Meeting for Sufferings: Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

'Right now the government was trying to divide the opposition, and Friends needed to act.'

by Joseph Jones 8th October 2021

Friends in Surrey and Hampshire sent a minute to MfS about the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which is currently before parilament. They were ‘very concerned’ about ‘the impact on freedom of assembly and of expression, and the right to peaceful protest’.  Recording clerk Paul Parker presented a report from BYM’s public affairs and advocacy manager, Grace Da Costa, which outlined the ongoing Quaker response. It was a wide-ranging bill, he said, which made it difficult to oppose. But Friends were working with other organisations to build resistance. He hoped that MfS would be able to help frame this opposition in faith terms, to avoid seeming simply political.