Please visit our historic 18th Century Quaker Meeting House, with 2008 modern extension. Exhibition and video covering Quaker history and also contemporary Quakerism. No pre booking required. Open 10-5, Saturday, 14th September. For details of other historic properties please go national heritage open days
Celebrations for the 400th anniversary of the birth of Quaker co-founder George Fox are taking place throughout 2024. Many of these events can be joined online, from around the world. For further details please click here.
The picture shows the beautiful and still used Brigflatts Meeting House, Sedburgh, Cumbria. George Fox stayed at the farmhouse just behind the meeting house in 1652 and then preached at a great open air meeting at nearby Fairbanks Fell. This event is normally identified as the start of the Quaker movement. A permanent meeting was established at Brigflatts that year with the meeting house built 23 years later. Our own meeting house has its origins only thirty years after Fox’s momentous trip to the North.
14 hour per week at £12.46 per hour. Temporary for six months but possibility of becoming permanent , days/times irregular and some weekend work needed. Need to be flexible in terms of days/times.
caretaking tasks include the re-arrangement of furniture,, security checks, maintenance tasks, and a certain amount of cleaning.
For full details and application form please contact the Warden, tel 07746695589 or email BSE.quakerwarden.gmail.com
Date moved back a year to stop it from appearing on front page
This letter was printed in the Bury Free Press in early December.
As the UN Special Rapporteur on on extreme poverty and human rights ends his fact finding mission to the UK, Quakers in Bury St Edmunds would like to draw attention to some of his findings.
Professor Philip Alston began his fact-finding mission on 6 November and spent 12 days travelling to Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Essex, Glasgow, Jaywick, London and Newcastle
He visited foodbanks and community groups, talking with MPs, academics, local officials and families in hardship. His final report, which will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council next year, found that the UK government has inflicted “great misery” on its people with “punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous” austerity policies.
Finding that about 14 million people, (a fifth of the population), live in poverty and 1.5 million are destitute, being unable to afford basic essentials , Alston was critical of cuts and reforms introduced in the past few years “that have brought misery and torn at the social fabric”.
“Changes to taxes and benefits have taken the highest toll on those least able to bear it” said Alston, pointing out that the costs of austerity are falling disproportionately on the poor, women, ethnic minorities, children, single parents, asylum seekers and people with disabilities.
Focusing on Universal Credit, the Special Rapporteur found it a good idea in principle but one which was “fast falling into universal discredit”, and called for it to be overhauled, describing it as “gratuitously punitive in its effects” . Draconian sanctions and long payment delays were driving claimants into hardship, depression and despair, said Professor Alston. Its insistence upon the ‘digital-by-default’ approach excluded people without internet access or computer skills. “We are witnessing the gradual disappearance of the postwar British welfare state behind a webpage and an algorithm”, Alston said.
Deep cuts in council funding, together with the rapidly rising demand for social care, meant many local authorities were only providing basic services and this had led to the closure of libraries, parks and youth clubs. This was “damaging the fabric” of British society and eroding its sense of community.
Alston reports that the government is in a state of denial about the impact of austerity policies on those in poverty. Indeed, it seems already to have dismissed his findings saying it “completely disagreed” with his analysis, citing citing figures and statistics at odds with the experiences encountered by the Special Rapporteur.
As a faith body with a Testimony to equality, this concerns us deeply. We see a respected and eminent lawyer who has taken a great deal of time and care in listening to people who are often ignored and who has done what no politician of any party has yet done: placed their lived experience on the record.
We ask faith bodies, and all people of good faith, to read Professor Alston’s interim report, to reflect upon it, and to engage with their elected representatives. The people with whom Philip Alston has been speaking during his visit are our fellow citizens. Many of them are living in misery and real despair. Every one of them is “unique, precious, a child of God. ” We cannot let politicians sweep them aside in a cloud of statistics and selective figures.
Bury St Edmunds Quakers
St John’s Street,
Bury St Edmunds IP33 1SJ
