Forty-five Friends attended the NFPB meeting held on 28th February, with most present at Darlington Meeting House and a number also online. This first meeting of the year took place on the day that news was coming through of the military action by the United States and Israel against Iran. The Board agreed a short … Read more
NFPB gathered in York, with some also online, for our third meeting of the year. Friends joined us from across the North – from North Scotland to Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Area Meeting, North Wales to North Yorkshire. We had invited Rachel Julian to give a talk on Building Peace in Troubled Times. Rachel is Professor … Read more
NFPB members gathered in Nottingham and online on 1 March for our first meeting of the year, after a week in which issues of war and peace, diplomacy and international politics could not be ignored. Military spending was a focus during our morning session. Russell Whiting joined us to speak about the issue and about … Read more
NFPB members met at the end of September, gathering at the Quaker Meeting House in Penrith and online via Zoom. We were joined by Ruth Harvey who, as well as being a Penrith Quaker, is currently serving as leader of the Iona Community. Ruth had been invited to talk about the Community’s peace concerns and … Read more
Many of the towns and cities where there has been the worst violent and racist unrest in the past ten days have been in the North of England. We don’t currently have a programme on peacebuilding in our own communities, but do try to respond to new and emerging peace challenges facing Friends and wider … Read more
The weekend before the UK General Election, NFPB members gathered in Glasgow and online for their second full meeting of 2024. Parliamentary engagement We were pleased to be joined by Sarah Komashko, the Parliamentary Engagement Officer for Quakers in Scotland. In a full and informative presentation, Sarah gave a good insight into the ways that … Read more
In the second of this summer’s regional NFPB events Friends from three Area Meetings gathered at Darlington Meeting House on 6th July 2024. The date and theme had been planned before the General Election announcement, but the result of that election two days previously provided a not-insignificant backdrop to the meeting. Rethinking Security – the … 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
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.
NFPB’s meeting (that was to have been in Glasgow this month) took place online, with 25 Friends present during the morning from across the north, and a representative from Quaker Peace & Social Witness. Whilst smaller groupings of NFPB had met via video conference since March, this was the first of our representatives. Shorter than … Read more