What’s the point of a leaf?
Tim Nicholls reflects on the recent Quaker Peace & Social Witness Spring Conference
During the Saturday afternoon break, while drinking a cup of tea sitting on the lawn in the sunshine, the clerk to the conference asked me what expectations I had come with. The honest answer was none, which I think was a surprise to her. I recounted that when deciding whether to take a place on the weekend, my partner had reminded me of the advice that when you are faced with two roads to choose from, you should take the road you cannot see down. That had led me to join the weekend.
Our conversation flowed along several streams and for a while was caught in the eddy of the Barrow Pilgrimage, which challenges the now dominant narrative that taxation is a negative. In speaking of what we were doing, I was reminded of a story about the origin of the word ‘taxation’, which I was taught when on a horticulture course at the botanical gardens in Edinburgh – so I can’t vouch for its accuracy! I was told it is linked to the Latin name for a yew tree, taxus baccata.
The English military once needed yew trees to support its production of weapons. The scarcity of yew trees meant that merchant ships travelling to ports around the world were required to fill their holds with the trees for their return to an English harbour and the payment of their duties. Crucially, the trees provided the ballast to stabilise for the ship during its return journey. I cannot help seeing here the analogy with the need for taxation in our society to maintain its homeostasis and the wellbeing of its citizens during rough times.
For me, this conversation reflected the essence of the Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) Spring Conference: telling each other stories that relate to and point to the purpose of QPSW, which is to remind people of Quakers’ long tradition of dissent, of questioning the conventions of the day and of challenging the narratives that underpin and reinforce unjust systems in society.
Over the weekend I spoke with several members of the QPSW team: Maya Williams, Steve Whiting and Alison Prout. Maya greeted me on my arrival with: You’re the one doing the walk.’ I took this to mean that I was taking part in a walk option on Saturday afternoon, completely forgetting the Barrow Pilgrimage! I chatted with Steve, who leads the Turning the Tide (TTT) training programme, about our experience of a TTT event and its value to us of bringing clarity to the nature of our social action. Alison Prout led a session on the New Economy and its ten principles. One of these concerns taxation and is so in tune with Quakers’ social action that we could have written it.
I valued my conversations with them and like the work that they are doing. However, for me, there is a place for a further dimension to the strategy driving their work. This would be to address how social action is taken beyond the local and regional to the national consciousness, so that Quaker beliefs and values become a part of the national conversation on issues such as the dismantling of the welfare state.
I would like to thank my Area Meeting for giving me this opportunity. The weekend held many moments of new knowledge, new understanding, new friendships and new experiences. It was also a welcome reminder of what it’s like to be looked after rather than doing the looking after!
Oh, I almost forgot about explaining the title of this piece. It came from the keynote address on Quaker activism by Chris Venables, who helped facilitate the Turning the Tide event at Kendal, and Jane Peam. Jane explained that she saw all concerns and testimonies as an oak tree, deeply rooted in the soil of belief. Each leaf of the tree takes the light given to it and converts it into nourishment for the whole. The analogy was played around with, developed and grown further over the weekend. Maybe there is a lesson in there.
The QPSW Spring Conference took place on 24-26 March at Swanwick.
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