We are pleased to announce that we have received from the printers copies of our publication – Responses to War. Contributions cover responses that include the personal, practical, political and spiritual, informed by Friends’ insights and experiences from a range of backgrounds. We hear from peacebuilders, campaigners and academics as well as Friends who have … Read more
As reported in a previous item the main output of the Alternative Security Review will be released in September. The month will also see the first Global Week of Action on Peace and Climate Justice, 21-28 September Can you raise these issues with your MP? At a time when effects of the climate crisis become … Read more
The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are distressing, causing horrifying levels of death, and devastation to ordinary people now and into the future. Northern Friends Peace Board has, during the past two years, sought to promote understanding of the nature of the conflicts and also of possible routes to peace. The very nature of war … Read more
At our meeting in Sheffield at the start of March, NFPB members heard from a member of the staff team with particular responsibility for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Palestine and Israel. They described the challenges that programme continues to face, as well as the advocacy work that Quakers have undertaken in calling for a … Read more
For our second members’ meeting of the year, Friends gathered in Darlington and online on 24 June, with roughly equal numbers in the physical and virtual spaces respectively. The date of our meeting coincided with the government-sponsored ‘Armed Forces Day’ and Friends had the opportunity to reflect on this in the opening part of the … Read more
‘No one said it was easy’, wrote Mary Lou Leavitt in the NFPB booklet published in the late 1980s. Peace is not easy, but on the other hand, to see wars being waged and money spent on weapons for no good reason is distressing and frustrating, plain and simple. As we approached the anniversary of … Read more
– a brief update of recent activities. Whilst Covid is still with us, we are moving out of the pandemic patterns of working and gathering, and this autumn is a typically busy one. NFPB meetings Following our successful hybrid/blended meeting in June, a further meeting for NFPB members took place in late September. The reduced … Read more
NFPB members met online and in-person on 18 June; 33 were present at the meeting during the day. Central Leeds (Carlton Hill) Meeting House provided the hospitality and technical set-up for our meeting, the first blended meeting we had held and the first time a number of us had met one-another in person. We made … Read more
We have today sent the following text in a letter to the UK Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss: Quakers are united in distress at the terrible toll that the continuing war in Ukraine is taking on human life. There can be no justification for military action such as that taken by Russia, however strongly grievances might be felt. As a community committed to peace, it pains us to recognise that the situation in which citizens of Ukraine find themselves is one in which armed resistance seems, to most, to be the only option.