‘We can feel hopeless but if we can find “absolute hope”, it’s the Kingdom of God’

This year’s Swarthmore Lecture will be broadcast over YouTube. Its author, Tom Shakespeare, speaks to Rebecca Hardy.

Hello Tom. Thanks for meeting this way. The title of the 2020 Swarthmore Lecture is Openings to the Infinite Ocean: A Friendly Offering of Hope. which is based on the George Fox quote. Was this your idea?

Yes, it’s from me. I was asked to talk about hope. Obviously I was very familiar with that George Fox quote. So I felt it fitted and people seemed to like it. I feel very grateful for the opportunity.

You actually filed it at the end of February, almost a month before lockdown came into effect…

Yes, it was all written and thought-through long before Covid and lockdown, so I’ve sort of retrofitted it to make sure that it was ‘Covid-proof’ in a way, which seemed to be the right thing to do. It was interesting because, obviously, the Swarthmore Lecture is very much about trying to celebrate Quaker history. That’s one of the things you’re trying to do. So, long before Covid, I visited Woodbrooke. I talked to [the senior programme leader for on-site learning] Stuart Masters, I read two or three previous Swarthmore Lectures, and I read more and talked more about the history of Friends, and I have this chapter in the book/lecture about what the Bible says about hope. Those things seem to me to be what the lecture should contain, but I’m not a theologian and I can’t claim any spiritual insights, so I was struggling with the idea that I had something original to say about God or about Quakers. Then I thought: what do I know? Well, I am a social scientist, and I do know about social projects and social experiences of hope, and I thought, well, that’s what I can contribute. The lecture does contain material about Quaker history, the Bible and what it takes as ‘a Quaker view of hope’. But it also talks about the various projects I’ve reviewed that have shown to me that human beings working together, even in adverse circumstances, can do good work. And I thought that this is something I can share with Friends.

I’m interested to hear about the post-Covid retrofitting…

Well, I don’t have recent examples from the Covid crisis, but I do know that amidst the suffering, there has been great love and community feeling, and support for people – not least the service of healthcare workers and social care workers, which we are all very grateful for. And I thought I need to celebrate those stories of hope.

I went to Yearly Meeting [YM] last year and heard Eden Grace give her talk, which I found very moving and powerful, and I thought: ‘What can I do?’ My deadline for the writing was February, before Covid, and to me it was very important that the book was ready at the same time as the lecture. I went for a 20,000-word book, which is short. I read it, delivered it and copy-edited it before Covid struck and then, since that, I’ve been turning this 20,000-word book into 6,000-word ministry, so obviously a lot has been lost, but I hope you’re left with a distilled message. I’ve been very blessed to have the support of Friends on the [Swarthmore Lecture Committee], which has really enabled me. They’ve helped give me a sounding board; told me which bits work, which bits aren’t clear and which speak to their condition. And all of that is much appreciated on the journey, but, ultimately, what I do is my fault and responsibility.

What I felt was really important though is that, despite the fact we couldn’t meet at YM, I wanted to give the Swarthmore Lecture. I’ll do three sessions with young people, who I’ve always supported. My first Quaker committee was the children and young people committee in Newcastle, and since then I’ve supported many young people. So it’s a busy week, with my talk on Saturday, two meet-the-lecture sessions, and then three young people sessions.

The subject is so apt. It couldn’t have been more timely, which is interesting in itself. It’s so prophetic…

Yes, I think so, and it wasn’t me who chose the topic. I was honoured that they thought I could say something about it. At the time it was about global warming, it was about Donald Trump, it was about our government, and since then it has become even more important to try to speak truth to power and try to find sources of strength inside ourselves, and with our relationships with each other; to help us move forwards. It’s easy to be downcast, but our job is to try to find the hope, and I can help anyone on that road… but sometimes it is definitely a tough task.

Yes, it definitely is. So let’s talk more about hope. Did your idea of hope change having gone through these strange few months? Has your relationship with it undergone any kind of transformation?

I think this context tests our thoughts about hope. In a way it distills the complexities of the world and says, right, it’s not black and white. If we can find hope anywhere, this is where we need it. Bertolt Brecht says: ‘In the dark times will there also be singing?’ And the answer is: ‘Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.’ Our human spirit is not defeated, and when we have a crisis, we dig into that. One of the things I say in the third section [of the book] is: let’s look differently, in three ways. One is putting things in perspective; [secondly] let’s not forget the very positive things that are happening, and that includes about Covid, but it’s also about looking close-up at the things that go well; and, thirdly, it’s about the long view. There’s a quotation by Maya Angelou: ‘History despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived but if faced with courage need not be lived again.’

I think we are in a period of wrenching pain, but we can get through it, as people have got through things in the past. [Covid] has shown a lot of things but, at the end of the day, it shows we’re all equal. The prime minister got Covid; I believe [the president of Brazil] Jair Bolsonaro’s now got it. There’s an Italian proverb that says, at the end of the game of chess, the king and the pawn got into the same box. What that says to me is: rich or poor, powerful or vulnerable, we can all get this thing. It is unequal in its impact, but it’s nothing any of us is immune from. It’s a bit like the bomb in the Blitz: sadly, and tragically, it could be any of us.

There’s this notion too of ‘absolute hope’: is our hope that things will improve rational or irrational? Gabriel Marcel talks about people who have cancer or who are terminally ill. It would be dishonest to over-inflate their chances of getting better. It would be a deception. He says that even though you may not hope for something specific, you can have ‘absolute hope’, which means having a sense of self, waiting patiently and having a communal space – where you are with others. I think this realism – in the Bible it is talked about as ‘fortitude’, or sometimes psychologists talk about ‘resilience’ – is a tremendous human quality that we can build and grow. We can feel hopeless but if we can find this ‘absolute hope’, which is an attitude of mind, it’s not fatalism. It’s the Kingdom of God; it’s knowing that you can make a difference. Grace Paley is a great short story writer and [she says] ‘the only recognisable feature of hope is action’; and I talk a lot about taking action. We know throughout history that men and women have taken action for what they believe and Quakers do this so well – working for peace and donating to food banks, sometimes in little ways and somethings big ways – and this is what we should strive for.

Do you think in order to find true meaningful hope, rather than hope as a kind of self-deception, we have to stare into the abyss? The climate crisis is the classic example; we could vainly hope that it will just go away but it’s not going to until we realise how bad it is.

I think you have to be realistic. George Fox says in the ocean of dark he is staring into the abyss, if you like. But it is realism. Martin Luther King Jr said ‘we must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope’. Things are going to be grim. In Romans – the gospel according to St Paul – we read ‘Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed’, so there are times when it does look hopeless, but it’s about trust, faith and hope that change is going to come.

There’s an idea that hope can be a form of practice. Is that something you subscribe to?

Yes, I think so. We talked about climate change. There is this idea that hope – or enthusiasm – is a renewable resource. It’s something we work to build and grow and maintain. I like that idea. It is a practice. It’s understanding what the situation is, identifying what it is we want to change, and taking the steps. Often when we have a big project, it seems impossible, but we break it down into steps and move in the right direction.

I quote Archimedes in the book, the Greek engineer and thinker. He said he could move the world if he had a lever and place to stand, and I think that’s doable – it is doable. I think the love that we have is the lever. I think that very much.

Another of the sections is about faith, hope and love, and it’s not just hope but the three together help us move forward.

Going back to Covid-19, has it given you more hope, in any way? Have you seen green shoots?

Yes, it reveals just how good human beings can be. It’s not for that, of course, it’s a virus. It doesn’t have a meaning. But it reveals things. It reveals goodness and community spirit. As a disabled person, I particularly see this: the people who come forward and give others support. At the beginning, it looked as if disabled people’s needs were being completely ignored, almost as if they had been trampled in the rush, but [although many are suffering] we have remembered ourselves. Even where our systems fail, our human spirit wins. Just speaking personally, the neighbours who knock on the door and say, ‘Can we get anything? Are you okay?’ Those actions of love and respect are heart-affirming. My partner works in the NHS… that bravery, that commitment. So many care workers, who have been abandoned and have every reason to be angry, are not letting down the people with whom they work. In the midst of difficulty, there is goodness.

So, what gives you hope on a very personal level – aside from the things that we’ve talked about?

Ha, well, I think the chances of Trump being reelected are at eleven per cent! That gives me hope. Or the fact that some countries have suppressed [the virus] and controlled it, like New Zealand. It breaks out in little fires but well organised societies have done better and in South Korea or Taiwan or even China, by having organisation and tirelessly working, they have suppressed it. That is extraordinary. If you think of a country the size of China, and how terribly they have had the pandemic affect them in Wuhan and elsewhere, the fact that they almost eliminated it is astounding. And you only have to look at the tragic cases of America and Brazil to know how difficult it is.

The worry for me now is Africa. I work in Uganda, Kenya and Zambia, all these countries with these urban settlements where people are very closely confined. Not just the virus but the social consequences. If you are a day labourer, how can you not work for a day? You need to work. What people are telling me in Malawi and India and Bangladesh is, you can’t have a lockdown because people will starve, because they have absolutely no reserves. At least they are young societies, but we have to look ahead and consider carefully how we as a rich country – even with the debts we have accrued – can support the poorest. And for me it is a great distress that at this time of need the Department for International Development (DFID) is being absorbed into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I work with people at DFID and we ask them what is going on: they say we don’t know, and it is meant to be settled by September. And yet, meanwhile, the most appalling crisis since the second world war is erupting and we need DFID to stand by people. It is really criminal, when we need to act together.

You have done a lot of work on disability rights. One of the big conversations Quakers have been having is on diversity and inclusion. In your blog you write about the prejudice and presumption that disabled people have faced historically, and still face. What particular obstacles do they face now? How far do you think we have come in creating a culture of inclusion?

Since 2008 disabled people have borne the brunt of austerity. While Britain has become more equal in the sense of having more access, there’s been an attempt to get disabled people off benefits. To get disabled people into work is not an easy thing. It’s part carrot and sometimes requires stick, but what we have is all stick and no carrot. The incentives have not been there. It’s just been terrible, terrible sanctions, which don’t work. What works is support and employment, not just saying: ‘It’s up to you, sink or swim’. And you have to spend in order to get them into work. You can’t just browbeat people. A lot of people have been denied Personal Independence Payments and then the vast majority win on appeal, so it means the original decision was wrong. To have a state system that works so ineffectively and punitively is just a total waste of government resources and human suffering. The good thing is that disabled people are more visible. There are more disabled people in public life than ever before.

Recently I’ve been working with people with dementia. In the old days, if you got dementia you probably lived about two years. Now with brain scans people are getting diagnosed much earlier, and there are people with dementia living five or ten years. What’s funny is we’ve been doing Zoom for years and it’s second nature. So what a lot of disabled people are cross about is that we have been saying, ‘Can we have virtual access and can we contribute at a distance?’ and people have said ‘No, no, we can’t, it’s not possible’, and now with Covid, suddenly parliament is online, education’s online, everything’s online. A lot of disabled people are a bit cheesed-off, ‘cos we always said it was possible.

I think we have to avoid ghettoising disabled people. There is a danger that, because things can be done online, people will say, ‘Ah, we don’t need to bother with access, disabled people can just access it online’, so we want to be very vigilant and not enable a new exclusion, whether it is kids with disabilities at schools or students with disabilities in lecture halls. We have to do both. We have to be flexible enough where we can give access online and in-person, because isolation is a huge problem for disabled people. And isolation kills. So our abiding drive is to enable disabled people to go where you go, do what you do and enjoy what you enjoy. But what is interesting is that we are now at a point where remote learning and participation is very much accepted. And I don’t think we are going to turn the clock back.

Do you think that we are coming to a culture shift in the way that disabled people are treated and viewed?

I’m not certain. I think there has been a culture shift in the way lesbian and gay people are portrayed and included. Over the last twenty years, there’s been a huge shift and it’s so welcome, and it’s not finished. And I hope that with awareness of gender discrimination and with Black Lives Matter, we are saying, ‘Look gay people, women, BAME people, we’ve got to get off your backs and move aside’. Those things are happening in terms of BAME people and women and LGBT people, but disabled people are saying: ‘What about us? Are we there too? Are we included?’ And that conversation hasn’t happened. It’s ongoing, and I think we need greater visibility and solidarity, because the thing about disability that is different to most of those experiences is that anyone can become disabled. Around half of all disabled people are over sixty. It’s a path that awaits many of us. It will be to all our benefit if we can value people equally. There’s a project in Muswell Hill that I will mention in the lecture called ‘WAVE: We’re All Valued Equally’ and I love that. It’s basically about people with intellectual disabilities, and it’s saying that ‘we are all valued equally’ means that we are going to do things that are inclusive. It’s a really good motto. It’s what disabled people are asking for, whether they are people with intellectual disabilities, or physical or mental health issues: we’re all valued equally. It’s the Quaker testament to equality, and to that of God in everyone. It’s a very Quaker thing to get it right; to get it right in terms of disabilities. It’s absolutely congruent with our values.

So at the moment you don’t think that disabled people are involved enough in the wider conversation about diversity and inclusion?

No, I don’t. There’s a line in the Bible from Hebrews that says: ‘Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.’ That’s what we want. We have had improvements – it’s much better than it was – but we’re not there yet.

Do you think that more could be done in Quaker Meetings to enable access and to attract more disabled people?

It’s been interesting lately. I’ve been worshipping with Friends in lockdown and here I am in London and I can worship with my nearest Meeting, in Westminster, on Zoom. I can worship in Wyndham in Norfolk, where I used to worship, and Newcastle where I started twenty years ago. This is a great thing. We can all participate – well, not all of us, not if you’re deaf – but more than ever before. I don’t think Quakers always get it right. Many Meeting houses are old, so many are not accessible, but Friends House is, so it varies. I know that Friends take this issue very seriously, but I don’t see a whole lot of people with intellectual disabilities in our Meetings. I don’t see a lot of reaching out to people with disabilities. We tend to be a white, middle-class bunch. We’re ageing. so we might have issues associated with that – hearing loss, etc – but I think we have every possibility to do more, and we should.

My friend Jackie Leach Scully gave the Swarthmore Lecture a few years ago [2002]. She’s a deaf woman, and so I know there is a recognition of these issues, but I don’t think we can say that we are exemplary.

You’ve said that to bring about more acceptance of disability in society, we need to see more disabled people in positions of power, authority and leadership. How do you think that’s going?

I don’t necessarily always agree with her, but I am a great admirer of Jane Susan Campbell, the life peer. She works tirelessly in the interests of disabled people. Also Tanni Grey-Thompson, again in the House of Lords. Both are cross-party peers. I believe the House of Lords should be reformed and [members] not just appointed, but we are lucky that we have some good disabled voices [there]. But why are there so few disabled politicians? Disabled people make up at least fifteen per cent of the population. Why are they not adopted as parliamentary candidates? Uganda has places reserved for disabled people in parliament. That’s not how our system works, and I wouldn’t call for that, but I would like to see more disabled people having the confidence to represent us, and more constituencies saying: ‘Yes, fair enough: we’ll have a disabled person represent us like Jack Ashley did.’

This is the fiftieth anniversary of Alf Morris’s Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, the first piece of disability rights legislation in the world. Manchester is about to celebrate it in the Histories DigiFest in September. I’ll be speaking at it and it’s very welcome. We need more of that.

You’ve been a champion of disability arts too. Though you say that they’re not criticised enough…

Yeah, my feeling is that we’ve got to expose ourselves to the same [level of scrutiny] if we want to be equal. That means not saying, ‘Oh, aren’t they marvellous?’ It’s about saying, ‘Alright, that’s not good enough’. That’s hard to hear and hard to say, but it’s the honesty we need.

You’ve done some research into the mental health benefits of singing, which is interesting given that we have a tradition of silent worship. Would you like to see more Quakers breaking into song?

I think everyone should do more singing! It doesn’t have to be in a religious context, but we did an evaluation of a project called ‘Sing your heart out’, where people with mental health conditions met together and sang [and it showed an improvement in mood]. I think that singing is fantastic. It’s about the choir coming together: you make a better noise collectively, you can support each other and be part of a network, and you’re breathing deeply. I don’t say that we should change our worship, of course. Our worship is a different thing. But I’m sure we would all benefit from singing more.

We’ve talked a lot about hope and diversity and there’s been a lot of debate about ‘cancel culture’ recently, where people are targeted for having unpopular or controversial views. What’s your take on that? Have you noticed it in academia? Do you think that there is a cancel culture, or do you think that accusation is a backlash from privileged people against people who used to be excluded from the conversation?

Oh gosh, I’m not sure. I’m a liberal. I want to hear people. I’ve friends who are trans, I’ve friends who are radical feminists. I want to hear voices. I don’t want to hear voices that preach hate, but there are different strategies. There are genuine fears, and I want to understand. I have a close friend who wrote in The Guardian this week and she made a transition from a man to a transwoman and I welcome and support that; and it’s interesting to hear the whole legacy of slavery and enslavement, and how British wealth has been based on this. All people of white descent should take stock and think about what they can do to move aside and enable people of colour to communicate. I think we need more change and there is unfinished business, and I still think that the best way to get the truth is to talk. What I fear is that people… I do love Twitter, I spend a lot of time on Twitter, but there is some real anger. I don’t want anger. I want dialogue, and that’s a real Quaker thing to say maybe but Quaker Meetings are about listening to people’s voices and hearing God, and I think that will dissolve anger.

We started off talking about hope: where does hope come from? Well, hope comes from the silence of Quaker Meetings. This is what we are about and can be about, and many people who are lost, confused and distressed may be able to find hope in a Quaker Meeting, which they might not feel in the bustle and stress of everyday life.

As a public debater you must have encountered disagreements in your time. Have you any insight into how we can most effectively work with differences of opinion?

As an intellectual, I would say [by using] rational, evidence-based discourse. I’m aware, however, that a lot of the questions of our time bring up very strong emotions, so we have to have a space to hear the emotions. We have to be able to receive anger and not retaliate. And I think that one of the things I am trying to say in the book is that the ego is a problem, that we can’t back down, we can’t admit we’re wrong. We can’t hear criticism because it’s us, our personhood, that is affected. And I think we have to try to be able to hear. If someone is angry about colonial oppression or enslavement, it’s not ‘us’ that caused it, but it’s part of our legacy; we have to hear and acknowledge, to truly hear things.

I’ve written about nonviolent communication. I’ve also tried in all my work with young people to inculcate listening: hearing other people and giving them a space, and that’s at the root of conflict avoidance and peacebuilding. It’s about hearing people. I know that’s glib and easy to say, but I don’t think there’s anything more important. I’ve been wrong. I know I have made mistakes. I haven’t known what I’m talking about, and people have ‘called me out’, rightly, and it’s been very hard to hear, and it’s been shameful for me to acknowledge that I haven’t always got it right. But I have to be big enough to say, ‘I got it wrong, I’m sorry’, and ‘I’ve changed my mind’.

Here’s something interesting. There’s a moral psychologist called Jonathan Haidt who has said that we think we are judges – that we neutrally evaluate evidence and come to an opinion based on that. But in fact we tend to be more like barristers. We have an innate thought and then we seek the evidence to back up our thought, so we are biased. We are biased from the start. I do hope that we can be more like judges, to resist the temptation for an immediate judgement. Wait until we’ve heard what’s going on and try to deliberately come to agreement. I think the Quaker Business Method is a way of doing this. It’s not the only way, but the more we can do this, whether it’s in peacebuilding or in deciding what to do in our community, the more hope there will be that we will get it right. Or even if we get it wrong, we will do everything in a spirit of humility, discernment and togetherness, which will help us change course if we need to.

So how did you become a Quaker? What was your journey?

I was brought up an Anglican. I lost my faith in my twenties, like many people do. I was living in Newcastle and my friend said: ‘Why don’t we go to Newcastle Quaker Meeting?’ So in January 1997, we started going. She has sadly died since of breast cancer, but I stuck with Quakers. Regardless of where we are in our personal faith journey, I think Quakers have a home for us.

I don’t want Quaker smugness: Quakers are not perfect. Quakers are flawed in all sorts of ways. I get irritated by Quakers sometimes believing that they’ve got it right and that they are better. They’re not. I go sometimes to other churches to find joy, children, diversity, and it’s a great change and a welcome one from my Local Meetings, which are white, middle-class and rather conservative, in some ways. So I think we can reinvigorate Quakerism and that is why talking to young people is so important.

And I suppose a lot of Quakers are quite quietist and liberal, and I am more evangelical about my faith, which is not very fashionable in Quakerism. But we have a great resource to share with people. We sometimes feel that we are doing enough if we are just keeping our Meetings going, but we could do more than that. And some people are doing more than that. And I welcome it.

Tom is a member of Norfolk and Waveney Area Meeting. Rebecca is from Winchmore Hill Meeting and is the journalist at the Friend. The 2020 Swarthmore Lecture, ‘Openings to the Infinite Ocean: A Friendly Offering of Hope’ will be live streamed on 1 August – see https://bit.ly/SwarthmoreLecture2020 for details. The e-book of the lecture will also be available on that date.

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