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
Order in the courts
Two years ago this week, Quaker Trudi Warner, holding a handwritten placard, was arrested for standing outside Inner London Crown Court where Insulate Britain activists were on trial. The government solicitor requested that contempt of court proceedings were brought against Trudi and she faced the possibility of a two-year sentence. The High Court judge, however, claiming Trudi with her placard was only informing prospective jurors about one of their legal powers, threw out the case saying the evidence against her was being mischaracterised by the government lawyer.
A very relieved Trudi said how happy she was, and that she simply wanted jurors to know their rights and to be confident enough to stand up to judges who, in her opinion, were acting unlawfully by not allowing defendants to explain the reasons for their actions to them – the jury.
On the placard Trudi was holding were handwritten words that appear on a marble plaque inside the Old Bailey Court. It was put there in 1670 after the trial of William Penn and William Mead in which a jury refused a judge’s direction to find the defendants guilty. One of the jurors, Edward Bushell, was fined and imprisoned for his role. He appealed and the chief justice reversed the fine and released him. This landmark decision, also known as Bushell’s Case, solidified jury independence and jurors’ ability to decide based on their consciences rather than court dictates.
What Trudi did, all on her own, started the solidarity campaign Defend Our Juries (DOJ), whose supporters have since been sitting quietly outside courts across the country holding placards like Trudi’s, also showing pictures of world renowned civil rights and environmental and climate justice activist prisoners of their day; who are now honoured and acclaimed the world over for the changes their actions and sacrifices engendered.
Today, in unity with the many environmental and political activists serving lengthy sentences in our prisons, after being found guilty by juries prevented by some judges from hearing defendants explain the motivation for their disruptive, nonviolent actions, DOJ Quakers and friends across the country remembered this day in over thirty Jury Equity Day vigils outside their cities’ Crown Courts, holding the same worded placards as Trudi did.
Another wonderful, linked-up, ‘in heart and mind’ experience, I was able to take part in outside Birmingham Court and now wish to share with you, dear Friends.
Maris Vigar
Risk: management
I want to offer a reply to Beth Allen’s letter in support of ‘Managerialism’ (31 January). I am a former head of the School of Management, and deputy chair of the Senate at the University of Tasmania. I saw managerialism at work in for-profit companies, and in not-for-profit organisations, too. Unfortunately, managerialism is far more sinister than Beth describes.
Managerialism can be observed when the management class within an organisation uses management techniques and words to obfuscate, distort and dismiss alternative ways of thinking. Management may also question other ways of being in the organisation, and impose its own. This kind of approach is characterised by top-down decision making (though it is often cast as ‘consultative’ decision-making). It is cynical, determined and dangerous, because it considers all aspects of an organisation as things to be used – not for the benefit of the people in the organisation, but for the benefit of the management.
This management decides that what is in its benefit is in the organisation’s benefit. Its operators turn the organisation into what they think the organisation is, or should be, or what they want it to be. This is often justified by reference to the ‘optics’ of a situation – how something looks to people outside the organisation. Oh what a managerialistic word that is! When optics drive decision-making, you know you’re in trouble. The tail wags the dog…
Managerialism is the most dangerous, insidious thing that can overtake an organisation. It will overwhelm it. It will destroy the culture from the inside out. And this all takes place in the name of money – everything reduced to numbers. What can be counted is what gets measured, and what gets measured is the only thing that counts. In managerialism, the price or cost of everything must be known; the value is slowly but surely, and often irrevocably, lost to sight, lost to memory. It becomes meaningless. (Just to be clear, I am not talking here about the sensible use of data in the development of sound ideas.)
No, in short, managerialism is the exploitation of power systems and structures by those who have power over those who don’t, in the determined use of an organisations’ material assets and its people. Take the term ‘human resources’ – how degrading is that? The aim is only to deliver what the management of that organisation wishes to see done. Another justification might be ‘efficiency’, as if that were the same as ‘effectiveness’. The two are emphatically not the same.
This all happens regardless of the wishes of the majority, the people who are the organisation. In this process, in fact, the people are to be ignored as far as possible. And if not entirely ignored then, perhaps even worse, their wishes subtly altered after the fact, to be what the management wish the majority had decided. With the explanation ‘Oh yes, but it’s really what the people meant.’ Now you know what it is, see if you can see it. It can be beguiling and subtle but, when you do see it, put a stop to it.
Mark Dibben
Seeking understanding
There have been some angry letters from trans Friends lately. While I hear their real hurt, they could help me more if, instead of anger, they could give me a deeper understanding of their experience. I guess that few Friends intend to upset them; but many of us find this an unfamiliar and challenging topic.
Diana Lampen
Comments
Diana asks for a deeper understanding of the trans experience. I am a woman. That is the heart of it. I have blogged extensively: perhaps you would read some of my blog. There are books on the trans experience, such as Sophie-Grace Chappell, Trans Figured.
Trying to present male subjected me to crippling gender dysphoria: https://clareflourish.wordpress.com/2025/03/12/gender-dysphoria/
I wrote this about what I lost on transition, and what I gained, in 2014: https://clareflourish.wordpress.com/loss-and-gain/
It’s also important to see what we are losing, and the falsehoods being told about it. In 2011, it was completely clear that we had access to services according to our gender, from the moment we decided to transition. See http://clareflourish.wordpress.com/2021/10/29/the-equality-act-code-of-practice/
That post has links to relevant authority.
I wrote about some trans experience in the 20th century, and before: https://clareflourish.wordpress.com/2024/05/14/trans-history-week/
Here is something on Trans Joy, the joy we experience in expressing our true selves:
https://clareflourish.wordpress.com/2024/08/06/brighton-pride-and-after/
https://clareflourish.wordpress.com/2024/07/21/trans-pride-brighton-2024/
There is a great deal about the trans experience available. The trouble is, talking about our pain is difficult, particularly with the rage we are subjected to, including in letters and comments here. The letters in support of trans, such as by Mark Russ, are measured; the comments against trans have been deeply hurtful, and it is hurtful that they are published. They are contrary to the Quaker way: for example, a claim that sex is “objective” is contrary to seeing the Light in everyone. Trans is the manifestation of my inner light.
By Abigail Maxwell on 2025 04 10
Thank you Rachel Bennett for your letter, and thank you Joseph Jones for publishing it.
There has been much misrepresentation across Quakerdom about these events at Westminster Meeting House, I’m pleased some of us as trying to see the truth being presented.
YiF
By Ol Rappaport on 2025 04 10
I have now written specifically in answer to Diana Lampen’s request. My attempt to give her a deeper understanding is here: https://clareflourish.wordpress.com/2025/04/10/can-i-help-you-understand-trans/
By Abigail Maxwell on 2025 04 10
Responding to Diana Lampen
Thank you for asking for accounts of trans experience. I’ve written about my evolving understanding of my gender, over the years, on my blog: https://assumebenevolence.wordpress.com/
I now describe myself as a genderqueer man (who is also transgender) - the descriptors I use have changed over time based on my experience of myself and my interactions with others.
By fredlangridge on 2025 04 13
In his letter, published in The Friend, 11 April 2025, Oli Rapport starts with his concern: “Youth Demand (the group which was the object of the police raid on Westminster Meeting House (see news 4 April)) is an antisemitic organisation” and finishes with another: “And enabling Youth Demand’s actions is enabling racism.”.
Many Quakers and others, in Britain and around the world, were shocked by the excessive force used by the Metropolitan Police and their heavy handed treatment of the six women they arrested in Westminster Meeting House,
Today, by chance, Michael Rosen, famed poet, writer, person of multiple achievements, publicly posted the following:
·
“We demonstrate too near to synagogues.
Apparently.
No respect for places of worship.
Apparently.
(In fact, the PSC were asking to demonstrate several hundred yards from a synagogue and not ‘past’ it or ‘opposite’ it, or ‘outside’ it nor in anyway demonstrating against it or in opposition to it. You can’t see the synagogue from where the demonstration was going to be. It’s round two corners from there.)
In Gaza, the IDF (or the airforce) destroy places of worship.
In terms of column inches:
a claim that the PSC wanted to demonstrate outside a place of worship is many times worse than destroying a place of worship.
There must be a place-of-worship league table somewhere.”
I highly recommend Michael Rosen’s excellent, recently published book, “The King and The Tutor,” which is full of highly pertinent insights into how decisions and policies are faschoned by those in power when they are not guided by ethical and moral principles, or scruples.
https://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/portfolio/the-king-and-the-tutor/
My concern is that power, ours and that of those with immensely more means and ifluence than we will ever have, be used only in the interests of equity, good community, human rights, justice and peace, and that we guard against letting ourselves to be misled or duped into promoting the interests of those who, unlike most of us, will use any means, no matter how foul, to acheive their personal aims, objectives, ambitions.
By Rajan on 2025 04 13
My apologies for the egregious typos in my response, above, to Ol Rappaport’s letter in The Friend, particularly of Ol’s name.
By Rajan on 2025 04 13
The letter regarding Youth Demand, is a repeat of the claims made in a comment to your coverage of the raid in the 4th April . I response I can only make the same points, this is a completely fal;se accusation and I am afraid the editorial team do itself no justice in republishing them.
Youth Demand has been around for several years, they have never had any activist arested for an act of violence and all their actions are non-violent. The act you refer to was aimed at the Metropolitan Police who they beliieved was protecting the BBC from protest, because of their role in protecting the State of Isreal from the consequences of their actions in Gaza. Which I whole heartedly agree with.
They did so by sitting down with cardboard signs, and deliberatly not acting in a aggressive manner. If one reads the Metropolitan Police Statement and you disagree with it, then the protest they undertook is completely logical, targeted and non-violent. I really cannot see how it can be termed Antisemitic.
Phil Laurie (East Kent AM)
By Phil Laurie on 2025 04 13
I concur with the views expressed by Phil Laurie and Rajan, and am surprised that Ol Rapaport seems to be unaware of the huge Jewish presence on marches for peace and human rights in Palestine. There have never been any threats to places of worship on national demonstrations in London or elsewhere, and marches are deliberately timed to avoid Sabbath services. I draw attention to this heartfelt Passover meditation on the killing of Palestinian children by Rabbi Brant Rosen. https://rabbibrant.com/2025/04/11/this-passover-we-must-reckon-with-israels-heinous-violence-against-children-in-gaza.
By Nicola Grove on 2025 04 14
Hi Phil. I imagine Ol sent his letter and posted his comment at around the same time. I don’t think ‘republishing’ is the right word. Having a letters page (with a week’s distance) and online comments (published immediately) messes with one’s (by which I mean our) mental timeline, sometimes. And comments appear here without moderation (though of course we can moderate after the fact).
I’m sure Ol has his own response to the issue at hand, but I wanted to point out that we haven’t endorsed or doubled-down on anything.
By The Friend editor on 2025 04 14
If a Jewish Friend is raising a concern about antisemitism, we would do well to, at the very least, listen and try to understand. “I cannot see how it can be termed antisemitic” is not quite the same as “it can’t be termed antisemitic”.
It wouldn’t be the first time in recent memory that Quakers had allowed an antisemitic left-wing organisation to rent their space, so we need to be humble and receptive to criticism, and on our guard against making the same mistakes again. Some of Youth Demand’s material does seem to flirt a little with the tropes, language and dogwhistles of the new antisemitism, if unintentionally. “Deliberately and with malicious intent” isn’t the only way to say something wrong and hurtful.
Antisemitism doesn’t have to mean hating Jews with every fibre of one’s being. It could mean accidentally or carelessly using language in ways that reinforce or allude to antisemitic tropes. It could mean dismissing concerned Jews out-of-hand when they try to broach the subject of antisemitism.
A&Q: “Bring into God’s light those emotions, attitudes and prejudices in yourself which lie at the root of destructive conflict, acknowledging your need for forgiveness and grace ... Seek to understand the causes of injustice, social unrest and fear.”
Thanks for calling it how you see it, Ol.
By Michael Bartlett on 2025 04 15
Thank you, Michael Bartlett, for actually reading my letter.
There is a technique called active listening, I wonder if Friends (myself included) could learn active reading…
“Active listening is a communication technique where a listener focuses entirely on what the speaker is saying, understands their message, and responds thoughtfully, rather than just waiting for their turn to speak. It involves actively engaging with the speaker, showing empathy, and seeking to understand their perspective. “
YiF
Ol
By Ol Rappaport on 2025 04 17
Please login to add a comment
