Letters - 31 January 2025
From a lament to Goma and M23
Lament of the ‘but’
Oh George Fox, what hast thou done?
Swarthmoor local Friends have been glad of your legacy through the ages since. But you butted us with your add-on of ‘but you should worship at Swarthmoor Hall as long as you can’. We thought it was nothing to worry about.
Latterly we have been remiss with this ‘but’.
The hall is still there, eight minutes’ walk from your Meeting house, and it is owned and well looked after by Yearly Meeting Friends. We could now, again, worship there if we chose to.
But what of your legacy if we follow the letter of your instruction? We have always taken heed as we were advised by Balby Friends, and now we are torn with ‘the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life’. If we follow your ‘but’ in the letter, would we sell your Meeting house and worship at the hall?
If we did, would this kill our Meeting?
If we see the spirit behind your words, would it give life to us and the Hall?
Dare we sell it?
Our stewardship is being tested as your grand old Meeting house is in great need of tender loving care and updating. But we are timid Friends and there are so few of us now, sitting in our tiny circle in the middle of your huge Meeting room. Gobbling up electricity to stop the shivers in the cold every midweek and first day, and we can imagine the lamentation across the Quaker world if we did sell George Fox’s Meeting House.
Oh, what canst we do?
Answers on a postcard to: George Fox’s Meeting House, Meeting House Lane, Ulverston, Cumbria LA12 7JE.
William Shaw
Managerialism
I worked in Friends House, our central offices, for about twenty years, including several years as a senior staff member. I retired about eighteen years ago.
When I began there I knew about Quaker practice, but I had no management qualifications.
So for many years I stumbled along, not really sure what I was doing, learning how to run a department on the job. I had never planned or argued for a budget, and I needed lots of guidance on personnel matters; I wasn’t really sure what I was doing, and I made lots of wrong decisions. Some of my colleagues had come from other fields such as industry or local government, and had lots of experience, so I learned from them; others, like me, were amateurs.
Fortunately for the department, I took several courses set up by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and the Open University – it was such a relief to voice my unspoken worries, to hear how to solve them, and to find that other charitable organisations had the same concerns and difficulties. One of our dangerous myths is that we are so totally unique that no other body is like us, so we cannot learn from anybody else. I also read a lot, and learned from others. One vivid memory is a planning day with the central committee – I had a vague plan, but thirty minutes in, I was floundering. Then a committee member with wide management experience and skill sized up the situation, asked if she could take over, stepped in and ran it all – much to everyone’s relief, not least mine! (She later became the director of Woodbrooke.)
I recall an incident from the time when we were developing from a loose conglomeration of committees in the same building, to a more coherent set-up. The then recording clerk, who had come from much more clarity in the world of manufacturing, met regularly with each departmental general secretary for an ‘informal advisory conversation’. He stuck faithfully to this guideline, but one day as he and I finished an inconclusive and unsatisfactory meeting, he said sadly ‘Oh, if I could only manage you!’
I realised that management was not a dirty word, it is a set of thought-out tools, a complex human skill like cooking, operating a combine harvester, nursing or any other skill. So I am concerned when I read that Friends distrust the word ‘management’ when it’s used about the way we live and work together in our Yearly Meeting. Yes, we can be amateurs, we can just muddle along, wasting Quaker time and resources – or we can gladly accept and use the considered body of formulated knowledge and experience of working with people to get something done, which is actually all that management is.
Beth Allen
Charitable position
I find it curious that Paul Parker, the recording clerk and an employee of Britain Yearly Meeting, felt it was his place to respond to Eric Walker’s letter (17 January) when he clearly states that it is his purpose, as a member of staff, to deliver the work asked for by Friends.
Eric Walker, as I would, questions the need for the extra staff and surely one of the duties of the recording clerk would be to warn Friends on the various national committees of the costs their requests would incur. Given that the accounts for last year show a deficit of around two million pounds and this year’s accounts are likely to drain another two million or more from reserves, it seems we are being profligate.
It appears that Friends’ committees are not being kept aware by their staff of the costs of their decisions or simply being profligate with a fast-disappearing reserve fund while trying to coerce members and others to increase giving.
It is worth remembering that we are a charity and ruled by the Charity Commission, which should be consulted on our current financial position to ensure we remain with their rules.
Robert Campbell
Use them or lose them
If my information is correct, it is good news to learn that Yearly Meeting will no longer post on X, formerly Twitter.
I hope that all Friends and Area Meetings/Local Meetings will also boycott using X and indeed consider no longer using any social media that will not, or is not, regulated to prevent the distribution of misleading, inaccurate and inflammatory messaging. The methods by which much of our social media is conceived and constructed, and consequently operated, surely contradicts our Quaker testimonies.
There are, and will remain, if used, other ways in which as Friends we can communicate with each other and our families and friends. The gentle art of letter writing (‘Please Mr Postman, have you a letter for me?’) is one, or speak in person on the telephone. Use them, or we will certainly lose them, in favour to the immensely wealthy and unregulated few – the power-seeking ‘tech giants’, who like nothing better than to rule us all.
Please let us all ‘Speak truth to power’.
John Sivyer
Generational shifts
Many thanks to Robin Waterston for his balanced letter (3 January). In my ninetieth year I find life a constant challenge to adjust to new ideas so am in good practice.
Obviously each generation has specific gifts to share and older Friends of long experience must surely have much to offer while welcoming the enthusiasm of the young.
I would love to see the establishment of a forum, such as Robin mentions, so that the generations could more easily co-operate. We have no young ones in our Meeting and I feel the lack.
Dorothy Woolley
Goma and M23
I always appreciate Elizabeth Coleman’s reports from the Great Lakes area of East Africa. Her article (10 January) about the displaced persons camps around Goma is no exception, and I will certainly be responding to the appeal. Plainly the M23 militia is causing much distress.
I am wondering what M23 stands for. Is it an internal group within Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or a group from a neighbouring country? It would be helpful to know.
Marion Longstaff
Editor’s note: M23 takes its name from the date (23 March, 2009) of some (much contested) ‘peace accords’ between the DRC’s Tutsi-dominated National Congress for the Defence of the People (CDNP) and the DRC government. M23 was formed in 2012 by former members of the CNDP. It is widely believed (including by the United Nations) to be backed by government officials.
Comments
Generational shifts - I ‘m confident that Dorothy Woolley will like Emma Roberts’ Quakerology YouTube Channel.
The channel provides long interviews with a broad cross section Quakers about their faith and how their Quaker community and practice sustains them. They talk about worship, witness and the big issues affecting Quaker meetings across the UK as church and community.
https://www.youtube.com/@Quakerology
By Ol Rappaport on 30th January 2025 - 9:07
Not to use X Social Media is daft.
It is like saying I am not going out or going to answer the phone because I might come into contact with a liar.
X is the forum where many folk get and share information, please do not deny others exposure to Friends or be ignorant of what others are communicating.
Andrew S Hatton.
Essex, UK.
By Tolkny on 30th January 2025 - 11:23
Subject: Letters to the Friend - Managerialism Charitable Position Paul Parker Inclusion and Diversity in years 2017 2021 2024
Dear Mr Joseph Jones and Mr George Osgerby
In the Letters of our Friend magazine 17th and 31st January I was shocked that our Friend had printed so much critism of our Management team, We need more professional management not less.
More management to deliver more transparency and openness - more basic information
- what are Quakers going to do about our £2M deficit? - what to deliver our 5-10 year plan 2017?
Quakers in Britain are Complex - All includes a faith organization, a management umbrella and a registered charity. Look at other Quaker Charities - Quaker Social Action - Joseph Rowntree Foundation - Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust - each delivers less complex outcomes and each has a chief executive led prominent management team that is as simple as possible, overseen by voluntary trustees re the delivery of
charitable objectives and obeying charity law. All have an informative visual description - dividing income
and expenditures into a few clear categories. On the scale of responsibility for lots of money Britian Yearly Meeting is big - £15M a year turnover with £90M+ reserves. Quakers need big simple management too.
There’s been a gold burglary in Netherlands last week, at Drents Museum in Assen that is a warning call to all Quakers. Drent’s housed millions of pounds of 2000 year old objects, that are irreplicable, in a building with too few security (too little management) people. Quakers have an emphasis on the voluntary not the professional. There are pockets of huge wealth and huge responsibility in Quakers like the museum, are at risk from serious and determined criminals’ crimes. These areas of risk hidden by our self imposed un-simple governance structure, duplication and rejection of openness to our “The Friend” journalists..
There needs to be sufficient management to avoid risk. Sufficient management to manage Britian Yearly Meeting efficiently. Quakers want to go woosh. Modern management of our Quaker administration will contribute to our woosh, to give more time to our spiritual. Robert Campbell (Great Ayton Meeting Letters to the Friend 31125) that Quakers should self refer to the charity commission for advice - offers a speedy solution (months not decades).
best wishes David Fish Rugby Quaker Local Meeting .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
By davidfishcf@msn.com on 4th February 2025 - 14:34
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