Words and Woodbrooke

Antony Barlow regrets a change of name at the Birmingham centre

I am sure that I am not alone in feeling uneasy at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre’s decision to drop the word ‘Quaker’ from its new logo. It has overtones of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where the wording of the ‘seven commandments’ is subtly changed to accommodate Napoleon and his comrades’ subversion of the values of the founders of the farm’s take-over. Incrementally, since Woodbrooke College became the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, and now just Woodbrooke, its connection to George Cadbury’s great idea has become ever more tenuous.

Woodbrooke has been an intimate part of my family’s life for over a hundred years. Cousins George and Elizabeth Cadbury first invited my grandparents John Henry and Mabel Barlow down to Birmingham in 1900 to be the first directors of the newly founded Bournville Village Trust (BVT). As there was no immediate place for them to live, George made Woodbrooke available to my grandparents as their home.

In his letter of appointment of 1900, George insisted to my grandfather that as well as managing the BVT, he should ‘devote time both to philanthropic work for which we know thee to have a special gift and helping the advancement of the Society in which field our ideas are so much as one.’ One Sunday when they were still living at Woodbrooke my grandfather recalls George ‘burst in’ and told them how he was filled with the idea of starting a Quaker college. ‘The Society of Friends needs more trained ministry if it is to grow,’ he told grandfather.

What he envisaged was ‘an academy where dedicated individuals would engage in study of scripture and the principles of Quakerism to prepare for service in the Society of Friends’. John, too, had long believed that ministry for some be a ‘first charge on their lives’ as he described it. Long known for the preparation he gave to his ministry through reading and study, and recognised as the ‘finest minister of his generation’, George’s idea of a Quaker college chimed exactly with my grandfather’s notions.

Later, Woodbrooke became a constituent college of the Selly Oak Colleges Federation and my father Ralph, like his father, became a trustee and devoted much of his life to Woodbrooke, eventually, in his retirement years from the BVT, writing the history of the third quarter century of the college. At the beginning of this history he quotes the great HG Wood, who wrote: ‘Tribute must be paid to the vision and foresight of the founders, especially William Charles Braithwaite, John William Graham and especially John Wilhelm Rowntree’, and goes on to cite the 1903 Trust Deed, which states that the property was given by George Cadbury ‘for the purposes of a college or Hall of Residence where members of the Society of Friends… and other persons… may receive instruction with regard to and study of the Christian religion, especially as it bears upon the doctrines held by members of the Society of Friends (Quakers).’

What would they make, one wonders, of the decision to drop the word ‘Quaker’ from the logo?

Of course, times change and circumstances too; there is no longer a George Cadbury around to secure Woodbrooke’s finances, and the Society has moved on, now facing another crisis in its history. We can debate about theists versus nontheists, we can discuss the new inclusivity, but as Quakers we remain followers of George Fox’s Christian inspiration and to drop the word Quaker would only make sense to Napoleon and his comrades of Animal Farm – truly Orwellian.

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Comments

Strange.
I have a memory of Meetings for Worship In Jesus Lane Cambridge in the 70’s.
When I used the word “Quakers” I would be gently reminded,
‘Amongst ourselves we prefer just to say “Friends, John” .’
Times do indeed change! 😊

By andavane on 9th June 2017 - 16:08

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