Letters - 24 April 2015
From hustings to the economy
Hustings and prisons
Friends attending hustings will, no doubt, be ready to raise issues of welfare, economic justice and defence spending. There is another area for which we have always maintained a concern – prisons and prisoners. Huge changes and massive cuts to the Ministry of Justice (planned to continue in the next parliament) have left the prison system struggling to cope.
The prison I visit is a case in point: staff numbers are down, curtailing many activities offered to prisoners. The library is now closed at weekends. It is those prisoners who have been educated above a basic level that suffer most. There is nothing on offer in education and no way of accessing the distance learning through the ‘Virtual Campus’, which was designed to fulfil just this purpose. Writers-in-residence are long gone but prisoner groups that maintained reading and writing circles are now ended due to library closures.
Can Friends please inform themselves and raise the issues of underfunded public prisons, growing privatisation and life after the dismemberment of probation. Paula Harvey of the Crime, Community and Justice sub-committee can help. We can expect serious unrest if the needs of this hidden population continue to be ignored. What do candidates have to say?
Melanie Jameson
Quakers in Criminal Justice
Living Christ
I wholeheartedly endorse the content of John H Hall’s letter about the living Christ (17 April). The message that lifted George Fox from his despair, made his heart leap with joy and led to the formation of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) was not: ‘There was someone who might have spoken to thy condition called Jesus. He was cruelly executed but you can read all about him in the Bible.’ No, the message was quite clear: ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.’ When early Friends said ‘Christ has come again to teach his people’ they were referring to their realisation that the living ‘inward light of Christ’ was and is within ‘the heart’ of every single man, woman and child in the world. That ‘true light’ may be given a different name in different countries and different cultures. It may be heeded or ignored, but it can never be overwhelmed or completely extinguished. It is upon that axiom that all our testimonies have their foundation. It really is not an optional extra.
Ernest Hall
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