Northern Friends Peace Board


The Peace Board

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Issue 26  Spring 2009

Have you looked at the NFPB Blog ... ?

peacepeaces.blogspot.com

Contents


Learning about grass-roots peace-building

Early last summer, Douglas Rennie, of Newcastle Quaker Meeting, joined us for our NFPB meeting in the city, introducing the project that they have set up - the Newcastle Conflict Resol-ution Network - with the support of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. On their website they describe their work thus:

The Newcastle Conflict Resolution Network, NCRN, offers a programme of events to raise awareness of issues around conflict resolution in the City. It provides support for people in leadership positions, policy makers and workers who are dealing with conflicts and attempting to resolve conflicts in a variety of settings.

NFPB members were excited to learn about this project and the new model of working that they have developed.

Our recent meetings have also been opportunities for Friends to hear about a range of other peace-building projects, in this country and beyond. Here are some highlights:

Peace, faith and race

Our own focus on building peace has as its focus peace in our communities.
Following our conferences in 2007 and 2008, on Building Peace - Tackling Racism, we ran a follow-up event this March. This was again well attended, with opportunities for networking and for learning. On this occasion we had two workshops looking at different aspects of dialogue and identity, drawing on the expertise and experiences of the Bradford-based Programme for a Peaceful City and the Lancaster branch of the National Coalition Building Institute.

We are keen to promote further discussion and action on this area of concern, and with that in mind have produced a short DVD and some study notes from last year’s conference. We have been very pleased by the responses to this so far and hope to see it widely used. Details of how to get a copy of this are given on the back page.


Some useful web links

  1. Newcastle Conflict Resolution Network
    -- www.newcastlecrn.org.uk

  2. Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel -- www.quaker.org.uk/eappi

  3. City of Sanctuary -- www.cityofsanctuary.com

  4. Fellowship of Reconciliation International Peace-
    makers Fund     -- www.for.org.uk/ipf

  5. Building Peace - Tackling Racism
    --     page of links relating to this work: www.nfpb.gn.apc.org/bptr

Planning for the future

Northern Friends Peace Board is close to completing a development plan for the coming years, with our centenary year in 2013 as a particular focus point. We have had a number of wider consultations with Friends since 2004 and these have all contributed to our thinking, as have discussions at our meetings, addressing evolving needs, concerns and resources.

The plan has four main areas:

  1. Relationships with Friends – how we support and enable Representatives and others to play an
    active role in our peace endeavours

  2. Communications – amongst Friends and more widely, using technology adventurously and
    appropriately

  3. Building common cause – working together with others and affirming diversity in our approach to this

  4. Sustainability – working in a way that is sustain-able (organisationally and environmentally) and promoting sustainability as a key element of our peace vision

A detailed plan will be available for any who are interested and a summary will be distributed to Meetings and available on our website. We hope this will fit in well with the Yearly Meeting's 'Framework for Action', helping us in taking our work forward in raising the profile of Quaker peace concerns.

Financial Note

Thanks to the continuing support of Friends and to the generosity of Friends who have left money to us in legacies, we finished 2008 on a sound financial footing. We have suggested £7.00 per Member as a guideline for  contributions from Area and Local Meetings. Thank you to those who have given already in 2009. Our Annual Financial Statements and Trustees Report will be available soon.

NFPB Meetings and events

Our next three meetings will be in Glasgow on 13 June, Middlesbrough on 26 September and Swarthmore on 29 November. Interested Friends and Attenders are all welcome to join us at these meetings.

We shall soon by planning meetings for 2010 and would be pleased to hear from Local Meetings interested in hosting us, with the possibility of including areas of common concern in the agenda for the day.

We would also be pleased to hear from Meetings who would like a workshop or other event on a peace-related theme. Our contact details are on the back page.

Speaking our Peace and Challenging Militarism

We have been reviewing project work under these two headings. Some of our recent and forthcoming activities include:

We have been encouraged by the positive feedback from the workshops and other events we have organised. It is likely that these will continue to be offered to Meetings and to other groups in the future. We have also had some very useful input from Friends around the issue of Militarism; we will be developing ways of continuing to support Friends:

Thank you to all those Friends who have helped us in reviewing these areas of work. We look forward to further opportunities to work together.

Nuclear Weapons -  opportunity for disarmament

Recent public pronouncements by some national leaders, politicians and commentators suggest that the nuclear disarmament agenda is on the agenda of more than just campaigners.

CND’s statement in early April says that they: “warmly welcome President Obama's speech on nuclear disarmament in Prague on the 5th April. This process, which had stalled during the Bush years, is being brought back to life under the Obama Pres-idency. We particularly welcome the committment by President Obama and President Medvedev of Russia to conclude a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) which expires at the end of this year.”

Many have seen this as an opportunity to encourage our own government to follow the US President’s lead and to reverse its commitment to developing a replacement for the Trident Nuclear Weapons

system. Indeed, Martin Butcher pointed out in a piece in The Guardian that “Britain cannot refuse to follow Obama, since the UK is entirely dependent on the US for its "independent" deterrent. ... Britain cannot stand in the way of a US president who is actively working towards global nuclear disarm-ament.”

To encourage this process along, QPSW is working with BASIC (British American Security Information Council) to support Friends in engaging in dialogue with decision-makers on this area of concern. In an initial briefing on this, they write: “... By establishing relationships, we can work more effectively on these issues, before going back to Trident. The opportun-ities currently presenting themselves for British action may not be here forever.” To get involved, contact: Kat Barton (QPSW), disarm@quaker.org.uk 020 7663 1067

Another initiative that Friends may wish to develop locally is to encourage local mayors and councils to sign up to
Mayors for Peace, an international organisation begun by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, seeking the elimination of nuclear weapons and the promotion of the peaceful resol-ution of conflicts. At the moment, 51 towns, cities or council areas in the UK are members and the UK working group is seeking to expand this list still  further. Information can be found at: www.mayorsforpeace.org

UK Government still active in promoting arms sales: current focus for CAAT campaigning

Campaigners celebrated when the government announced in 2007 that DESO, the Defence Export Services Organisation, was to be closed down. Promotion of arms exports is still on the Government’s agenda, however. The body which now has respons-ibility for this is UKTI - UK Trade and Investment - Defence Services Organisation.

Campaign Against Arms Trade has produced a briefing on this new body, which, with other campaigning 
resources and suggestions, is available from their website: www.caat.org.uk/campaigns/ukti/

Phone: 020 7281 0297

Also there are details of their 2009 week of action, taking place over 14-21 June, again with a focus on UKTI .

From across the pond - Quakers speak out on Afghanistan

Friends in the US are amongst those who have spoken out against the policy of expanding the 
military commitment in Afghanistan. In response to President Obama's request to Congress for $83.4 billion for supplemental spending to this end,

Friends Committee on National Legislation’s Joe Volk writes, in a letter to Representatives:
“We at FCNL oppose all new funding for war and urge you to vote against the war funding in this bill. At a minimum, Congress should condition the supplemental funding bill to end U.S. warfighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and change the proportion of funding allocated to non-military purposes. Rather than calming and stabilizing the situations, continued U.S. warfighting is destabilizing the region and feeding the seeds of extremist violence. Please do not write yet another blank check for war.”

Read more at: www.fcnl.org

Resources and Opportunities

Building Peace - Tackling Racism DVD now available

This 15 minute DVD and the accompanying booklet are based around a conference on Building Peace – Tackling Racism, held in Huddersfield in March 2008. The DVD includes talks by Philip Lewis (Bradford University) and Leah Elcock (Bolton Racial Equality Council), along with excerpts from discussions during the day. The resource booklet contains photographs and notes relating to the day and suggestions for discussion. We hope they will 
together be a useful resource that will stimulate discussion and action. 

Available from the NFPB office (see box on the bottom right-->> ) at £6.00, including postage. 

'The Hexham Debates: War. Peace and Democracy'

The book of Series One of 'The Hexham Debates' is now available. It is a record of a remarkable programme of public talks which formed the response – in a small market town in the north of England – to the decision in March 2007 to upgrade Trident, Britain's nuclear weapons system. The arguments against nuclear weapons are clear and familiar, but greater awareness is needed of alternative means of ensuring the UK's security.

Contributors to the book (Bruce Kent, Michael Clarke, Peter Greener, John Sloboda and Paul Rogers) argue that Trident has no relevance to our defence needs in the 21 st century.

They examine the threats Britain really does face, and set out realistic nuclear-free defence policies based on the concept of 'sustainable security'. The book also includes the inspiring story of how New Zealand achieved and maintains its status as a nuclear-free nation. The second series of these talks is now under way and the audiences have still been flocking in.

The book is available from Sue Bennett

(01434 270 312) price £6.00 plus p&p

New on the NFPB Website

Linked to our concerns on Peace, Faith and Race, and about supporting young people, we have developed two new pages on our website with links to resources specifically relating to these.

Links relating to Building Peace: Tackling Racism can be found at: http://nfpb.gn.apc.org/bptr

Links relating to Young People and Peace can be found at: http://nfpb.gn.apc.org/yngpple.htm

The Calendar of peace-related events on the NFPB website is regularly updated. We welcome
suggestions of additional items to include. Contact details below. View the calendar at:

http://nfpb.gn.apc.org/calendar.htm

Worship at the Bases

Quaker Meetings for worship are a continuing peace witness outside military bases in the North of

Britain. Here are details of when and where these will be happening in coming months. Friends are welcome to join these (and should be prepared for variable weather - the bases tend to be in exposed locations!).

Monthly Peace Vigil in York

York Friends have a monthly vigil for peace outside St Michael Le Befreys Church by the Minster on the fourth Saturday of the month from 11.00am- 12.00pm
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