For the second time in less than a year, Metropolitan Police officers have raided a London Quaker Meeting House, arresting young activists.
On Thursday evening, 5 March 2026, more than 10 officers entered the meeting house and arrested 15 supporters of Take Back Power - a nonviolent campaign group advocating for a wealth tax - who had hired the room for nonviolent direct action training.
They were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit theft and taken to Brixton and Walworth police stations. One young man suffered a panic attack and was tended to by a paramedic.
The Met claimed the arrests were made to disrupt plans for mass shoplifting. No one arrested has yet been charged.
None of those arrested in the first raid on Westminster Meeting House a year ago, which drew outrage from across the faith spectrum, was ultimately charged with anything.
Oliver Robertson, head of witness and worship for Quakers in Britain, said: "Quakers don't think people should walk into a shop and take whatever they want. But we do support peaceful nonviolent direct action, including symbolic acts that draw attention to injustice, which is increasingly under threat as successive governments restrict our right to protest."
Despite being quite a small community in the UK, there are six Quaker MPs working to make positive change in the world:
Steffan Aquarone, Lib Dem North Norfolk; Ruth Cadbury, Labour, Brentford & Isleworth; Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Green Party, Bristol Central; Josh Fenton-Glynn, Labour, Calder Valley; Catherine West, Labour, Hornsey & Friern Barnet; Yuan Yang: Labour, Earley & Woodley.
Shoe brand Clarks has created a Shoemakers Museum in Street, Somerset
Although the business is now owned by private equity, it was founded by Quaker brothers Cyrus and James Clark and its origins are deeply rooted in Quaker values. For instance one of James Clark's original business ideas, born of a desire to eliminate waste, was to produce sheepskin slippers using off-cuts from sheepskin rugs.
The company invested a proportion of its profits in local community amenities such as housing, classrooms, a theatre, library open-air swimming pool and a town hall.
Quaker Paul Ingram, from the Centre of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge has pointed to the rise in the nuclear threat which has been particularly exacerbated by the President of the USA who has had a 'significant impact' on the worldwide culture and discourse around nuclear weapons.
In 2023 Paul gave a talk to Quakers in South West London about reducing the nuclear threat. A summary of his talk can be found here.
Quakerism informs the life of Oscar-winning actor Dame Judi Dench:
“It’s very quiet, which is what I am not, and it makes you create your own form of Quakerism.
‘’ It consists of sitting in silence with a lot of other people. That suits me very well, because I often don’t give myself the time to get all the drawers organised inside my head.
‘’ It’s a strength I can’t do without.”
According to BBC News Yorkshire 'York would be a different city without Quaker Joseph Rowntree'
From Fruit Pastilles to parks, chocolate entrepreneur and philanthropist Joseph Rowntree, who died 100 years ago this week, has an enduring legacy. In York, the Rowntree name has been given to a park, theatre, caravan site and school.
Joseph Rowntree also endowed three trusts which campaign and research into poverty, housing conditions, and education and political reform: The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.
Quakers believe that everyone is equal before God.
We have formally supported, and have lobbied Government to legislate on, same sex marriage since 2009. This was enacted four years later.
Britpop band Blur frontman Damon Albarn,was born into a Quaker family:
‘I think [the Quaker heritage] gives you an understanding of what the Spirit is, and for someone who is constantly searching to identify and connect with the Spirit around the whole world through music, to have an understanding when you start that journey, [of] what it is you are looking for... Even though, as we all know, you can only feel the Spirit when it reveals itself’.
In 1904 Quaker Lizzie Magie created and patented the board game that was later called Monopoly.
The aim was to show that one person owning all the property put everyone else out of business. The irony is that Monopoly is now owned by games giant Hasbro, and dominates shelf space in stores around the world.
The New World paper (formerly The New European) had a feature in the August 28 edition revealing the game's tangled history - of a shameless opportunist claiming to be the inventor, enabled by a company which knew how to exploit the legal system, getting rich by exploiting the uncredited labour of others. You can read the article here.
Astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a Quaker from Northern Ireland, discovered the first radio pulsars in 1997 as a graduate student. This discovery earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974, but she was not among the awardees. However, in 2018 she was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics and donated the full prize of £2.3 million to 'fund women, under-represented ethnic minority and refugee students to become physics researchers', with the funds administered by the Institute of Physics.
24 June 2025
Quakers speak out against proposed terrorist proscription of Palestine Action
Quakers in Britain have voiced deep concerns about the government's plan to designate Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation under the Terrorism Act 2000.
In a letter to the then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Quakers highlighted the important difference between nonviolent disruption and actions that threaten or inflict harm on people.
Oliver Robertson, head of witness and worship for Quakers in Britain, emphasised that nonviolent protest, and even acts of vandalism, should not be labelled as terrorism. Misusing anti-terror legislation in this way, Robertson argued, threatens core democratic freedoms.
“As Quakers, our faith sometimes leads us to act against unjust laws and actions, and be held accountable for that," wrote Robertson. "There are Quakers who have participated in or supported nonviolent direct action for various causes, as part of living out their faith, but they have always done so with a firm commitment to nonviolence...Proscription interferes with our freedom of religion, as well as the freedom of conscience and the right to assembly that all people have, regardless of their motivation for acting."
Read more here.
6 April 2025
Quaker MP detained and barred from entry to Israel
Quaker MP and former Financial Times journalist Yuan Yang was one of two British parliamentarians detained and barred from entry to Israel recently, despite having been clearance for entry by Israel before travelling. Yang said she had understood the risks of travelling the region but “I did not anticipate the risks of detention and deportation by a British ally”. She said: “If my experience has proved anything, it is that what we say in this chamber matters.”
Police raid Westminster Quaker Meeting House
More than 20 Metropolitan Police officers, some equipped with tasers, forced their way into Westminster Quaker Meeting House on Thursday 27th March 2025 and arrested six women who had met to discuss peaceful protests about climate change and Gaza.
Quakers support the right to nonviolent public protest and we act from a deep moral imperative to stand up against injustice and for our planet. Many Quakers have taken nonviolent direct action over the centuries from the abolition of slavery to women's suffrage and prison reform.
Read more here: here.