Sleaze

Keith Wedmore has a concern and believes Friends have an answer

We have been against war for over 300 years, but where are we now? We should go on trying, but, frankly, I am not holding my breath. It would be great if Friends were to start to deal from strength – where their aim has a good chance of success. My target today is ‘sleaze’. Let us end it.

Friends were well known in the early years of the movement for running businesses honestly and being so in all other transactions. People liked that. So, Barclays Bank, Rowntrees, Fry’s and Cadbury’s, Friends Provident Insurance and such companies grew and – dare we say – prospered. That started a chain of events and, in fact, Friends became vaguely uncomfortable with being rich or, at any rate, prosperous.

By the middle of the nineteenth century they started to react, sometimes to sell out. By the mid-century it was still OK to be a doctor of substance – my ancestor doctor Samuel Wedmore was one. But the career tendency began to turn from business and industry to social service. ‘I help people’ sounded better than ‘I can sell stuff.’ Friends started to become, typically, social workers, teachers, therapists, probation officers, police officers and so on. None of these jobs is going to make a bundle.

We see today, as Meetings gather, a collection of people of mostly modest income and slight social or political clout.

I was told in 1962 by Herbert Tanner, one of my rich but honest supporters in an election when I stood for parliament, that, had I really wanted to be elected to represent Bristol West, I would not have stood as a Liberal. Maybe so. But my Conservative opponent was so ill-mannered that I got 12,000 votes. I nearly beat him. On polling night his chairman came over to apologise personally to me for the behaviour of his candidate throughout the election – for his sleaze, in fact.

Our early show of unusual honesty stood out little in areas where most people were honest anyway.

So, our unique gift, I believe, lies fallow, has been forgotten and is not used as an instrument for social change. (And think how some banks behave these days.) May I make a suggestion?

Where Quakers find themselves owning or controlling a business of any kind, or are leaders in some area, they should put up a notice claiming two things: ‘We are Quakers… and we deal honestly and fairly’. I emphasise both points. Most people don’t think we exist outside cereal packages. They may not realise that, in Britain, we number less than 25,000.

Friends, how about it?

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