Letters - 2 April 2021
From Mass destruction weapons to Language and division
Mass destruction weapons
The International Peace Bureau has just awarded this year’s Sean MacBride Peace Prize to the Japanese Hidankyo Signature Campaign in support of the hibakusha’s (survivors of the A- and H-bomb explosions) appeal for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
The signature campaign, and the continuing work of the hibakusha, played a significant part in achieving the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (or Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty), which came into force in January this year. The UK government refused to join in the negotiations or sign up to the treaty.
Nonetheless, nuclear weapons, under international law, are now illegal.
The UK government, in the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, declared it would lift the cap on the warheads on missiles on the Trident submarines from 180 to 260 – effectively re-arming not disarming.
This announcement on increasing nuclear warheads by over forty per cent flies in the face of the treaty that the UK has signed, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which the nuclear weapon states would ‘disarm in good faith’. In a recent poll, seventy-seven per cent of the general public supported a ‘total ban on all nuclear weapons globally’.
The Trident nuclear-armed fleet, part of the US Trident project, will not keep anyone secure. It threatens genocide; it provokes nuclear proliferation; its replacement, to which currently the government and the Labour Party leadership are committed, will cost over £205 billion, which would be better re-directed to health, welfare and combatting climate change. Increasing the number of warheads will make all these dangers worse.
We need to oppose not only this policy of more nuclear warheads but the whole Trident project, comply with the Ban Treaty and scrap all the nuclear weapons based in the UK. Let us honour the hibakusha’s call.
Rae Street
Foreign aid budget
In November 2020 our foreign aid budget was cut from 0.7 per cent to 0.5 per cent of national income. This is a big deal, and not just morally wrong, but stupid, so much so that senior Tories have obtained legal advice indicating that without the consent of parliament the cut is illegal.
Such consent may be sought before the Easter recess, and it would be very helpful if Friends everywhere could write to their MPs indicating that yes, we did notice the cut, and yes, we do care.
Surely when the economies of already-fragile states are reeling under the effects of the pandemic we can afford more than a halfpenny in the pound to help them through, and £2.5 billion well spent on aid is a far better deal than the £16.5 billion increase in the defence budget also announced last November.
As the chair of the defence select committee remarked: ‘The recruiting sergeants of Hezbollah, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, Isis and other armed militias will be the immediate beneficiaries of the cuts to the UK’s humanitarian programmes. China and Russia will not hesitate to fill the vacuum we create.’
Martin Drummond
Beautiful websites
In your news piece on the new Experiment with Light website (12 March), I feel I am given undue prominence as a helper.
The work was done by Kealan Fallon (who has also set up several websites for Britain Yearly Meeting) and who deserves the credit for the excellent and easy- to-use Quaker Meetings Network websites platform.
If your Meeting or Quaker recognised body would also like to get a beautiful website, which is simple to update and priced very favourably, please contact the team at support@quakermeeting.org.
Keith Walton
‘Meeting for Stillness’?
In his splendid article ‘Still life’ (12 March), David Saunders draws a distinction between silence and stillness.
I have for a long time thought that the term ‘Meeting for Worship’ must be offputting for people who, as one hears so often these days, regard themselves as spiritual but not religious. I have often wondered what might be a better term, and then David’s article opened the way: what if we were to call it ‘Meeting for Stillness’?
Jan Arriens
David’s discoveries
Thank you for publishing warm and affectionate memories of David Firth from George Penaluna and Harry Albright (12 March).
My favourite memory of David is a conversation we shared over the breakfast table at Woodbrooke a few years after his retirement, when I asked him which new adventures he was enjoying most. With a glint in his eye he told me: ‘This may not sound exciting but I just love using my senses. I’ve lived in the same part of London for many years and now I’m free to see, hear, touch, smell and taste my surroundings as if for the first time. I’m making some remarkable discoveries.’
Christopher Stokes
Quietly ecstatic
Thank you, Stevie Krayer (19 March), for alerting us to Quaker poet Waldo Williams’ quietly-ecstatic Welsh poem in Quaker faith & practice (Qf&p 21.33)! How had I managed not to see it before? And I thought I knew my Qf&p.
I offer one tiny correction to your inspiring account of the Meeting of Friends in Wales: the wonderful Mererid Hopwood is a vice-president of the Movement for the Abolition of War (MAW), an honour she shares with our own Diana Francis among others. The newly-appointed president is Paul Rogers, emeritus professor at Bradford School of Peace Studies.
I hope Friends will take a look at MAW’s brand new website: www.abolishwar.org.uk. And, for more inspiration, order a copy of our bestselling pocket book of quotes: From War to Peace – you will find many surprises in it!
Sally Reynolds
Waldo Williams
Friends who are inspired by Stevie Krayer’s account of the reading of Waldo Williams’ poems at the recent Meeting for Friends in Wales might like to turn to the anthology of poems by Quaker writers, A Speaking Silence, published by Indigo Dreams in 2013. There they will find two of Waldo’s poems exquisitely translated by Stevie herself, with the Welsh original in parallel text.
They might also be interested to know that there is currently a Quaker Welsh Learners Group who meet regularly on Zoom to improve their knowledge and use of the Welsh language.
Alison Leonard
Which voices?
In two consecutive issues of the Friend (12 March and 19 March) we’ve had letters from Quakers appealing to the Cambridge dictionary in relation to racism.
When considering how to define racism, or whether the term ‘overseer’ is unhelpful in our attempts to be anti-racist, which voices carry authority for white Friends such as myself? The voice of the white establishment represented by the Cambridge dictionary, or the lived experience of people of colour?
Mark Russ
Language and division
In his letter to the Friend (19 March), Jonathan Riddell writes that he fails to see the logic in the reasoning of those Friends who wish to stop using the term ‘overseer’. He refers to the length of time since slavery has been abolished and gives a dictionary definition of the term ‘overseer’.
Neither of these things change the fact that some people find the term offensive. Language can be a powerful means of perpetuating division and inequality. Even though change can make us uncomfortable, I would encourage Friends to listen patiently and seek the truth which other people’s opinions may contain for us.
Kathy Chandler
Comments
A French Friend told us that the word they use is ‘veilleur’, more someone keeping watch than overseeing. Maybe another language can help us out
By doreen.osborne@outlook.com on 1st April 2021 - 12:21
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