Letters - 22 September 2023
From DSEI arms fair witness to Prisons
DSEI arms fair witness
After attending the No Faith in Arms day at the DSEI (Defence and Security Equipment International) arms fair in London, I am trying to process two unexpected and discombobulating aspects of our day of witness.
First, the turnout: in 2019 approximately 800 Friends joined others from many faiths and none to protest during the week leading up to this despicable event, hoping to physically block the delivery of services and equipment being put in place. Last week saw not many more than fifty, and fewer than 100, Friends at the site. Members of other faiths were also fewer in number, even including a small number of Buddhist monks.
Why the dramatic drop in numbers? Was it the heat (which was intense)? Was it a post-Covid reluctance to travel? Or the war in Ukraine?
DSEI sells deadly weapons and equipment indiscriminately to any regime, no matter what its human rights record. If our Peace Testimony lies at the heart of our Quaker identity, then bearing witness here might be seen as a crucial part of our faith in action.
The second disquieting aspect of the day occurred during our open-air Meeting for Worship at 1pm, when a young Friend contributed – I can’t describe it as ministry – with a call to follow the pre-briefing we had all received. She listed the various injunctions, ‘Do not speak to the police, the police are not our friends’, ‘If questioned, always respond with No Comment’, encouraging us all to echo back what she was shouting.
Many of us had been uncomfortable with the guidance to not speak to the police, and only reluctantly went along with what was being asked of us. To hear the same guidance ‘preached’, with no spiritual context, during a period of very public worship, felt like a line had been crossed. No longer were we worshipping, we were protesting. And how could we ask the police to honour our worship as they stood alongside us, hearing these words?
The organisers, Quaker Roots, have put an enormous amount of careful thought into planning a week of radical protest. May we never lose sight of the spirit-led basis to our witness.
Charlotte Allen
The scent of gentleness
Angela Greenwood (1 September) powerfully gave us this quote from Sufi Elias Amidon: ‘We can learn how to open into openness… by following the scent of gentleness. We can feel this “gentleness” spontaneously and directly in our bodies… Let that gentleness take you. Whatever stories, fears, or grief might trouble your daily life, whatever pains or depressions… give them to gentleness.’ Angela appropriately links this to our Advice to ‘follow the promptings of love and truth in our hearts’.
Recently a Friend and I were sharing how painful it had been for each of us – in different Meetings – when Friends became entrenched in bitter animosity.
She felt what might have gone wrong was that those Friends forgot the Advice: ‘Think it possible that you may be mistaken.’
These embattled situations might never have happened, if those Friends could have allowed gentleness to take them. The significant learning for me is to bear these teachings in mind in my daily life.
It’s a great deal easier to wish that others could consider they might be wrong, and behave with gentleness, than it is for me to swallow my pride, and admit my mistakenness.
Gillie Bolton
Questions to ask
I read Dora Bek’s letter with some concern (25 August). While we observe the Peace Testimony, we have to ensure as Quakers that we do not become moral relativists when it comes to right and wrong.
Russia’s unjust war in Ukraine, and the aggression it carries out there, shows this is not two equivalent parties in a dispute. One side finds itself in a fight of self-defence, for its future.
We all accept that Russian and Ukrainian people all pay the price for this war, and that is tragic, but I don’t think it is overly simplistic to say ‘Putin the baddie, Zelenskyy the goodie’, as a just and final peace can never be built on a falsehood.
Kevin McNamara
Brummana High School
This year is the 150th anniversary of our dear Brummana High School (BHS), in Lebanon. British Quakers enabled the school to open in 1873 and continue to support it to this day. Over the years BHS has quietly worked away, through a whole series of challenges that would defeat most of us. The last four years have been particularly difficult in Lebanon, where the population continues to endure the impact of one of the world’s worst ever economic crises, political failure, and the aftermath of the massive explosion in Beirut’s port in 2020, during the pandemic.
And yet, despite these challenges, with the help of good people, BHS continues to provide stability and hope through excellent education, not just for the students, but for the region as a whole. It truly is a beacon of Light.
Many Quakers in the UK have had the pleasure of getting to know Brummana High School over the years and may like to know that there will be a gala dinner in Lebanon, on 16 November 2023, to help raise funds and celebrate this special year. If you, or anyone you know would like to attend, please email sarah.yoxford@gmail.com.
Sarah Barrett
Prisons
In the UK we have many squalid overcrowded prisons and there are plans to build more. The approach in The Netherlands is the reverse: in the last two decades they have closed more than twenty prisons with no evidence of any substantial change in crime rates. The Dutch approach is to find the causes of crime and to treat them. Many offenders have been predisposed to crime by mental illness, and lack of literacy, numeracy and social skills. None of these can be helped by a prison sentence. Sentencing policy is not motivated by deterrence or retribution.
Hard drugs in The Netherlands remain a serious problem, but the liberalisation of soft drugs means that users are not criminalised and there is no need for supply networks other than coffee shops. This liberalisation is exploited by tourists, but smaller proportions of native Dutch people than UK citizens have tried cannabis or become regular users. The Dutch approach social problems on the principle of minimising harm, instead of a pursuit of absolute moral purity which can never be achieved.
David Hitchin
A view from the back
Participating in the Walk of Witness in preparing for the arms fair at ExCel was a learning experience. Starting from the garden at Friends House the group walked through some minor roads to Tavistock Square. I opted to go at the rear of the column with a yellow hi-viz vest to warn those behind including cars, vans, bicycles and fast walkers that there was a group of walkers ahead. It became rapidly apparent that Quakers move at different speeds. Some walkers moved out of the line to look at things or meet other people. The group could easily have become very stretched out. Pausing for traffic lights split the group many times. Further back were two uniformed police officers who were sent to escort us, at a discrete distance.
A Meeting for Worship in Tavistock Square Gardens allowed some chance to catch our breath and hear some helpful ministry. Then we walked on to Trafalgar Square. Postcards were handed out and many supportive comments came from passers-by. Following a period of silence in front of the National Gallery I took the opportunity to talk to our police escort. They were pleasantly surprised that we were following the route previously discussed and that we were so quiet.
Then we moved on to stand for a time outside the offices of Northrop Grumman, Leonardo and BAE Systems. Outside each we heard a little about their arms sales and something about the people being killed and injured to maintain their profits. Hidden in plain sights in central London the arms manufacturers can network with both the UK government and many other nations.
Quakers move at different speeds and have different views but we are moving in the same direction and beginning to catch up.
Martin Schweiger
Comments
DSEI Arms Fair Witness.
I am in unity with Charlotte Allen’s concern regarding the disconnection of our witness from the leadings of the spirit.
By Richard Pashley on 21st September 2023 - 15:50
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