Our Peace Testimony: Where Are We Now?

Neville Keery (Contribution 21/9/13): A Certain Commitment to Peace

The Historic Peace Testimony dates back to 1660 when “the Harmless and Innocent People of God, called Quakers”, presented a declaration to King Charles II denying “All outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatever”. What gives this and other Friends’ Testimonies particular force is that it is seen as presenting a truth inspired directly by the teaching of Christ.

Participants in Quaker Meetings for worship are constantly surprised by the frequency with which the silence, the Ministry or a reading addresses their needs. I worship here in Monkstown where a list of suggested readings is drawn up for each Sunday. During the period of reflection leading up to this talk, it should not have been a surprise that a number of readings would help to deal with some of the questions which I thought I might address today.

On Sunday 14 July last this reading from Quaker Life and Practice spoke to my condition: “The peace testimony is not something Quakers take down from a shelf and dust off only in wartime or in times of personal or political crisis. Living out a witness to peace has to do with everyday choices about the work we do, the relationships we build, what part we take in politics, what we buy, how we raise our children. It is a matter of fostering relationships and structures – from personal to international – which are strong enough to contain conflict when it arises and allow its creative resolution. It is a matter of withdrawing our co-operation from structures and relationships which are unjust and exploitative. It is a matter of finding creative ways of dealing with conflict when it does arise, with the aim of freeing all concerned to find a just and loving solution”.

There I had it, an introduction to and summary of what I had hoped to say. What follows is the story of my commitment to peace.

Any individual’s commitment to peace relates to his or her personal experience. For me a commitment to peace is not just opposition to war or adopting a pacifist position, it is a rejection of violence as an appropriate response to any situation. In my case, I owe much of this commitment to a frightening experience in my teenage years, oddly enough an incident involving a Dublin Quaker.

The secondary school I went to was St. Andrew’s College, Dublin, a Presbyterian foundation then situated on Clyde Road, now at Booterstown. I went there from a Church of Ireland background and the late Peter Skelton went there from a well-known Quaker family. We were both in the school Scout Troop and went to a summer camp at Castle Archdale in Co. Fermanagh. There was an incident at the camp when I saw myself as a victim of bullying and sought to avenge myself on anyone I felt was involved in or amused by my discomfort. The only boy I managed to catch was Peter Skelton and I found myself punching him about the head mercilessly until I was dragged off by the bigger boys at the camp.

Whatever about the effect on Peter – neither of us appeared to be injured and we never talked about the incident, although he and I met more maturely at Trinity, where he was a History Scholar and I was a Philosophy Scholar – the effect on myself was very traumatic.
I was frightened by recognition of the reality that I had the capacity to kill someone with my bare hands. I resolved never again to lose my temper to that extent, and I never have.

Revulsion at violence is not, of course, a considered intellectual position. The development of my pacifist view came through the university debating experience of arguing for and against views of all kinds and my interest in trying to determine political and ethical positions that might best serve me not just in debate but in life after university. To this day my political and ethical views remain fluid as my knowledge of the world grows and new theories and ideas come to my attention.
Particularly where war is concerned, I am increasingly sceptical as to any possibility of long-term positive outcomes. I am appalled by successive interventions in conflicts where history has shown there is no prospect of success – Afghanistan is the current outstanding example. The waste of resources in warfare today is so staggering that one suspects the main engine behind it may indeed be what the late President Eisenhower called “the military industrial complex”. Successive leadership generations seem to learn very little from their predecessors or from history.

Post-university I worked as a journalist in the North of England before returning to Dublin to a post in the newly established Institute of Public Administration. Almost by definition, the Institute was a place of exciting vision and ideas and was staffed by a bunch of very bright and interesting people. My decision to join Fianna Fáil in the interest of supporting Sean Lemass in his efforts to modernise Ireland was not seen as a problem and, indeed, met with some encouragement. I was fortunate to meet, Anne, my late wife, in the Institute and from first acquaintance and throughout our married life we found ourselves involved in shared social, cultural, political and religious ideas. It seems appropriate in today’s context to say something about our opposition to the Vietnam War, our involvement in the anti-apartheid movement, and our becoming Members of the Belgium and Luxembourg Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in Brussels in 1976.

As a small boy born in 1939 I could not but be aware of war. Although my father died when I was four, I remember talk of his listening to radio broadcasts by Lord Haw Haw. Children in our small Cowper cul de sac painted paper flags to wave in celebration of the ending of war in Europe in 1945. Years later I was fascinated by news reports of war in Indo-China and the extraordinary photographs and film of the final defeat of French Forces in the siege of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. Hence my view that no European power could hope to win a campaign in Vietnam or Cambodia and my belief that the American involvement that sent so many soldiers and conscripts to death, injury and traumatisation in Vietnam in the 1960s was a mistake and immoral. It may be timely to recall that in that war the US made wide use of a chemical weapon, namely agent orange, a defoliant that had serious effects on some civilians.

In 1966 I moved from the Institute of Public Administration to a job in Trinity College that gave me access to the Common Room there. Lunchtime in the small dining room provided wonderful opportunities to discuss current affairs with a wide range of informed and interesting academics, like Joe Haughton and the late Kader Asmal.

On moving to Monkstown, to the second house of our married life, Anne and I began attending this Meeting House as an answer to some of the spiritual and educational challenges we had to meet for ourselves and our two small children in what at the time was called a “mixed marriage” – Anne was born into a Roman Catholic family.
We were welcomed as Attenders and worshiped here and were involved in the Preparative Meeting until we all moved to Brussels in 1974, when I was seconded from my post-Trinity employment with the European Commission’s office in Dublin to join the Cabinet of Dr. Patrick Hillery, then a Vice-President of the European Commission.

From 1967 Anne and I had become very involved in local politics and in the Fianna Fáil organisation in the constituency in which we lived, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown. Both Anne and I were unsuccessful as local election candidates and I was unsuccessful on two occasions as a general election candidate. I did however get to represent the constituency on the Fianna Fáil National Executive and became one of Jack Lynch’s Taoiseach’s nominees to the Senate from 1969 to 1973. None of that affected our peace interests.

The most memorable event in our concern about Vietnam, was the visit to Dublin of Dr. Spock, one of the leading US opponents of the war, whose famous book on Baby and Child Care we had treated as gospel. I was very much aware of the important role Quakers in America played in opposition to the Vietnam War, between 1967 and 1972 I often spoke with Joe Haughton, well known both as Professor of Geography in TCD, and a Quaker with a great interest in international affairs. He introduced me to a range of Quaker writing on international affairs that influenced my thinking at that time and since. The late Stella Webb also taught me a lot by urging my involvement in the United Nations Association. Both Anne and I were involved in the growing Irish Anti-Apartheid movement led by Trinity Academic Kader Asmal. Victor Bewley, a much respected Dublin Friend also supported the anti-apartheid movement and I often regret that I never got to know Victor. At one point he and I were listed on the note paper of Kader’s organisation as Trustees. When Kader brought Nelson Mandela to Ireland and sought to involve him with Sinn Fein people on the basis that they were fellow freedom fighters I felt obliged to ask that my name be dropped from the list of trustees.

Involvement in protest politics, whether about Vietnam or apartheid, meant we met a lot of interesting people in Dublin, particularly a small range of people seeing themselves as radical activists with backgrounds in socialism, republicanism, and feminism, coupled with a tendency to anti-Americanism. It was fascinating to see how the same people cropped up as the leading voices for a very wide range of causes, and a number of them survive as activists today.

When at the beginning of the Seventies I decided that Europe had a great deal to offer Ireland through its post-war vision of peace and reconciliation offering the prospect of support for economic and social development, I was disappointed to find that, to a man and to a woman, these radicals we had worked with in a number of campaigns were completely opposed to the European Communities and Irish accession – and mostly still are.

People often seem to wonder how my own liberalism and commitment to peace and justice issues could possibly fit with involvement in Fianna Fáil and a career with the European Commission. The answer is that I have always found a degree of support and encouragement wherever I have worked, and indeed have been supported in my interests.

I cannot claim my commitment has been very successful but it may be illustrative to give to examples which gave me some satisfaction.

In Dublin, when the late Dr. Hillery was Minister for Foreign Affairs, he agreed at my request that Irish concern should be expressed in Washington about the possible environmental impact of an underground nuclear test in the Amchitka peninsula.

In Brussels, the European Commission had no problem about my accepting an invitation in 1988 to go on a Quaker-led visit to the Soviet Academy of Social Sciences, a first mission of its kind, and to my holding a public briefing in Brussels on my return under the auspices of an organisation called Europeans for Peace.

The point of this rather long and personal prologue is to remind this predominantly Quaker audience that there are many pacifists and peace workers who pursue their views without the underpinning that the Peace Testimony offers Members of the Religious Society of Friends. My role now is to look at the Peace Testimony and its place in the life of the Society before concluding with some remarks about how I see working for peace in the context of Dublin Monthly Meeting and Ireland Yearly Meeting. I believe this requires some reflection on the implications of the distinctions between birthright Quakers and Quakers by convincement and between Members and Attenders.

It seems to me that by no means all birthright Friends pursue a knowledge of the history and tenets of Quakerism. Because Attenders and others seeking Membership of the Religious Society of Friends are aware that they are in the process of making a life-changing decision as mature adults, and will be visited and questioned about their reasons for seeking Membership so that a report on their application can be prepared for consideration at a Monthly Meeting, they obviously prepare to deal with whatever questions may arise. Many applicants will have become familiar with Friends’ worship, history and practice over a number of years. Most will expect to be questioned about their attitude to Quaker testimonies, particularly the testimonies on peace, simplicity and integrity.

I believe the peace testimony particularly is seen by many potential Friends as a major difficulty in their consideration of the possibility of becoming a Quaker. It is seen as a stumbling block by individuals who feel deeply uncertain about their likely reactions when faced with the possible reality of finding themselves or loved ones faced with the threat of violence. I know a number of long-standing Attenders in Ireland and elsewhere, some of whom are engaged in invaluable work for their Meetings, who feel they cannot proceed to Membership because of the Peace Testimony.

I sympathise greatly with the position of such Attenders and fully respect it. I can only say personally that I see acceptance of the Peace Testimony as a help towards accepting a fundamental of Christian wisdom and as creating a personal responsibility to try to ensure that in any discussion in which I may be involved, where there is a context in which military action is a reality or a possibility to be considered, I will be seen as an advocate of peaceful and non-military alternatives. This seems to me to follow the idea of Quakers as “patterns”. Acceptance by Anne and myself of this responsibility was a key element in our decision to seek Membership of the fledgling Belgium and Luxembourg Monthly Meeting in 1976. Our Membership was then transferred to Dublin for our return to Monkstown in 1977, before reverting to Belgium from 1982 to 2001. Since then I have of course been a Dublin Friend and a participant in Ireland Yearly Meeting on most years.

Before becoming Friends, Anne and I were involved in the first gatherings in Brussels, which eventually led to the establishment of the Belgium and Luxembourg Monthly Meeting. The 1973 enlargement of the European Communities brought to work in the European Institutions a small number of British Friends who were interested in making contact with recognised continental Friends, in establishing a Meeting for Worship, and in creating a centre in Brussels, similar to Quaker offices established in NewYork, Geneva and Vienna to monitor the work of the United Nations. They saw such a Brussels centre as ideally placed to help Friends follow bodies like NATO and the Council of Europe as well as the future development of the European Institutions. The presence in Brussels of a massive number of embassies, representations, lobbies and NGOs was seen as an ideal environment for contact, dialogue and possible partnership. Thanks to a letter from Annelies Becker, late of this Meeting, an extraordinary German, who had come to Ireland as a young woman but retained many continental contacts and friendships, Anne and I received details of the time and place of the first gathering being organised by UK Friends in Brussels.

We were happy to meet and work with these Friends in an effort, which as many of you know, led in due course to the establishment of a healthy Meeting and the creation of a Quaker Council for European Affairs in Quaker House, Brussels. I was among the Founding Members of QCEA in 1983. (Two great gifts of the Brussels years were that Geoffrey Hubbard, author of Quaker by Convincement, became a QCEA Clerk, and the Dutch Quaker writer, Jan De Hartog, was for a time a member of the Brussels Meeting.)

Because of the impact two QCEA missions had on me as examples of a peace-inspired Quaker initiative, I would like to describe my participation in these missions to talk to senior staff at NATO Headquarters in Brussels and to military staff at Supreme Headquarters Allied Forces in Europe (SHAPE), Mons, in 1981. Like many other people and organisations, at that time QCEA was concerned at a US proposal to deploy intermediate range missiles in Europe. It was decided to put together a small group of Friends, led by someone with experience of campaigning against the basing of nuclear submarines in Scotland, to seek meetings at the highest level possible in both NATO and SHAPE. Somewhat to our surprise, meetings were very quickly offered at Ambassador level in NATO and with a US Army Colonel on the staff of SHAPE. We felt the pattern of dialogue developed with the Ambassador in Brussels was an effective model that we could repeat in Mons. The range of voices – male and female – deployed by our small group appeared to be listened to with great courtesy and attention and the atmosphere was such that it seemed natural and appropriate to ask each host to join with us in a short period of silent worship by way of conclusion to our visits. Who can say whether or not our lobby contribution helped towards a freezing of the missile deployment for a time, later followed by a disarmament treaty with the USSR. We felt nevertheless that our missions had been well worthwhile and that the wisdom of certain traditions of Quaker approaches to peace and other political contexts had been confirmed. The tradition of trying to speak truth to power and doing it on a personal face to face basis seems sound. The methodology of trying to convey that any such dialogue is being conducted within a Quaker pattern of worship and – at the time – on a confidential basis and without publicity also seems to add to effectiveness.
To speak truth to power one has to be well prepared, knowledgeable and well-informed. Consideration has to be given as to who will speak for Friends in any particular situation and as to how the dialogue is best planned and structured.

It is both humbling and encouraging to know that almost everyone being addressed will have heard of Quakers and will have some knowledge of the reputation built by Friends over the years through pioneering concerns which helped to change attitudes in areas of human rights like slavery, conscientious objection and capital punishment. We have to be aware of everything that may be involved in trying to be true to such a history.

While preparing this talk, a Dublin Friend contacted me to ask where the phrase about speaking truth to power, that I had used at the recent Yearly Meeting came from. When researching this I assumed it to be a very old phrase from the early days of Friends. In fact it seems to have been coined in 1955 by the American Friends Service Committee in a pamphlet promoting pacifism. My guess is that this was among the documents given to me by Joe Haughton, already mentioned above. I saw recently that Marisa Johnson, Executive Secretary of FWCC Europe and Middle-East Section, has argued that Quakers may also “speak truth with power”, an interesting observation.

It seems to me that any possibility of success in peace campaigning demands that one be highly informed about the issues at stake. That any specifically Quaker initiative should have been tried and tested within the Society in the same way as what we call “concerns” emerge and advance. It is always useful to ask what organisations may already be involved on issues we wish to pursue and to see if there may be a possibility of forming supportive partnerships given our limited numbers and resources. At the same time, those things that make Quaker witness distinctive need to be maintained and asserted, with Friends involved trying to keep well clear of headline political controversy.

Before seeking to draw conclusions in an Irish context, I should perhaps say that this method of working has certainly been very effective in the development of QCEA under the guidance of its Council drawn from Meetings all around Europe. The current work of QCEA has been described very well by Margrit Grey, of South Belfast Meeting, a QCEA Council Member, in the May-June 2013 issue of The Friendly Word. Further details are always available on the QCEA website http://www.qcea.org

Now some remarks about the Irish context.

First, I think our Peace Committees are working on the right lines. A good recent example of seeking to enhance information and education in a complex area is the 2009 conference on neutrality and its resultant publication. Efforts to get a reduction in the volume of violence portrayed on television have been built up and pursued from the concern of an individual Friend. I found it very timely that our recent Yearly Meeting asked that the Peace Committee and others consider the concern brought to it by Munster Quarterly Meeting regarding the current wave of centenary commemorations that may easily be read as the celebration of a calendar of manifestations of violence and militarism. People and resources are needed to pursue such concerns and we need to ask how more Friends may be involved, particularly young people with an appropriate background education. I note that in the UK an effective “No Glory” campaign seems to be developing an alternative narrative to the likely government celebration of the First World War as a “glorious” conflict.

Friends with an interest in political or other organisations should be encouraged and reassured that there is nothing wrong about taking considered positions and identifying themselves as Friends. I have indicated that there was a time when Friends were closely identified with the United Nations Association and there may be links like that which might be looked at and supported.
In my own experience there is a great deal to be learnt through organisations like the Irish Institute for International and European Affairs, European Movement Ireland, and many ad hoc conferences or thematic summer schools. The idea of helping young Friends or relevant Committee members participate in such organisations and events should be placed clearly within the context of our existing mechanisms for conference support.

Lastly, it is not widely known that in Ireland and other EU Member States there is an established mechanism through which Government consults with what are called “faith communities”.

As I believe this to be an important process, which governments take seriously, and which includes regular meetings with the Religious Society of Friends, I would like to say that I think it is very important that Friends plan their input to such meetings as carefully as they can, if necessary asking for more time whenever the notice may be inadequate. Apart from regular consultation, should an issue of particular or urgent interest arise on which Friends feel that we have something specific and useful to say, the Society need not hesitate to seek a carefully prepared and focussed private meeting with the Taoiseach or a Minister.

Seeking such meetings is obviously something to be pursued very infrequently and on a targeted basis. I am mentioning them here because many people imagine them to be beyond our compass. Happily we live in a very open and small society with a tradition of voter access to elected representatives and should not be afraid to avail of this reality. Although apparently unsuccessful in immediate terms, I was very glad to find myself some years ago as one of a group of Dublin Friends received by the Taoiseach. The conduct of that meeting was very similar to my experience of the meetings in Brussels and Mons I have already described and I am convinced that all present, whether as Friends, politicians or officials will have found the experience positive and worthwhile.

We should be continually alert as to particular opportunities for a Quaker expression of opinion. For example, we are meeting today at a time when there is a government Green Paper on Defence open to comment by 10 October 2013. Should Friends think of making a submission? One never knows what seeds are sown by peace work, but the bible surely entitles us to carry the expectation that some seed may fall on good ground.

Before concluding with another recent Monkstown reading, I would like to say something about my appreciation of the difficulties Friends can face in trying to find an effective voice relevant to threats of conflict or the need for disaster aid in today’s complex world. And of course I am talking about missions in a humanitarian or human rights context, and not of war or combat. Most humanitarian and aid efforts can only take place in areas where there is a background of stability and security. It seems to me that while pacifists must always make the case for civil policing in zones of conflict, there can be times when as Friends we must accept that some level of police or military intervention may be essential to the pursuit of peace. We need to recognise that no professional soldier in a NATO, EU, or UN context expects to die or do anything other than what may be necessary to the role of peace-keeper or peace-maker. As a Belgian Friend pointed out to me in regard to her son who chose to do his military service, today’s armed services are all much more highly educated about peace and peace issues than most people working in other contexts. This is a consideration to be borne in mind when ones immediate reaction to a crisis may be to dust down a protest banner without a thorough reflection about everything involved.

A few Sundays ago, Monkstown’s reading list again came to my aid with a quotation from Sue Ryder’s autobiography, which seemed to me to sum up how I feel about having a certain commitment to peace: “Experience as a field worker has taught me that it is the effort made by one individual that makes all the difference to another individual’s life. It has shown me that no matter who we are or what our position in life there is always something that we can contribute if we have the desire and the will. It may be personal service in ones spare time, by arousing the interest of other people, by organising a function, by building, by nursing, by collecting clothes or bric-a-Brack for a gift shop, by going without in order to make a small gift or by a bequest in a will. Or, on a different level, it could be by prayer or by identifying oneself in whatever way one can with another person’s predicament and need. The very fact of knowing that someone else, perhaps on the other side of the world, is interested and concerned is enough to give encouragement and new strength and to lighten the burden of the sufferer.”

I look forward to this afternoon’s discussions.

Thank you.

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