Posted: March 4, 2024   •   Posted in: Journey to Quakers, Reflections

A ‘Peripheral Quaker’ reveals all

My wife is a lifelong Quaker. I have long been a sympathiser on the basis that “if she’s nice and her Quaker friends are nice, they must be nice people” without thinking that they were a bit unrealistic. It’s taken thirty odd
years to change that opinion.

When I was a teenager I saw HMS Leviathan, an aircraft carrier which had been delivered in 1945. It had never been to sea. At the time it seemed to make sense but it wasn’t big enough to take new types of aircraft and would have required a major refit to even carry piston driven ones. It was an investment in rust.

The arms industry nevertheless continues to insist that vast sums are spent to keep up with potential enemies and to have multiple levels of deterrence. This in a world where theoretically rich states have increasingly stark rates
of poverty and inequality.

Planning for any conflict which does not involve defending the state in which people are living has actually been illegal since the Nuremberg trials of 1945. This is why the politicians use phrases like “restoring the internationally recognised government”, “protecting democracy in…”, “the territorial integrity of…….” or “eliminating terrorism”, are used instead.

This is why the War Department was renamed the Ministry of Defence.
This is why weapons makers are the “Defence Industry”.

I could be persuaded that we might need the ability to defend ourselves if attacked but the idea of the “suite of weapons” is contrary to this.

An anti tank gun is a defensive weapon, a tank isn’t.
An anti aircraft missile on home territory is defensive, a long range missile
isn’t.
A short range fighter aircraft is defensive, a long range bomber isn’t.
A military airfield on home territory is defensive, an aircraft carrier isn’t.

Feel free to add to this list.

I finally decided to join the meeting when Russia invaded Ukraine. Up to that point there were arguable reasons for border adjustments. Ukraine was a new country with borders which were determined by Joseph Stalin (not noted for his ability to change his diktats because of reality). Those arguments became nonsense the moment the tanks rolled.

War has never really solved anything. Reasonable mediation has.

In 1864 the king of Denmark, who also ruled the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein, annexed the territory which he ruled anyway. There was war with Prussia and Austria-Hungary. Denmark was defeated and the Duchy ended up in Germany. After 1945 the “Land” of Schleswig-Holstein ended up with an arrangement where people, who lived in Germany could decide for themselves if they wanted to speak Danish or German and learn in Danish or German speaking schools. With the coming of the EU it ceased to matter.

“Only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business: the Prince Consort who is dead; a German professor who has gone mad; and I, who have forgotten all about it”
(Lord Palmerston British Prime Minister)

All those frantic crowds waving flags, all the dead soldiers, all the refugees, the widows and orphans, all the waste for a place that many who took sides couldn’t find on a blank map! (Falkland Islands anyone?)

You can make your own list.

The urge to conflict, even peaceful, represents a huge opportunity cost (as the economists would put it) We could have fed everybody in the world adequately, achieved at least adequate level of healthcare for everyone and schools for all. It’s taken me a lifetime to recognise this.

If you do option X, you lose the opportunity to do options A to W.

If you do what you’ve always done you’ll get what you always get, possibly
worse.

If you spend your own wealth on prestige objects (new Range Rover anyone?) You lose the opportunity to spend it elsewhere. What works on an individual basis works on a societal level. An aircraft carrier costs what has been cut from child benefit over the last 10 years.

States have the right to defend themselves. States which cannot feed their own citizens when they can afford shiny new weapons systems do not deserve to exist. I need “defence” against crime, unnecessary illness and cyclical poverty. I’m not sure about being defended against someone I’ve never met who lives thousands of miles away.

I have become an attender because I need to find a way of avoiding a feeling of hopelessness when almost all my experience of other human beings is that they are perfectly decent on the whole until they feel threatened and the world seems to revolve around leaders who want us at each other’s throats.

Help needed here.

Andy (Beccles Quaker Meeting)