Reflections on our Message of Peace
On the 29th June we took part in an act of Silent Witness in response to Armed Forces Day. The vigil took place, as in past years, on Angel Hill in Bury St.Edmunds.
The following is the text of a letter from Bury St.Edmunds Quakers which provides more background (published in the Bury Free Press on Friday, July 9th):
“Bury St. Edmunds Quakers would like to clarify some of the content of the report which appeared in the Bury Free Press of July 2, regarding our act of Silent Witness in response to Armed Forces Day.
The action was a decision of the whole Meeting and was arranged by the Peace Group, not by any one individual.
The two pillars of our message were that we may best show care for the men and women of our Armed Forces by working for peace, and that we wished to invite consideration of the potential of ‘Unarmed Forces’ (such as humanitarian and aid workers and the Ecumenical Accompaniers In Israel-Palestine).
Our placards invited passers by to reflect on this and on the need for the government to invest more in conflict prevention and resolution, nation building and peacemaking.”
The vigil was reported rather unsatisfactorily in the Bury Free Press:
So we wrote and got a clarification:
