Meeting for Sufferings: Welfare cuts - A growing concern
Elinor Smallman reports on a lively session of Meeting for Sufferings
On Saturday 6 July, Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) discussed a Quaker response to the welfare cuts in a session of passionate contributions from Friends who spoke of their ‘anger’, ‘despair’ and ‘frustration’. Welfare cuts were discussed at two previous MfSs but there was a strong sense that more needs to be done. However, there was also a lack of clarity regarding what.
Should Quakers in Britain issue a statement? Some Friends felt that a statement would make Quakers more visible in this area, with one saying ‘it frustrates me that we can’t articulate a position on this… the distress is real, the distress is now’. However, another emphasised the need for more than a statement: ‘a loud voice that is just a loud voice may resonate for a while but will fade’.
Others reflected that a ‘statement will be in the dustbin tomorrow but that’s no reason not to issue one’ in an effort to stimulate a debate on how we treat each other and to challenge the discourse surrounding welfare cuts. This is a particularly difficult area in light of a recent ICM survey showing nearly two thirds of those questioned were in favour of the cuts.
Central England Area Meeting had suggested that the 1987 statement (Quaker faith & practice 23.21) could be revisited and reissued. The statement begins:
‘Quakers in Britain have felt called to issue this statement in order to address a matter of urgent national priority to promote debate and to stimulate action. We are angered by actions which have knowingly led to the polarisation of our country – into the affluent, who epitomise success according to the values of a materialistic society, and the “have-leasts”, who by the expectations of that same society are oppressed, judged, found wanting and punished.’
The full statement was read at MfS and moved many present but, as one Friend said, it also gave the ‘appalling sense that we’ve been here before’.
There was support for the idea of Friends making use of this statement. However, MfS was reminded that it also showed ‘all the things we undertook to do but did not do’ and urged Friends ‘to remember our own frailty’.
Others highlighted the need for: proposing positive, practical, alternatives rather than just deploring the current situation; working with others; supporting initiatives such as Citizen’s Income and People’s Assemblies; and attending events such as the planned shared meal in Trafalgar Square concluding the Peace and Economic Justice Pilgrimage on 20 July.
Peter Sender, database and strategy manager, spoke about a survey recently launched by Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM). It aims to discover what Friends around the country are doing so that Friends House can assist with networking actions and advocacy. Sixty Friends responded in the first ten days and more are encouraged to do so before the survey closes on 31 August. The survey is available online (www.surveymonkey.com/s/qwelfare) or in paper form by calling Peter Sender on 020 7663 1114.
A Friend commented that MfS ‘needs to give a considered and careful response’ and welcomed the survey as something that ‘will help us to achieve clarity’ and ‘may draw us into greater unity’. She added that it may also act as a motivator for Local and Area Meetings that have not yet engaged with poverty and the cuts as a group.
One Friend said ‘the strongest expression can come from Local Meetings’ through actions and speaking out within their community. Another said that local efforts such as food banks could be seen as ‘sticking plasters’ that enable something ‘grossly indecent that the government is doing’, showing the need for action on many levels throughout Yearly Meeting.
By the end of the session, some practical steps were identified: the Quaker Peace & Social Witness paper Government Cuts: Welfare Reform – what Friends can do will be expanded; materials from the recent Economic Mythbusters course will be made available online; and research will begin into a variety of projects and initiatives that Friends could support nationally ‘as a major radical effort’.
During the discussion, the minute regarding morality in public life sent to MfS by Ipswich and Diss Area Meeting resonated with several Friends:
‘In a society where the gap between rich and poor is increasing, we see high levels of greed among those who are already at the top of the pile, and a callous disregard for those lower down… We have been left feeling impotent.’
However, as a Friend noted towards the end of the Meeting, there is hope. She noted: ‘We have failed in peace terms many times, but we don’t dismiss the Peace Testimony’.
