Berkhamsted Quaker Meeting House

02/04/2026

13/02/2026

We welcome the High Court's recognition that the proscription of Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act was unlawful. We call for the immediate lifting of the proscription order which remains in place.

https://www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-events/news/quakers-in-britain-statement-on-the-high-court-ruling-that-palestine-action-proscription-was-unlawful

19/12/2025

There are now FOUR food hubs in Berko and Northchurch, plus the original one still outside Open Door.

10/12/2025

A Quaker who recently completed a 700-mile climate pilgrimage has said that continued commitment to “No New Oil” is all that matters in the face of a 26-month sentence.

04/12/2025

https://www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-events/news/quaker-climate-activist-appeals-conviction-after-judge-threatens-the-jury?fbclid=IwY2xjawOeSr9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEegFC2y5M47nIfLcbBLIfqVUGsEYEAVL3hVAB8oxLwUXC4CdZkH6ofC5thaZM_aem_WAIkuFe-G3grLgXCMutzSg

A Quaker is appealing her climate conviction after a judge threatened the jury with contempt of court if they found defendants not guilty according to their conscience.

21/11/2025

Prime Minister Keir Starmer must rethink his decision to buy 12 nuclear-capable F-35A jets to be stationed at RAF Marham, Quakers in Britain and other civil society organisations have said.

07/11/2025

Almost 300 organisations, including Quakers in Britain, have issued an urgent plea to politicians and the UK government to stop scapegoating the UK’s human rights framework.

25/09/2025

Red Line for Gaza, by the statue of George V, Old Palace Yard

Once I thought that kings
had big-eyed Disney daughters.
Today I wish this marble giant
could set sail on sculpted cream robes
and leave in place the Hockney blue
with its clouds white-lit -
as if all Earth held firm in a purity of now.
Behind the London buses,
vaunted history
rises guarded by force.
Our red is scant and whole, bare and intricate,
until we join, one silent power,
stillness unbroken as shadows fade to green
and build to black in sun and wind.
Our red line circles worlds.
As they run, bleed and cry,
share and carry and waste to bone,
I feel the heat and dust of children’s skin,
wash them clean, hold them close,
take their hands,
keep them safe.
Am unreal.
Go home to keep on living.

22/09/2025

Quakers in Britain welcome the announcement by our government today to formally recognise the State of Palestine.

22/09/2025

WOW. And YES.
Congressman John Lewis (1940–2020) describes his Christian faith as the foundation of his commitment to nonviolence: I believe in the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. I accepted it not simply as a technique or as a tactic, but as a way of life, a way of living. We have to arrive at the point, as believers in the Christian faith, that in every human being there is a spark of divinity. Every human personality is something sacred, something special. We don’t have a right, as another person or as a nation, to destroy that spark of divinity, that spark of humanity, that is made and created in the image of God. I saw Sheriff Clark in Selma, or Bull Connor in Birmingham, or George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, as victims of the system. We were not out to destroy these men. We were out to destroy a vicious and evil system. [1] Theologian Walter Wink (1935–2012) recalls a tense moment in Selma in which a reminder to love their enemies shocked the conscience of the crowd and forged a nonviolent path forward: King so imbued this understanding of nonviolence into his followers that it became the ethos of the entire civil rights movement. One evening … the large crowd of black and white activists standing outside the Ebenezer Baptist Church was electrified by the sudden arrival of a black funeral home operator from Montgomery. He reported that a group of black students demonstrating near the capitol just that afternoon had been surrounded by police on horseback, all escape barred, and cynically commanded to disperse or take the consequences. Then the mounted police waded into the students and beat them at will. Police prevented ambulances from reaching the injured for two hours…. The crowd outside the church seethed with rage. Cries went up, “Let’s march!” Behind us, across the street, stood, rank on rank, the Alabama State Troopers and the local police forces of Sheriff Jim Clark. The situation was explosive. A young black minister stepped to the microphone and said, “It’s time we sang a song.” He opened with the line, “Do you love Martin King?” to which those who knew the song responded, “Certainly, Lord!”… Right through the chain of command of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference he went, the crowd each time echoing, warming to the song, “Certainly, certainly, certainly Lord!” Without warning he sang out, “Do you love Jim Clark?”—the Sheriff?! “Cer … certainly, Lord” came the stunned, halting reply. “Do you love Jim Clark?” “Certainly, Lord”—it was stronger this time. “Do you love Jim Clark?” Now the point had sunk in, as surely as Amos’ in chapters 1 and 2: “Certainly, certainly, certainly Lord!” Rev. James Bevel then took the mike. We are not just fighting for our rights, he said, but for the good of the whole society. “It’s not enough to defeat Jim Clark—do you hear me Jim?—we want you converted. We cannot win by hating our oppressors. We have to love them into changing.”

16/09/2025

Quakers in Britain has joined more than 80 civil society organisations in a new campaign, Stop Trade with Settlements.