Letters - 08 November 2024

Great teachers

Thank you, Daniel Clarke Flynn, for this article (‘Thought for the week’, 25 October). It ‘speaks to my condition’ and helps me with the language of faith. I can call ‘the greater wisdom’ the ‘Holy Spirit’ without unease.

We can be thankful for the great religious teachers throughout the centuries for helping us to be in touch with the ‘greater wisdom’.

From Socrates to the Buddha to Jesus, Spinoza to George Fox, to William James to Carlo Ravelli, to name some of those who have helped me be in touch with that wisdom.

Kate Allen

'Principled impartiality'

I am saddened that there are still Friends such as Tim Robertson (18 October) who feel that Britain Yearly Meeting can be seen as antisemitic in singling out Israel for criticism over its harrowing and largely one-sidedly destructive actions in Gaza and all over the Middle East. 

Tim’s position seems to be that we must give equal weight to all similar situations if we are to avoid the label of antisemitism in relation to Israel. This is an unreal position. None of us gives equal weight to all similar conflicts. Historical and current connections to the conflict are always in play and understandably so. I was more outraged by the French military response to the Algerian independence struggle than most British citizens because I was a French teacher. In the case of Israel and Palestine it is partly because we are responsible through the Balfour declaration. But far more because it is western powers, including the UK, that have in effect granted Israel carte blanche to do whatever it wants, led by the US. 

That impunity has created the disaster – for the people of Palestine and Lebanon, for the standing of the western powers, now exposed to a justified critique of their hypocrisy in relation to violations of international law, and to Jewish people of Israel who will have suffered generational damage from not only the direct experience of the effects of the appalling violence but also from the moral and spiritual shrivelling and distortion that arises from hearts closed to empathy.

So, I am profoundly grateful for the statements of Britain Yearly Meeting. I would go further, however. Nothing can justify what we have witnessed. We should be outraged. And we should not take refuge from the truth in our sensitivity to our many Jewish Quaker Friends, as I believe may be true of some local Quaker response or silence.

Jonathan Dale

Internet gaming

I have recently been in the process of changing my phone contract and thereby accepting the change to broadband. It has made me think about the place of the modern communications industry and its consumers.

It seems to me that one of the most important advertising areas of this change is that of offering faster speeds and the one area that they link faster download/upload speeds to is in gaming and gambling. And in that it has some success, I have spoken to people with younger family members who have bought into contracts because of this.

I feel that, with the identified problems that these activities can produce, it is disquieting that major telecommunications companies should ally with promoting the gaming sector. To promote access to gaming and gambling without having a responsibility for avoiding or mitigating its harmful impacts seems wrong.

This is in some ways an insidious development and one, I suggest, that needs questioning. We have certainly moved on from the world as described in Quaker faith & practice 20.61.

Colin Sheward

Time to stop

I wish the letters about Jeremy Corbyn and ‘reputational risk’ would stop. The decision, as reported in the Friend 5 April, was about risks associated with programmes of work in Israel and Palestine at a time when the Equality and Human Rights Commission had found evidence of antisemitism (according to a definition that is questionable) in the Labour Party (of which I am a member).   

My understanding is that the decision was not about banning an individual from speaking but about anticipating unrest from the press and outsiders against people who were, and still are, vulnerable when doing the work of love on our behalf in a harshly divided and emotive situation. 

I don’t see any value in revisiting a past internal discernment that was made in good order and niggling away among ourselves, while the much harder task is to continue what Quakers and others do to make things better in that part of the world.

Anne Watson

What about the poor white?

Like other Meetings, my Area Meeting has been considering the question of reparations for injustices suffered by black people in the past and alleviating their present disadvantages.   

My own small Local Meeting was unable to reach unity on the matter because of a lone voice arguing against the principle of compensating for past injuries and pleading that black people should not be singled out for special treatment. She pointed out that those in our society most disadvantaged educationally are poor white boys.

Coincidentally I read recently a review of a book called White Poverty: How exposing myths about race and class can reconstruct American democracy, by a black preacher called William J Barber II. While the book is about the USA, much of what the author says is relevant to our situation in the UK. 

Barber pleads that, instead of being distracted by racial difference, poor people and those who advocate for them should put their energy into creating a more equal society for all.

There is a danger that while we are concentrating on how best to make reparations for the enslavement of back people, we may turn a blind eye to injustices currently suffered by black and white alike. It is likely that, if special attention is seen to be given to causes singling out black people, those who are white and disadvantaged may turn against those whom they perceive to be favoured because of their skin colour rather than making common cause with them. 

From a historical perspective it is manifest that white people as well as black were subjected to dehumanising treatment in order to bring about the industrialisation and ensuing wealth from which the more fortunate among us benefit so greatly. 

Moreover, exploitation and injustice in our present society are by no means confined to racial minorities. Witness the horrors of the gig economy and the rental sector in housing, which affect people of all races. It is necessary that we recognise poverty and exclusion wherever they are to be found, so that we may pull together to create a society where all can flourish rather than favouring divisive policies based on racial difference.

Jo Dales

Ukraine

I see that at the end of last year Britain Yearly Meeting joined with other concerned groups in a letter to the Ukrainian and Russian embassies calling on both to respect the rights of conscientious objectors to military service under international law.  

I subscribe to Forum18, the Norway-based report service on religious freedom. On 18 October its newsletter described the continuing torture and abusive treatment of conscientious objectors. One recognises, not without regret, the desperate need for Ukraine to sustain its army. But the news that there has been a Ukrainian Quaker Meeting makes me hope that a more direct but nuanced approach could again take place. The case could be made (in the present circumstances) for channelling objectors into medical and other forms of service that are non-violent but which the nation must desperately need. Individual Friends could write, but a collective or even person-to-person approach might carry more weight.

Richard Seebohm

Poppies

Wearing a white poppy implies no disrespect for the fallen. Especially if worn alongside a traditional red one.

Rosamond Reavell