The Quaker Memorial at the National Arboretum in Staffordshire. It includes a quote from the original Nobel citation. The artist is Rosemary Barnett. Photo: Barry Turner, NMA.
The Nobel Peace Prize
Rowena Loverance discusses the Nobel Peace Prize and Quakers
It is a moving experience to read the citation for the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Quakers in December 1947 – especially the stress it places, not only on half a century of relief work in the wake of war, but also on acknowledging the motivating spirit behind it. The Quaker Peace Testimony, the Nobel committee recognised, is much more than a mere refusal to take part in war – it affirms that ‘in the end victory must come from within the individual man or woman’.
Some Quakers in 1947 worried that Friends should not be seeking or accepting public recognition for their work, but this, too, the Nobel committee had anticipated. ‘It is the silent help from the nameless to the nameless,’ they wrote, ‘which is their contribution to the promotion of brotherhood among nations, as it is expressed in the will of Alfred Nobel.’ It is very hard to argue with that, and it was in this spirit that the award was accepted by Henry Cadbury, on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and Margaret Backhouse, on behalf of the Friends Service Council (FSC), the precursor of Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW).
Even in 1947, the Nobel Peace Prize was not without controversy – Mohandas Gandhi, assassinated in 1948, was the most obvious name which the committee overlooked, and since then there have been accusations of over-politicisation (Henry Kissinger in 1973, though he did later offer to return it) and recipients who have subsequently fallen from grace (Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, who to date has not offered to return hers).
Clearly, Friends have never stopped reflecting on peacemaking and peacebuilding. QPSW’s current work involves challenging militarism and campaigning for disarmament, supporting active nonviolence work and assisting quietly in peace processes. AFSC’s website lists programmes towards ending discrimination, building peace, defending immigrant rights, ending mass incarceration and building economic justice.
There will always be too much work for us to do on our own. Both organisations seek like-minded partners – the list of organisations with which QPSW works in order to deliver the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) runs into hundreds.
Another way of encouraging the work, though, is to offer publicity and recognition to other groups and individuals who are working for peace – and this is where we can take advantage of our legacy as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which gives us the right to send in our own nomination each year for consideration by the peace prize committee.
The committee, which meets once a year to do this (after a lot of long-distance work throughout the year by email and phone), is the snappily named Nobel Peace Prize Nominating Task Group, and I am Britain Yearly Meeting’s relatively new representative on it. Having now attended one meeting, I can vouch for the care which Friends bring to the task.
The task group does its best to weigh the relative claims of individuals and groups, of people who work in the front line and those who advance the cause by writing and campaigning, of those who have spent a lifetime in the field and those who are up-and-coming. We reflect on the global situation and those who would benefit from timely recognition of their work. Following the lead of the Nobel committee, we interpret peace in its widest sense, including those working for human rights and for the environment.
The Nobel Peace Prize committee does not announce a shortlist, just the winner! Its choice last year, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), was an organisation which was very close to Quaker hearts, and with which QPSW had worked in campaigning for the 2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Meanwhile, the Quaker nomination was Christian Peacemaker Teams, which has teams in Columbia, Palestine and Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as a programme of Indigenous Peoples Solidarity, based in Canada.
The name going forward from Friends in 2018 is that of Search for Common Ground (SFCG). In this particular year, when the practice of careful listening to one another seems even more under threat than usual, the task group warmed to the values pursued by this organisation.
Its founder, John Marks, was influenced by, among others, Adam Curle’s work in Biafra: he believed, with Adam Curle, that peacemaking is all about building relationships. He began in 1982, in the middle of the cold war, by trying to find common ground between the US and USSR; subsequently he and his wife, Susan Collin, built SFCG into the largest dedicated peacebuilding NGO in the world with 600 staff members working in thirty-six countries.
SFCG’s current chief executive officer, Shamil Idriss, specialises in using technology to promote cross-cultural dialogue, and has encouraged the organization to use the widest possible range of methods, including television and radio production, participatory theatre, sporting events, music and people-to-people exchanges.
I hope the 2019 process of discernment, which begins this month, will be an exciting one, enabling us to spread the word about some fantastic individuals and peacemaking groups, and to hold them up to the Light. But for the process to work at its best Friends need to give their input. I want to encourage you to reflect on whether you or your Meeting would like to bring a name to the attention of the Quaker Nobel Peace Prize nominating task group. It is an opportunity to recognise, and endorse, the work of an individual or organisation.
Further information on the history of Quakers and the Nobel Peace Prize: https://bit.ly/QuakerNPP
On how to make a nomination for 2019: http://quakernobel.org/criteria
