Letters - 11 April 2025
From a final demand to seeking understanding
Final demand?
Youth Demand (the group which was the object of the police raid on Westminster Meeting House (see news 4 April)) is an antisemitic organisation. On its website it celebrates the arrest of three of its members outside Broadcasting House, in defiance of a restriction imposed under the Public Order Act. It was put in place to prevent the harassment of British Jews on their way to the nearby West End Synagogue on the Sabbath, Saturday 18 January 2025, at the same time that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign held one of its marches.
Youth Demand refused to modify its actions, knowing their impact on a congregation of British Jews. Instead they rejoiced in them.
God knows how many times I was arrested in the eighties. I have no objection to nonviolent direct action, and I actively support those witnessing for a just resolution for all living in Israel/Palestine.But harassing a group on the basis of their ethnoreligious identity is racism.
And enabling Youth Demand’s actions is enabling racism.
Ol Rappaport
Holier than thou?
After the police raid on Westminster Meeting House, many Friends, and others, may have become much more aware of the impact of the new police powers which Quakers are already speaking out against. This must be welcomed.
However, I have found it alarming to hear how many Quakers and others, in the UK and abroad, have got, and passed on, the idea that this was an attack on a Quaker Meeting, rather than an attack on a meeting in a hired room which happened to be in a Quaker Meeting house. This misapprehension seems to be compounded by the choice of photograph (of the Meeting room set out for Meeting for Worship) to accompany the statement from Britain Yearly Meeting, and the strapline ‘no one has been arrested in a Quaker Meeting house in living memory’. My understanding is that there is nothing particularly sacrosanct about Quaker Meeting houses. All places can be equally holy to Quakers, including the places not owned by Quakers which many of us hire for our Meetings for Worship.
Might we notice, and speak out about, injustice wherever it occurs, but not pass on misleading impressions in the process? We can only speak truth to power if it is indeed the truth.
Rachel Bennett
