Friends preparing to start the Ride. Photo: Courtesy of Sally Ingham.
Riding into the sun
Sally Ingham writes about the ‘Ride for Equality and the Common Good’
Driving home, the two-week ‘Ride for Equality and the Common Good’ over, the sun was bright, low and blinding; it was hard to see what was ahead. Our 360-mile bicycle ride from Swarthmoor Hall to Downing Street has been just that – a ride into the sun.
We overreached and overstretched ourselves. From a four-day pilgrimage across Cumbria at Easter 2016, we had leapt into planning this national action inspired by Tess, the warden at Brigflatts, who, unable to walk, had ploughed along lanes and across fields on her bike.
Why? Because we had decided we could not stand by and watch the dismantling of the welfare state and the damaging cuts taking place. Quakers have historically stood up against injustice. We felt compelled to, too. Some people in society are becoming invisible and unheard. We wanted to help give a voice to their suffering, just as Margaret Fell had appealed to Charles II to alleviate the suffering of persecuted and imprisoned Quakers placed outside the protection of the state 360 years ago.
The Ride was like a microcosm of the sort of world possible. We were looked after by Meeting after Meeting on the route, fed and offered much-welcomed beds, and often guided in and out of the towns and cities by a cycling Friend along safe routes through bewildering mazes of streets.
Quakers, and sometimes non-Quakers, at the Meeting houses stayed to listen to us and share their stories. We could not have done this without all these people, who gave so generously of their time. We tried not to take this for granted, paying our way, the money to cover food or be given to a social cause of importance to the Meeting. The sense of wellbeing that arose out of all this was invaluable. It reinforced the importance of care and how we must afford to care because through this we are bound together – happier and stronger. Arguably, our survival depends on it.
The route we followed was varied – sometimes beautiful, sometimes challenging – across wild fells, weaving through villages, along old railway routes and canals and, sometimes, winding through the hot busyness of towns and cities: a journey of contrasts.
Once in London we were also welcomed warmly into the welcome cool of Friends House, and were pleased to find Friends, and friends, had travelled by train to support us on the last leg of our journey – some with bikes (Marie from Lancaster bravely mounted a ‘Boris bike’).
As we approached Whitehall together, and having met so many new Friends as we travelled, we felt very much part of the larger Quaker community and upheld by them in our concern. One thing that will stay with us, as Hilary so beautifully expressed it, is ‘the joy of uncovering the concerns of others in a widening circle of conversations’.
Crunching across Horse Guards Parade and entering Downing Street with our Declaration, the weighty authority of government pressed down on us in the grandeur of the buildings. Yet the mood was upbeat – the security guards friendly and supportive, a reminder that we have more in common than differences.
In retrospect, it was an insane thing to do and undoubtedly some aspects could have been done better, but we were a small group with only so much time. It was in many ways an act of faith and, miraculously, potential gaps were filled by riders on their arrival. There was a level of fearlessness behind it all, not a heroic type of fearlessness, but the fearlessness driven by a concern and gritty determination that each of the riders seemed to share.
It might, like for Icarus, not have gone well. But we feel it did; it made some difference – there were no serious accidents, and lots of energy and enthusiasm for our concern was generated among Quakers and some outside them, too. Local media in Cumbria, Yorkshire, Derbyshire and the counties around London did broadcast our story and are showing interest in our action. And our story spread across social media.
Amongst the media who covered the Ride, Three Counties Radio asked whether we were proud of what we had done. We were more pleased, heartened by the links we forged with the Meetings we visited, but also moved and humbled by the many sad stories we heard along our journey and the sheer tenacity of the human spirit. However, there is so much still need to do; but, as Mary kept saying: ‘Drip, drip, drip’. Many drops can turn into a powerful torrent.
Our postcard campaign continues. Here are just a few of the 100 stories we carried with us to Downing Street:
I failed my medical review for ESA [Employment and Support Allowance]. I applied for mandatory reconsideration, which is supposed to take two weeks. Mine took three months. Without my mum I would have starved or froze.
I met someone begging who could not claim ESA because he had an appeal with the DWP [Department for Work and Pensions]. He is receiving emergency payments but these don’t cover B&B and daily living. He was then fined £100 for begging in the wrong position. He can’t pay the fine so is likely to get imprisoned for non-payment.
At twenty-seven I am homeless. My father died when I was fifteen, which messed up my education, but I found work and a place to live. But my landlady failed to pay her mortgage so I was evicted. Consequently I lost my job. I don’t drink or do drugs but now I’ve been homeless for eighteen months. My mother has since died. Without an address it’s hard to get benefit and I have no family to fall back on.
I am severely physically disabled. Cuts to the non-residential care allowance may mean that I am no longer able to live independently as I need full time carers all the time. The only alternative I will then have is to return to live with my parents who are elderly, sick and in need of care themselves.
My friend, who is very visually impaired and will not get better, has had her care package reduced by forty per cent. Nothing has changed, only the method of assessment.
I know someone with Parkinson’s who is clearly deteriorating but was refused PIP [Personal Independence Payment].
Although my daughter had mental health issues and was self-harming, because we didn’t live where there were services, we were told there was no help available.
My friend came to this country as an unaccompanied adolescent seeking asylum. Fourteen years later she has been granted leave to remain but has had to pay more than £1,000 to apply and has also had to pay for her children to be made British citizens and now has mental health issues due to the stress and hardship caused.
At Northampton Janice, a deaf blind person, spoke to the Meeting about the challenges and impact of being made redundant due to government cuts.
These people could be you or I. No one is utterly immune to the contingencies of life. It is in all our interests to have the safety net of a welfare system that we can access without fear of receiving a huge bill.
One of the riders, Cathy, the self-proclaimed ‘fat lass at the back’, described the Ride as ‘a triumph of hope over experience – many of us had never ever cycled so many consecutive days, and in the hottest British summer since 1976’.
We did it because we hope to bring the experiences of people suffering to the attention of those who can effect change and bring some hope to the lives of individuals who currently have little.
Over the next few months we want to increase the postcards of stories we have to 1,000 or more. Those who have a story to tell about our welfare system and how it has made a positive difference, or about how cuts have caused difficulties, can share it with us.
We plan to lobby parliament with them, bringing MPs across many constituencies together to face what is happening to those under their rule and care, and hope we may even persuade them to read out those stories in parliament and make the invisible visible and the unheard heard.
We hope that Quakers throughout Britain will seriously consider sharing our concern and acting on it.
Further information: quakers4thecommongood@gmail.com
Comments
Thank you.
By suehampton@btinternet.com on 30th August 2018 - 11:35
No doubt the riders meant well but this is an example of the one-sided political agitation in the name of the Society which is insufficiently challenged and does very little practical good.
This is not the seventeenth century. We live in a flourishing democracy (too flourishing, some would say), and A&Q 34 encourages Friends to be active in secular politics. There are any number of secular organisations – political parties, think tanks, and charities – acting on the questions in issue. Friends can take their pick. In this instance the Labour Party seems the obvious choice, with its attack on austerity. As for that, Friends need to be aware that the UK government annually spends £264 billion on welfare, which makes up 34% of all government spending. Defence spending is less than £50 billion.
This means that the UK spends over five times more on welfare than on defence, a situation Quakers ought to applaud. There are finite resources and, it seems, ever growing demand so sometimes harsh decisions get made. No doubts improvements are possible but ‘twas ever thus.
To speak plainly, I applaud the riders’ passion but would tell them to join the Labour Party, as hundreds of thousands of others have, and to take their politics out of our shared faith community.
By frankem51 on 31st August 2018 - 7:52
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