Thirsk Friends highlight choice
Series of events held
Quakers in Thirsk marked the centenary of the outbreak of world war one with a series of events highlighting the choices available at that time.
Thirsk Meeting saw the centenary as an opportunity to engage with non-Quakers and were inspired by Yearly Meeting recording clerk Paul Parker’s talk at the 2013 High Flatts conference on ‘inreach and outreach’.
The Meeting was keen not to preach the peace testimony, but to reflect the spirit of the town, which neighbours both Catterick Garrison and Alanbrooke Barracks. Some eighty per cent of Thirsk’s young men fought in world war one, Thirsk Friend Geof Sewell explained. ‘What we wanted to stress, though, was that choices always exist, especially about enlisting. We wanted to create a sense of balance between the experience of war and the objections to it,’ Geof told the Friend.
The Meeting worked with Churches Together in Thirsk on a series of events, including a candlelit vigil, a secular concert and an exhibition, ‘Choices 1914’. Planning took eight months.
More than three hundred people visited Thirsk Meeting House over the five days of the exhibition. ‘As the visitors entered the Meeting house, they were given a flyer with a number on the back. As they left they were asked if they would have joined up and told what that number represented in the lottery of war,’ Geof explained. Geof said that the conflict in Gaza gave the exhibition’s themes added relevance.
‘Seeking alternatives to violence was seen as a rational choice. Over half of our visitors said they would have refused to join up,’ he said.
Friends wanted their exhibition to not only to strike a balance between war and the objections to it, but also between the experiences of men and those of women and children.
Exhibits included the men’s last letters, diaries and photo albums. The Mount School York lent the Meeting a display of its girls’ research on the York Minster memorial to women who died in the first world war. Other exhibits commemorated the nurses who worked in Thirsk’s auxiliary hospital.
Thirsk School donated a sculpture of a wounded Tommy and murals created by students, including a two metre-high picture of a poet. Two local primary schools sent poems written by their pupils.
Pop-ups from the Quaker Service Memorial Trust were displayed in the Meeting for Worship room, along with posters celebrating the centenary of the Northern Friends Peace Board and a set of photographs and accounts of the Friends Ambulance Unit.
Choices 1914 was made up of one hundred and sixty-five items, most of which will be recycled to other Yorkshire museums, Geof told the Friend.
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