Accompanying Friends Prosecuted for Their Witness

If you are concerned about climate, peace and social justice issues but cannot act yourself, this session seeks to highlight the vital service that individual friends and Local Meetings can provide when defendants are in court near you.

We will hear from Phil Laurie who has experienced the legal system as a result of environmental witness, then Carlos Huggins and Anne Lutyens-Stobbs from Chelmsford Meeting will share about their experience of supporting the Stansted 15 when they were on trial.

What inspiration is there from our radical history?

Quakers have a tradition of supporting each other in living their faith, especially in the early days when hundreds were imprisoned for their radical beliefs. Some Friends were imprisoned in the twentieth century too, as conscientious objectors to military service, and more recently for their climate and social justice witness.

Early Friends accompanied those undergoing persecution throughout legal proceedings and the consequences afterwards. They got active and organised lobbying on behalf of those who were imprisoned, expressed concerns about conditions, and/or supported the families left behind.

Their support was robust, practical, spiritual and emotional.

''Our life is love, and peace, and tenderness; and bearing one with another, and forgiving one another, and not laying accusations one against another; but praying one for another, and helping one another up with a tender hand.''