing Israeli arms, marketed as ‘combat proven’ in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The UK is complicit in Israel’s continuing violations of human rights and international law. The government has acknowledged that UK-made weapons could be being used in the attacks on Gaza. Under pressure, the government is conducting a second review of its arms sales to Israel, which it is ‘due to complete shortly’.
Ken Veitch
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