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Quaker House Belfast Project
Our Friends in the North
Twenty-one years of Quaker House Belfast
From The Friend 5 December 2003
'The greatest single antidote to violence is conversation,' says rabbi Jonathan Sacks. By this he means speaking our fears, listening to the fears of others, trying to reason together. But in a situation of violence, engendered by deep forces polarising communities, conversation in this sense is actually extremely difficult to bring about. Apart from anything else, just where can such conversation take place? It needs a place where people who want to talk can do so away from the risk of publicity, or even of personal attack; a place where confidences are respected, possibilities explored without obligation. And it needs people who can help this to happen, act as go-betweens, sounding boards, facilitators. Over the years, Friends have made something of a speciality of activities of this kind, believing, with Rufus Jones, in the transforming possibilities of 'quiet processes and small circles.'
It was in the light of perceptions such as these that Quaker House Belfast was set up in 1982. By 1982, of course, the conflict in Northern Ireland, in its late 20th century form, had already been going on for over a decade; and there was already a history of Quaker activity. The two Belfast Meeting houses had opened their doors as temporary sanctuary to people fleeing riots. Will Warren had spent six years based in the Bogside as a one-man peace presence during the most trying of times. By 1980 and 81, the years of the hunger strikes, the level of violence had decreased (its peak year, 1972, saw 496 deaths) but it was clear to all that the territory was in for, in the IRA's own phrase, a 'long war'; long too, would be the road to peace.
In truth, there was no visible road at all. The request from non-Friends that Friends should set up a permanent centre for political peace work was itself an acknowledgement that they had a certain standing in Irish affairs (relief work during the Famine, 1845-50, is still remembered) which was a resource for peace; but it also stemmed from a (perhaps belated) recognition that the work of peace was a long haul.
A house was purchased in a location ideal for the work in mind – a rather anonymous street near the university, in an area not known for sectarian associations. The first representatives, Ulster Friends Billy and Joan Sinton, moved in. Their principal role was to engage with politicians from across the spectrum and to make Quaker House available for any dialogue that opportunity might offer.
But representatives' briefs should not be too specific. They need to be free to interpret needs and openings and to act according to their own particular leadings. Hence, since the Sintons (Billy died in 1986), subsequent representatives have come from a variety of backgrounds and brought diverse experience and skill to the task.
The second representatives were John and Edith Wigzell, from England, and their successors, Steve and Sue Williams, were Americans with experience of peace work in Africa. When they left in 1991, they were followed by English Friends Alan and Janet Quilley, who remained through the critical years of the peace process of the 1990s, to be succeeded early in 2000 by another 'native', Mark Chapman.
At the start, Quaker House was a project of Quaker Peace and Service, its work overseen by the QPS Northern Ireland committee, comprising Friends from both Britain and Ireland Yearly Meetings. The representatives reported to the committee, which offered ideas and guidance as to general directions, while always observing a proper distance between this and the necessary confidentiality of representatives' encounters with politicians. More latterly, however, the project was floated from the formal Yearly Meeting structures, partly so that it could be seen to be more grounded in Ireland rather than London, and partly so that it could find more of its own finances (while retaining a measure of direct subvention from the YMs).
This meant that the new management committee found the project no longer enjoyed charitable status. Such is the bizarre state of UK charitable law (it rests on an act of 1601, unbelievably) that it is charitable to run a public school, but not to work for peace, since the former is educational, the latter political. If only Quaker House had been tasked to help victims of violence, rather than to work towards a Northern Ireland with no more victims. But lack of charitable status need not be crippling. At least constitutions and budgets don't have to be made to fit into legalistic straitjackets. The fact remains that in this regard, the UK's law is an ass.
It is far from easy to discern how useful Quaker House has been on the long (and far from finished) road to peace in Northern Ireland. There is no measuring rod like a league table, or box office takings. Occasionally, someone from the political world has surfaced with a testimony. Mo Mowlem makes several references in her book, Momentum and told a Friends House audience in September 2002 that the work done in her time by Alan and Janet Quilley 'was invaluable. They did an incredible amount in a house where everyone knew they could be trusted. I wouldn't have been able to talk to such a cross-section of people except for being able to meet in that house. They told me who to listen to. Without them my life would have been much tougher than it was.'
Indisputably, what influence there may have been has been indirect, and exercised not alone but in conjunction with a whole diverse sector of peace and community relations organisations, as well as critically placed individuals such as some clergy. One detached academic commentator considers it reasonable to conclude that this voluntary 'peace and conflict resolution' sector has had an impact on the development of the peace process, by fostering new social forces, including enabling individuals and groups to find a way out of the worst modes of polarisation and violence.
One of the key features of the Quaker House contribution has been to be 'in the middle by being at the edge,' in the words of Steve and Sue Williams. That is to say, it has been on the edge in eschewing any particular analysis of the conflict in terms of Irish history or politics, but it could also aspire to be in the middle, working to an authentic Quaker discernment of peace as a process, a journey, not towards any specific political end, but the greater one simply of politics conducted peaceably.
In the last few years, those associated with the house, and in particular the management committee, have been appraising aims and opportunities in the light of the new situation brought about by the ceasefires and the 1998 Good Friday agreement.
In the year Quaker House opened its doors, the conflict-related death toll in Northern Ireland was 112 and the annual average for the 1980s was 81. Since April 1998 the annual toll has reduced gradually to a trickle. The 'war' is widely assumed to be over.
The agreement saw unionists and republicans agreeing on compromises that would have been unthinkable in 1982. And for this, much thanks. But the peace has yet to gel into a permanent, agreed settlement, and it is only realistic not to bank on it doing so for some considerable time.
Too much remains at stake, and there have been too many wounds. Indeed some indications suggest that sectarian division is as intense as ever.
Some have proposed that it takes as long to make a real peace as the length of any conflict itself. On one reading of Irish history, that means five years down, 390 to go. Less pessimistically, it certainly means that there is still plenty to do.
Harvey Cox, Wirral & Chester MM
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