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
NFPB member Phoebe Spence writes… Friday 21st April 2023 was the first day of the four day action taking place outside Parliament organised by XR with many other groups including Quakers joining in. It was the first big test of their new approach to action being more inclusive, accessible, no arrests etc. Several hundred Quakers … Read more
November meeting The final of our four members’ meetings of 2022 was to have been at Lancaster Meeting House at the end of November, with a zoom link. Unfortunately, it coincided with a day of industrial action by rail workers, meaning that few Friends would have been able to get there. The meeting online worked … 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 is one of nearly 150 faith communities and organisations that have signed an interfaith statement, released today as the first Meeting of the States Parties to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) formally gets under way in Vienna. The statement reflects that :“We gather at a time when the threat … 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
The war in Ukraine has had a devastating humanitarian impact. … At the same time as the war grinds on in and the brutality continues, preparations are under way for a very different event in central Europe; the first meeting of the states parties to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), from 21-23 June.
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.
In January we were pleased to support the collaborative webinar on what else needs to be addressed after COP26 – making links to the consequences of militarism and highlighting the fact that these are not included in UN climate talks or plans. The year has seen an horrific increase in military action in Europe in … Read more
Addressing human and planetary needs is urgent in building a sustainable security. Meanwhile, the military industrial complex consumes money on an extraordinary scale and the war in Ukraine is leading many Nato member states to call for this to be ramped up still further. It is a challenging context in which to be raising these … Read more