Issue 28-10-2011
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Peace as a way of life
The Perugia-Assisi peace march last month attracted more than 200,000 people. Many of them were young. In 1961 I took part in the first march and have, over the years, attended about one in every three. I marched again this year, despite my age. I am 74. There have been other marches outside...
Top stories
Nuclear power: The only option?
The people living near Fukushima in Japan have suffered disastrously from the false assumption that nuclear power stations are safe, as did the people living near Chernobyl. People have had to be evacuated from a twenty kilometre exclusion zone around the plant. France’s Institute for Radiological Protection and...
Transforming conflict
What settles disputes, deflates violence, erases ill-feeling and promotes understanding? Quakers have been pursuing this for generations. But a quiet revolution has been happening right under their noses – from foundations they laid. In the north of England, conflict resolution is beginning to look like a movement in transition – from...
Experiment with Light: Waiting in the Light
I couldn’t make out what it was. It looked a bit like one of those sand dollars or a smooth shell of some kind – or maybe it was just a step on the way to an image that would mean something. Just wait – ‘mind the Light’. I looked...
Remembering Jordans
My first experience of Quakers was in the 1970s when I was about seventeen. A girl invited me to a village bonfire party, at a place called Jordans in Buckinghamshire, but I had no idea she was a Quaker and that this had been a Quaker community since 1688 and the...
Quo vadis Libya?
No matter how much things change they remain the same, in Libya this is true. Tribe fights against tribe brutality is returned by more brutality.
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Quaker action at St Paul’s
Protesters camped near St Paul’s Cathedral were given an experience of Quaker activism last week, when Friends provided a workshop to help them think through their aims. Turning the Tide, a scheme run by Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW), sent two staff to facilitate a session held...
Quaker campaigner makes ‘Pink List’
Quaker activist Clare Dimyon is one of the most inspiring gay people in Britain – according to this year’s ‘Pink List.’ The list, published annually by the Independent on Sunday, names the 101 individuals considered to have done most to make life better for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)...
Bootham old boy new cabinet secretary
Jeremy John Heywood, due to take over the post of cabinet secretary when Gus O’Donnell retires at the end of the year, was educated at Bootham School in York. He was head boy at the school, which has a Quaker background and ethos.
Quakers and the cuts
On 4 October the Religious Society of Friends issued a news release titled ‘Quakers oppose unfair government cuts.’ Following discussions with Friends in Oxford, I have been encouraged to share my concerns about this statement. I think there are at least two weaknesses with its substance. I am also unclear about...
Letters - 28 October 2011
Political engagement Janet Quilley’s article (23 September) is correct in emphasising the Quaker statements in the past and in the present, and also the need for ‘advocacy plus.’ Overemphasising the role of politicians is very prevalent, albeit understandable. Any political development is very complex. It involves a myriad of internal...
Eye - 28 October 2011
Testing principles in Leeds Leeds, home of the Royal Armouries and once site of a large tank factory, recently played host to the Quaker Theatre Company’s performance of ‘George Fox and Margaret Fell Get Stuck in a Lift’ by Alan Avery. Martin Schweiger, of Roundhay Meeting in Leeds, tells...