By Julien Le Mauff, 18 February 2026. [Editor: In recent years the Albanian Professor of Politics at the LSE, Lea Ypi, has been articulating socialist ideas very close to what Quaker socialists know as ‘ethical socialism’ (the socialism of Ada and Alfred Salter and the ILP of Keir Hardie). She chooses to call her socialism ‘moral socialism’, presumably to differentiate it from the Bad Godesberg ‘ethical socialism’ of the German SPD, adopted in Britain by ‘Blue Labour’, but the Quaker ‘ethical socialism’ harks back to the 18th century Enlightenment, as hers does, and the Salters were close to the Austro-Marxists, as she is.]

Julien Le Mauff: How can we move beyond the double deadlock of state socialism and market capitalism? For Lea Ypi, returning to Kant and the Enlightenment offers a perspective to provide a new ground to freedom as social responsibility, and to open up towards a cosmopolitan horizon against the authoritarianism of profit.

As a guest of the Collège de France for the 2025-2026 academic year, holding the annual chair The Invention of Europe through Languages and Cultures, Lea Ypi offers an unequivocal diagnosis of our times. Drawing on her unique experience of the collapse of communism in Albania, she describes how the promises of freedom associated with the arrival of capitalism ran up against new forms of “horizontal” oppression, in a world where everything is for sale and human relationships are transformed into economic transactions. Devoting her lecture series to the idea of “moral socialism,” she begins with a plain observation: liberal societies have progressively emptied the concept of freedom of its substance, reducing it to a succession of individual choices constantly conditioned by advertising, algorithms, and the logic of profit. A freedom of choice that no longer questions the very conditions under which those choices are made.

Lea Ypi therefore proposes a return to the legacy of the Enlightenment to rethink socialism on moral foundations. Her project of moral socialism stands in opposition both to the state socialism of the 20^th century, whose oppression and end she experienced firsthand, and to democratic socialism, which remained trapped within the national framework, responding to the challenges of globalization through mere compromise. By revisiting a lesser-known philosophical tradition – that of the Neo-Kantians and Austro-Marxists of the early 20^th century – she shows how Kant’s categorical imperative – “never treat others merely as a means” – simply cannot be realized in a capitalist society. This moral imperative, applied to migration, inequality, or European integration, calls for moving beyond national frameworks to conceive a truly cosmopolitan project.

Albanian philosopher and political scientist Lea Ypi is Professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics. A Kant specialist, her work seeks to re-establish a politics that reconciles the demands of individual liberty and social justice. She is the author of Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency (Oxford University Press, 2011) and The Architectonic of Reason (Oxford University Press, 2021). Her autobiographical book, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (Allen Lane, 2021) recounted her adolescence amid the fall of communism and the dashed hopes of capitalism. This autobiographical exploration continues with the novel Indignity (Penguin, 2025), dedicated to her grandmother’s youth. She holds the 2025-2026 annual chair The Invention of Europe through Languages and Cultures at the Collège de France, in partnership with the French Ministry of Culture.

Books & Ideas: You began your lecture course by discussing the “age of unreason.” What are its characteristics, and how can the philosophy of the Enlightenment respond to this context?

Lea Ypi: The age of unreason is the opposite of the age of reason, also known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was defined by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant as humanity’s departure from a self-imposed tutelage. It is an age that tries to emancipate human beings from authoritarianism and from belief in dogmas.

I think these dogmatic beliefs define many phenomena of our time: whether it be social media influencers, the power or economic forces that shape political life, politicians who only consider their own interests when defining public policies, or even the resurgence of the prospect of war.

I think all of this can be understood with the term “unreason” because it involves a profound irrationality in politics. The Enlightenment can therefore help us rethink how to find the courage to think for ourselves.

Books & Ideas: To build an alternative, you start from a double failure, that of state socialism and that of capitalism, both of which betray the idea of freedom. How does this “Enlightenment freedom” differ from the freedom reduced to limited choices that you critique (along the lines, for example, of Sophia Rosenfeld)?

Lea Ypi: Yes, it is a double betrayal. The betrayal of state socialism, of real socialism, in relation to the idea of socialism that aimed to overcome the limits of capitalism and realise an idea of freedom for all. We see that state socialisms were a form of oppression by parties and bureaucracies, where the ideals of freedom that characterised socialist movements in opposition to capitalism have not been realised.

On the other hand, after the fall of communist countries, we saw a return to ubridled capitalism, where economic power concentrates everything, where there is a political return to austerity, where social-democratic parties lose the concept of social emancipation that characterised socialism and are content to focus on the legal implementation of capitalism, to facilitate profit for a few. So it is also a system where one cannot find the possibility of realising freedom for all.

I believe that the freedom of the Enlightenment, the freedom of reason, is a freedom that tries to connect the individual to the social, to the collective. It is a freedom understood as moral responsibility, and not merely as the freedom of selfishness that establishes itself as a system, as we find in capitalist systems.

Books & Ideas: Your proposal is an alternative you call “moral socialism.” What does it consist in?

Lea Ypi: Moral socialism is an effort to rethink the world by drawing inspiration from the philosophy of the Enlightenment, while also offering a critique of either capitalism or state socialism. It is an effort to think about freedom and radicalise our conception of freedom, by considering the social consequences of this Enlightenment critique.

We can speak of moral socialism, just as we can speak of egalitarian liberalism or radical democracy–and if some people are uncomfortable with the term “socialism,” that is not very important. What matters is making a diagnosis of the same issues and seeing the same direction towards change. For me, moral socialism is a project that returns to the conception of freedom as moral and social responsibility, and that finds a new way of thinking about the world, a way that transcends the limits of capitalism and state socialism.

Books & Ideas: How is it rooted in the Enlightenment, and how would you respond to those who might see it as a distortion of Kant through the lens of Marx?

Lea Ypi: The philosophy of the Enlightenment is a philosophy for thinking about crisis. The Enlightenment was an era of great scientific and technological transformations, but also of a crisis of authority and an effort to return to morality and reason as the centre of everything, understanding that reason is either the source of all error or the source of hope. I also think that for the Enlightenment it is not only about abstract ideas; it is also a social philosophy.

Moral socialism has a philosophical tradition that was crushed by the state socialism of the 20^th century. It is an effort to recover this lost tradition, with very important figures in early 20^th-century German philosophy, who drew inspiration from Kant’s thought and who show us that there is a critique of capitalist society influenced by the Kantian moral conception. In Germany, we find this in the thought of Hermann Cohen, neo-Kantians like Paul Natorp, or Eduard Bernstein. In Austria, this involved figures known as the Austro-Marxists: Max Adler, Otto Bauer, Karl Renner. There too, the aim was to demonstrate how the Kantian moral conception–and one of the most important formulations of the categorical imperative, which is never to treat other human beings merely as means but always as ends in themselves–cannot be realised in a capitalist society. A profit-driven society, where the prevailing tendency is to treat all human beings as means, as sources of digital data, as something to be exchanged for profit. The moral socialists, therefore, sought to draw the consequences of this Kantian thought for the critique of society.

Books & Ideas: You emphasise that the philosophy of the Enlightenment makes it possible to overcome contemporary irrationality. Concretely, how does this framework help us to analyse current political phenomena?

Lea Ypi: The Enlightenment sought to understand how unreason infuses into political institutions, how authoritarianism is born and how it can be overcome. In the Age of Enlightenment, this took the form of the authoritarianism of religion or monarchy. But in our era, it takes the form of the authoritarianism of the market, of social trends adopted without thinking, and also of a political authoritarianism that offers no alternative system.

Moral socialism is an alternative vision for a globalised world where the limitations of both capitalism and the nation-state are becoming apparent. It is about situating this perspective of change within a cosmopolitan and peaceful context, where it is crucial to make an effort to change institutions: either to control the market from a democratic perspective, or to understand that it is not possible to control the market through nation-states alone.

Here again, the Enlightenment helps us, because its philosophy was a philosophy for a world in crisis, but also a philosophy for the world, a philosophy of globalisation, where the first projects for perpetual peace and international institutions that transcend the principle of power becoming law began to take shape. It tries to understand legal relations and relations of freedom within a context of international institutions, where one sees the limitations of both individualistic interpretations and nationalist ones.

Books & Ideas: In the current context of platform capitalism and populist waves, how can this project be realised? Can moral socialism then respond to the fractures and oppositions within Europe itself?

Lea Ypi: To achieve moral socialism today, I think it is important to consider the dimensions of freedom and the complexity of identity. It is also crucial to inscribe this within a cosmopolitan project, a project of peace. For Immanuel Kant, we must understand freedom as something that does not belong only to the individual, but which requires social conditions for its realisation. So something like the freedom to own property, for example, will be understood within a legal framework that is national, international, and also cosmopolitan.

Immanuel Kant believed that this project of building cosmopolitan institutions would emerge from war, because he thought that at a certain point, human beings would grasp the irrationality of war. He had a kind of prophecy, and believed that nature would reveal to humanity what reason had not yet been able to make them understand. This project was very important in inspiring the original projects of the European Union. For example, in the Ventotene camp, which was a prison camp in fascist Italy, the democrats Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi wrote a manifesto for a cosmopolitan and post-capitalist Europe that later inspired European institutions.

This is very interesting because recently, the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in the European Parliament, citing the Ventotene Manifesto: “If this is your Europe, it is not mine.” And she was right, because the Europe that the right wing is trying to build is a Europe of the strongest that crushes the weakest. It is a Europe of security, of deporting immigrants, and it is a Europe very far removed from the post-capitalist federalist project of the Ventotene Manifesto. This is also where the inspiration of the Enlightenment appears, in this effort to rethink socialism for a transnational and cosmopolitan community, but which also considers alternatives to the capitalist market.

Books & Ideas: How does your own experience illuminate this necessity?

Lea Ypi: I think it is important to consider freedom from two perspectives. The perspective of macrohistory, what one might call the history of leaders, geopolitics, and the major forces of history. But also microhistory, the history of subjects, of people who live their lives and are affected by these dynamics, whether socialism or capitalism. I lived in Albania, where we witnessed the communist regime, freedom, and oppression. We experienced the oppression of a system that was a vertical oppression by the party, the bureaucracy, and the surveillance system. And this was replaced by another type of oppression: a horizontal oppression by the market, by the complicity of consumers, by a dynamic where one finds no responsible individuals, but where we still see that freedom is not for everyone. It is from this dual life experience that we must rethink socialism and the alternatives to contemporary society.

[Julien Le Mauff, 18 February, 2026. This interview with Lea Ypi is taken from the website of Books & Ideas, where readers are invited to share.]

By Rachel Shabi. August 06, 2026.

A far-right narrative linking Muslim migration and antisemitism has moved into the mainstream — with some British Jewish groups backing the shift.

From the early 2010s the European far right began recognisably to cast themselves as defenders of Jewish communities, against Islam. The Dutch Geert Wilders proclaimed: “The more Islam grows in the Netherlands, the more anti-Semitism grows.” Marine Le Pen of the French Rassemblement party called herself the best “shield” for French Jews, since she is fighting “the most fervently against Islamist fundamentalism.” It was, for far right parties, a rebrand that brought many benefits. Claiming to care about antisemitism rehabilitated the political fortunes of parties with fascist roots, steeped in antisemitism and previously considered beyond the pale. In performing concern for Jews, those parties also found a useful delivery mechanism for hostility to Muslims and migrants. They formed alliances with increasingly right-wing Israeli governments, happy to shake hands with European parties that espoused unwaveringly anti-Muslim and pro-Israel views – parties that would help to push defintions of antisemitism that stifle criticism of Israel.

This far-right narrative – whereby supposed concerns about antisemitism are invoked in order to bash migrants and Muslims – has comfortably travelled into conventional politics. As this article explains, far-right parties have funnelled anti-migrant and anti-Islam narratives into the European mainstream, either because such parties are in themselves now a part of the mainstream, or becuase they are in alliances with traditional parties, or because centrists have internalised and regurgitated their bigoted frames.

Which is how claims of ‘imported antisemitism’ – supposedly a product of migration into Europe from mostly Muslim countries – has crept into the conversation. In March, after an arson attack on the Jewish charity ambulance service, Hatzolah, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch urged a crackdown on immigration to help tackle antisemitism. In June last year, the German chancellor Friedrich Merz said that rising antisemitism was due to “the big number of migrants we have within the last ten years”. For Germany, of all nations, to make this claim was, as others have pointed out, a particular irony. It flies in the face of the stats, which show that the vast majority of antisemitic violence in Germany is coming from right wing perpetrators. It’s also an astoundingly revisionist claim, considering that Christian European countries invented antisemitism and perpetuated it in the most pernicious, violent and deadly ways for centuries on end.

You could cite violent extremist Islamism as one contributing factor, among several, behind some of the violent antisemitic attacks in Europe in recent decades. But you cannot with any credibilty extrapulate that into a generalised claim about Islam or about Muslim migrants. And why would you? To do so is pure racism. To do so is to start with anti-Muslim hatred and then grossly contort reality in order to manufacture a validation for such views. To do so is to use one minoritised community as a battering ram with which to attack another.

Europe’s mainstream Jewish bodies have, by and large, drawn a red line at engaging with far-right parties. That said, there have been exceptions, most significantly in Hungary, where the Orthodox Jewish organisation EMIH developed close ties with Victor Orban’s far-right government, and with some Jewish supporters of the AfD in Germany and public figures in France who have expressed a willingness to engage with Marine Le Pen.

In Britain, that line is blurring. A dismal sign of the times came when when the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council invited the Reform party to a rally oppposing antisemitsm. Some 2000 British Jews composed a letter of opposition to that. Meanwhile, and especially after 7 October 2023, a prominent strand of commentary among Jewish writers and broadcasters has foregrounded Islamism, migrant communities and ‘imported antisemitsm’ as frameworks for explaining contemporary antisemitism in Britain. And last week a Telegraph article penned by a British Jewish writer, under a headline that British Jews have been betrayed by immigration, claimed that antisemitism in the UK is coming from Muslim migrants but that we are all too cowardly or sensitive to say it.

All of which is deeply alarming to see, but cannot be presumed to be representative. As much as Israel’s genocide in Gaza has fractured Britain’s Jewish community, so too has this rightward lurch amid rising hostility to Muslims and migrants. Which means that those of us who outright reject such hateful narratives have to keep insiting on that. Our values must be applied univesally, to everyone, if they are to mean anything at all. Our anti-racism has to be consistent. The path to a future in which Muslim and Jewish communities live in safety and with equity is to unite in solidarity over our shared fears and shared struggles – and strive to create that world together.

Rachel Shabi, 06 August, 2026.

[Please note that articles on this website represent only the views of their named authors, and not necessarily the views of Quaker Socialists in general, or of the Quaker Socialist Society in particular.]

By Rebecca Hardy. From the Friend of 17 July 2026. The Friend is the weekly magazine read by British Quakers. Essential reading for Quaker affairs. To subscribe, or read other articles, go to https://thefriend.org.

‘Imagine a world built in the spirit of Ubuntu – solidarity, shared responsibility and generous human cooperation.’

Former Salter lecturer and Quaker United Nations Office director Nozizwe Madlala-Routlege has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Strathclyde. The South African politician delivered the Salter Lecture in 2021 on ‘Quaker Values in South Africa’s Struggle’ as the first black woman on the list of lecturers. 

[The photo shows Nozizwe when she was made a minister of defence in the ANC government in South Africa. Her appointment, as a Quaker, was intended to send a message of peace to the outside world.]

In 2024 Nozizwe Madlala-Routlege received her first honorary doctorate from the University of Bradford in recognition of an inspirational lifetime’s work for peace and justice. 

Sheila Taylor, writing on the Quaker Socialist Society (QSS) website, said: ‘Churnjeet Mahn introduced Nozizwe in Strathclyde with moving oratory about the fight against racism. Nozizwe responded with an appeal to the new graduates based on her Quaker beliefs: “The value most needed in our time is empathy… It is the first step towards human solidarity… Imagine boldly: a world where borders do not become walls around compassion; where the stranger is met not with fear, but recognition; where nations do not compete in cruelty but cooperate in care. Imagine a world built in the spirit of Ubuntu – solidarity, shared responsibility and generous human cooperation. Then help make that world possible.”’

The Salter Lecture is organised every year by the QSS.

Rebecca Hardy, 17 July 2026.

Our Courses

By Sheila Taylor.

Quaker Socialists are delighted that Nozizwe Madlala-Routlege has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Strathclyde. In 2021 Nozizwe delivered the Salter Lecture on ‘Quaker Values in South Africa’s Struggle’, the first black woman on the list of prestigious lecturers. In 2024 she received her first Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bradford in recognition of an inspirational lifetime’s work for peace and social justice.

Professor Churnjeet Mahn introduced Nozizwe in Strathclyde with moving oratory about the fight against racism, and Nozizwe responded with an appeal to the new graduates based on her Quaker beliefs: “The value most needed in our time is empathy…. It is the first step towards human solidarity…” “Imagine boldly: a world where borders do not become walls around compassion; where the stranger is met not with fear, but recognition; where nations do not compete in cruelty but co-operate in care. Imagine a world built in the spirit of Ubuntu — solidarity, shared responsibility and generous human co-operation. Then help make that world possible.”

The ceremony is available to watch on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2P8CJkmJq8 

There follows: 1) the text of Professor Mahn’s introductory speech, and 2) Nozizwe’s speech of acceptance:

Churnjeet Mahn, Professor of English Literature, University of Strathclyde. 30 June 2026

“Associate Principal, I have the honour to present to you Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge. Her life’s work stands as a powerful example of how principled leadership can transform not only political systems, but the everyday realities of people’s lives. From her early years as a youth activist under apartheid to her later roles in government and global advocacy, her work has consistently centred equality, dignity, and social justice. Born in KwaZulu-Natal in 1952, she came of age during one of the most repressive periods in South Africa’s history. Apartheid was a system of racial segregation that showed violence not just to people, but to the basic principles of humanity and freedom. Inspired by the ideas of Steve Biko and the leadership of Nelson Mandela, she became politically active while still young. She was also inspired by ordinary women who organised in the trade unions, in rural struggles for land, and through the global women’s movement, joining a generation determined to challenge injustice rather than accept it. Her activism brought serious consequences: she was imprisoned for her involvement in anti-apartheid activities, including a year in solitary confinement without rial.

Madlala-Routledge was part of the negotiations that dismantled apartheid and laid the foundation for a democratic state. Working alongside key figures, she contributed to the development of a constitutional framework rooted in dignity, equality, and human rights. Her later career in government brought this vision into practice. She served as Deputy Minister of Defence from 1999 to 2004 – an extraordinary role for a committed Quaker pacifist, and unique in global politics. Rather than seeing defence purely in military terms, she worked to reframe it around peace-building, cooperation, and the social conditions necessary for lasting stability. This perspective challenged traditional assumptions and helped shift thinking about security in a newly democratic context.

As Deputy Minister of Health from 2004 to 2007, her leadership during the HIV and AIDS crisis became one of the most compelling examples of her integrity. At a time when millions were affected, she challenged the government’s position which denied the real scale and impact of the virus.She challenged the social stigma around AIDS through compassionate action – she visited patients, including a widely noted unannounced visit where she witnessed the poor conditions affecting mothers and children. By speaking publicly about what she experienced, she drew attention to urgent systemic failures and insisted on accountability. She also publicly took an HIV test, challenging stigma and encouraging a culture of collective responsibility. After leaving ministerial ocice, her commitment to justice continued through civil society and international work. She co-founded Embrace Dignity, an organisation focused on women’s rights and the fight against exploitation and remained active in broader social movements calling for ethical leadership and democratic accountability.

She also served as Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly and later took her work to the global stage as Director of the Quaker United Nations Ocice in Geneva. Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge has delivered action informed by justice and compassion and has never flinched from speaking truth to power. In preparing for today, I asked young South Africans about the impact of Madlala-Routledge’s life and work on their generation. Their voice was united: her integrity and care in the face of the HIV AIDS crisis, a position that put her at odds with the government, helped to save potentially millions of lives. The scale of that impact – those people who were able to survive and not be the victims of ignorance, denial or complacency – cannot be underestimated. She is a hero.

Glasgow is a city that stood in solidarity with the anti-apartheid movement: Glasgow City Council renamed one of our city streets to Nelson Mandela Place in 1986. Graduands, this is part of your story too. Students at the University of Strathclyde successfully nominated Nelson Mandela for an honorary degree that was awarded in 1985 while he was still in prison and labelled as a terrorist. Our solidarity has not waned. Madlala-Routledge’s life work reminds us that change is built not only through positions of power, but through the courage and willingness to act, to speak, and to stand firm in the pursuit of justice—especially when it matters most. It is our honour to recognise your life’s work to build peace in our world. It is with great pleasure therefore, Associate Principal, that, with the authority of Senate, I ask you to confer upon Nozizwe Madlala Routledge the degree of Doctor of the University honoris causa.”

Churnjeet Mahn, 2026.

Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, Strathclyde Honorary Doctorate Acceptance Speech

“Vice-Chancellor, distinguished faculty, fellow graduates, families, guests and friends. Professor Churnjeet Mahn, thank you for your deeply moving oratory, and for the generosity and grace with which you have introduced me to this gathering. I am deeply grateful to the University of Strathclyde for this honorary doctorate. I accept it with humility, and with gratitude to my family, friends and the many communities whose courage has shaped my life. I am especially moved to receive this honour from a university known as a place of useful learning — an institution whose degrees are not only symbols of academic achievement, but instruments of practical knowledge, public purpose and positive change.

Strathclyde’s distinction is reflected in its Queen’s Anniversary Prizes for Higher and Further Education in 2019 and 2021, its recognition as Times Higher Education University of the Year in 2012 and 2019, and its honour as Scottish University of the Year in 2020 by The Times and The Sunday Times. These awards affirm a university whose teaching, research and partnerships serve society and prepare graduates to make a meaningful difference in the world.

I want to congratulate the graduates. Today is your day. As Professor Churnjeet Mahn has said: “Our graduating students are our future.” Your degree carries your effort, and the love and sacrifice of families, friends, sponsors, university staff and professors. It also carries Strathclyde’s promise that learning must be useful – useful to society, to justice, to innovation, and to the making of a better world. May you never forget that achievement is never solitary; it is always held by many hands.

I also pay tribute to the people of Glasgow, whose solidarity with South Africa’s struggle for freedom will never be forgotten. Long before apartheid fell, this city chose moral courage: Glasgow was the first city in the world to confer the Freedom of the City on Nelson Mandela while he was still imprisoned and later renamed the street of the South African Consulate as Nelson Mandela Place. Those acts were more than symbolic: they told prisoners, exiles and oppressed people that we were not alone. They remind us that solidarity can travel across oceans, enter prisons, disturb injustice, and help bend history towards freedom.

My mother was an educator. She believed, as this university believes, that education is a tool of liberation. But liberation from what? From ignorance, from fear, from the smallness of believing that our lives belong only to ourselves. Education teaches us to see more clearly, act more bravely, and serve more generously.

As you begin your careers or continue your studies, I offer you words from Howard Thurman that have guided me: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

But coming alive must never mean living only for ourselves. What is the use of being fully alive if we are untouched by the suffering around us? The value most needed in our time is empathy. Empathy is not a soft virtue; it is a courageous one: the power to feel the wound of another, and then to act. It is the first step towards human solidarity – the bridge beyond fear, indifference, and the narrow borders of self. This is the wisdom of Ubuntu: umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu – a person is a person through other people. Ubuntu teaches that my humanity is held in yours, that none of us rises alone, and that the measure of success is how many we are willing to carry with us.

In our time, this truth demands an urgent response to the movement of people across the world – families driven from home by poverty, conflict, climate change and inequality – and to the xenophobia that too often turns suffering into suspicion. So, I ask you, graduates: what kind of world will you help to build? Imagine boldly: a world where borders do not become walls around compassion; where the stranger is met not with fear, but recognition; where nations do not compete in cruelty but co-operate in care. Imagine a world built in the spirit of Ubuntu – solidarity, shared responsibility and generous human co-operation. Then help make that world possible.

My own journey began in high school, when teachers urged us to open our eyes to injustice. My teachers were a great part of raising my awareness to the injustices of the time. It was my teachers who encouraged me to apply to medical school and my first meeting with a great black consciousness student leader and mentor who influenced many of us deeply – Steve Biko and the South African Students Organisation taught me that liberation is not given to people; it is made by people who become active agents in their own freedom.

One of my teachers, Miss Llewelyn, came from Wales. We called her Hlu for short. She sent an appeal for donations which funded my entry and year at Medical School and later to Fort Hare University. This is what human solidarity represents for me, when people who did not even know me were able to dig deep for my tertiary education. Another lesson for me is: Expect the Best. I did not expect to become a deputy defence minister: I was a Quaker and a pacifist with no military background. But where does peace begin, if not in the courage to enter dialogue with those we may once have regarded as enemies?

Later, as deputy minister of health during the HIV pandemic, I learned that conscience sometimes asks a high price. When people were being denied life-prolonging ARV medicines, I stood with the vulnerable. It brought me into conflict with power, but speaking truth to power helped change policy and save lives. That is what education and leadership must be for: not status, but service; not comfort, but courage.

Graduates, you inherit a world of great beauty and great danger. Will you wait for perfect certainty before you act? Or will you begin where you are, with what you have, and with whom you can? Find what makes you come alive but join it to justice. Let your learning become courage. Let your success become service. Let your empathy become solidarity.

I end with Audre Lorde’s words: “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” May you dare to be powerful. May you use your strength in the service of a generous vision. And may you leave this university not only with degrees, but with the courage to help heal the world. Thank you.

Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, 2026.

By Gill Becket, Co-Clerk of the Quaker Socialist Society (QSS). Minutes of meeting on Saturday, 13 JUNE, 2026, at 3pm (online). [Photograph at the Ada Salter statue in North Bermondsey, taken in 2016. Three of the five in the photo are still members of the current committee.]

Minutes of AGM of 13 June 2026.

1. A quiet time for gathering was held.

2. Committee members were introduced.

3. Attenders: 19 members attended: Priscilla Alderson, Ken Barry, Gill Becket, Anne Charvet, Daniel Clark Flynn, Sila Collins-Walden, Nicola Grove, Susan Ikenberry, Diana Jeater, Jason Jolley, Alison Langford, Mick Langford, Barbara Miller, Chris Newsam, William Purser, Margaret Roe, Graham Taylor, Sheila Taylor, Catherine Weaver.

Prevented: Kate Arnot, Sylvia Boyes, Bert Clough, Denise Cullington, Sara Fielden, Deidre Flintoff, Ian Flintoff, Christine Green, John Grigg, Trevor Hicks, Izzy Lane, Ann Le Mare, Lilli May, Barbara Panvel, Joseph Rodger, David Sommervell and Penny Turpin.

4. Appointment of elder: We appointed Mick Langford as elder for this meeting.

5. Presentation of 2026 accounts and Treasurer’s report (already circulated).These were accepted and agreed.

6. Committee report (already circulated). This was accepted.

7. Appointment of committee and role-holders:

During the year, Ian Martin stood down: we thank him for his service over the years. Chris Newsam was appointed to replace him as Co-clerk.  All other committee members, including role-holders, were happy to continue and are re-appointed:

Co-clerks: Gill Becket, Chris Newsam

Treasurer/membership: Alison Langford

Social media: Chris Newsam, Graham Taylor

Parliamentary liaison, Westminster/Salter Lecture organiser: Sheila Taylor

Parliamentary reporting, Scotland: William Purser

Other committee members: Priscilla Alderson, Christine Green, Diana Jeater, Ruth Kettle-Frisby,

QSS members are encouraged to offer themselves for service on the committee at any time.

8. Minutes of the AGM held online on 14 June 2025 were agreed with no matters arising.

9. Future events and activities:

Suggestions for other events/activities:

• The curtailment of rights to protest and demonstrate and the proposed restrictions on trials by jury.
• Suggestions to increase the defence budget at the expense of the welfare budget.

10. Talk by Graham Taylor on “The Quakers the Quakers Forgot”: Graham talked about the many but largely unsung radical pioneers of Quaker socialism, which was much appreciated. He will consider whether to publicise his talk ahead of the publication of his wider history of QSS, Comrades and Friends.

11. Quiet time and closure.

By Abimbola Johnson. As reported by Rebecca Hardy in the Friend magazine. 26 June 2026. The Friend is the weekly magazine read by British Quakers. It is essential reading for Quaker affairs. To subscribe, or read other articles, go to https://thefriend.org.

Abimbola Johnson delivered the 2025 lecture ‘Pausing the Police’, organised by the Quaker Socialist Society. She is a barrister who has specialised in the relationship between the pope and the black community.

‘An attempt to turn policy into a culture-war talking point.’ (Abimbola Johnson, on claims of ‘two-tier’ policing).

Following the death of Henry Novak, the 2025 Salter Lecturer Abimbola Johnson has called for claims of ‘two-tier’ policing to not derail progress in anti-racism work. The eighteen-year-old was arrested and handcuffed by police after being stabbed five times by Vickram Digwa, who falsely claimed that he had been racially abused by Novak.

According to Abimbola Johnson, chair of the Inde­pend­ent Scru­tiny And Over­sight Board, which oversees police race action plans, the backlash over the handling of the murder risked ‘throwing away’ improvements in anti-racist policing.

Writing in The Telegraph, the human rights barrister said that her watchdog consistently showed that progress in tackling racism within policing had been ‘too slow, too inconsistent and too poorly embedded’. In an article in the Mirror she added that the claims of ‘two-tier policing’ are ‘an attempt to turn policy into a culture-war talking point’. 

On Linked In, Johnson wrote: ‘It is ridiculous to keep having to justify the premise of anti-racism when the evidential basis is so clear. The disparities in stop  and search, use of force, Taser, strip searches, deaths and serious injury after police contact, victimisation, misconduct and workforce experience are not imagined. They are documented again and again.’

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch cri­ti­cised the Inde­pend­ent Scru­tiny And Over­sight Board in the Sunday Times, claiming its lead­ers ‘believe in defund­ing the police’. 

Abimbola Johnson said it was legit­im­ate to ask whether the police were given ‘too much pub­lic money’ and some of it should be diver­ted to ‘more pre­vent­at­ive things to deal with the causes of crimin­al­ity’.

The police watchdog’s comments received widespread media interest including from the BBC’s Today programme. 

Rebecca Hardy, in the Friend, 26.06.2026.

[Please note that articles on this website represent only the views of their named authors, and not necessarily the views of Quaker Socialists in general, or of the Quaker Socialist Society in particular.]

By Sheila Taylor. Article, 29 May 2026.

‘Listening to Joyce proved a fascinating experience.’

Listening to Joyce Trotman, our Friend from Croydon, has always been a fascinating experience. Born in 1927, she remembers every detail of her life and education in British Guiana. She can still sing the songs they were taught at school as ‘children of the empire’, and recounts how proud they felt to be British as they sang: ‘God bless the flag that so proudly waves over us / God bless the Empire, God save the King.’

But whenever I have asked Joyce about politics, she has always said, ‘Oh, you must ask my friend Eric about that. He was the political one.’ So I visited Eric Huntley before he died last year, at his home in Ealing. I heard him recount personal stories of the history which I had only read about in books. 

As a young man Eric had become an activist and radical trade unionist. He campaigned for independence from British colonialism, co-founded the People’s Progressive Party, and spent a year in prison before fleeing to London in 1957 to avoid political repression at home. 

One particularly memorable incident Eric told me about occurred when he was accompanying the Venn Commission, sent by Britain in 1948 to investigate the causes of worker unrest on the sugar plantations. Five workers had been killed during protests for better working conditions, and John Archibald Venn of Cambridge University headed a two-person enquiry, together with the Quaker landscape architect, Richard Sudell. Eric took them to visit a sugar estate, where they admired the lovely buildings in the grounds before discovering that these were for the animals and far superior to the workers’ accommodation! 

In London, Eric and his wife Jessica quickly became leading figures in the African-Caribbean community, and in the struggle for racial and social justice. They set up a publishing house, opened a progressive bookshop, and played a key role in grassroots activism, including in the Black Parents Movement. Their legacy is lovingly preserved at the London Metropolitan Archives, and in a striking photo montage commissioned in 2022 at the National Portrait Gallery (see https://tinyurl.com/erichuntley and above). 

When Joyce settled in England in the 1970s, she became firm friends with the Huntleys, who in 2006 published her academic study The Proverbs of Guyana Explained. They would often meet up at Guyanese gatherings in London, and, after Jessica died in 2013, Joyce continued to keep in touch with Eric by regular phone calls. In 2017, as a gift for her ninetieth birthday, he published her booklet on a Quaker abolitionist – Thomas Clarkson: My saint – dedicating it to her with love and appreciation, and describing her as ‘a repository of our culture and history which does not dim with age’.

I can personally testify that neither Joyce nor Eric dimmed with age! Last year I saw them both enjoying an event in celebration of the actress Carmen Munroe being made a dame, and some weeks later Eric attended Croydon Meeting House for the launch of Joyce’s autobiography (see review, 27 November 2025). But sadly in January he died, and in February the Guyanese diaspora turned out in their hundreds to mourn his passing. At the funeral Joyce read out a tribute that moved people to laughter, applause and tears, and prompted a big hug from Valerie Amos as they left the crematorium together.

‘I can personally testify that neither Joyce nor Eric dimmed with age!’

So how did Joyce describe Eric? With references to literature, patriotism, Quakerism and the Bible, all combining into one inspirational vision. First she quoted the US poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: ‘Lives of great men all remind us / We can make our lives sublime / And departing leave behind us / Footprints on the sands of time.’ It illustrated how Eric, by tackling social and political injustice, had left his mark on the lives of those he touched.

Joyce also referred to the famous words which Quaker George Fox wrote to his followers from prison in 1656: ‘Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one.’ She said, ‘Eric has left us a legacy and become an example and a pattern of what service to his community should be.’ She had once listened to a Friend’s ministry in Meeting, saying, ‘If you acknowledge that of God in everyone, and act accordingly, nobody gets hurt.’ And, said Joyce, ‘I would add, everyone is blessed.’

The older generation at the funeral smiled in quiet recognition and agreement as Joyce recalled how they were all ‘conned’ into loyalty to the British empire, and how the Song of Guyana’s Children, by William Hawley Bryant (1931) made them realise that there could be an alternative: ‘Onward, upward, may we ever go / Day by day in strength and beauty grow / Till at length we each of us may show / What Guyana’s sons and daughters can be.’

When Joyce listed ‘that great cloud of Guyanese witnesses’ that Eric had gone to join, the famous names she read out were familiar to all the mourners at the funeral: Cheddi Jagan, Forbes Burnham, Martin Carter, Mollie Hunte, Thelma Lewis, Grafton Shepherd, Wilson Harris, Shridath Ramphal and Herman Ousley.

In closing, she echoed the words of Paul remembering David (Acts 13:36), and said that Eric, too, ‘after he had served his generation by the will of God, fell asleep’. And her tribute concluded, ‘As I give thanks for the example of your life and the way in which you enriched our lives, I say, “Goodnight, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. Eric, my comrade, my neighbour, my friend, my brother, Rest in Peace”.’

Thus, once again, listening to Joyce proved a fascinating experience. Her funeral oration was characterised by that possibly unique combination of British colonial education and Quaker beliefs. Such a delight to celebrate Eric’s life with her and so many of their loving compatriots!

Sheila Taylor, 29 May 2026.

By Elinor Smallman. As reported in the Friend magazine of 29 May 2026.

The Eye [a column in the Friend] was delighted to hear Friend and author Joyce Trotman interviewed in a recent episode of the BBC’s ‘Private Passions’ about her autobiography, Dis Girl.

Soon to turn ninety-nine, Joyce delves into the story of her life, bringing her time in British Guiana and England to life with musical selections including hymns, Handel played by a steel band, classical and operatic pieces, as well as treating listeners to a few snippets of song in her own voice.

Available until 8 June, Friends can listen to the full episode at: https://bit.ly/JoycePrivatePassions.

[What is truly amazing is Joyce’s amazing memory. She seems to remember every single detail of her life and can recite, endlessly, and without hesitation, hundreds of poems and songs learnt in her childhood and early years.]

[See also her short biography of Clarkson, Thomas Clarkson: My Saint, and her unique Proverbs of Guyana Explained. She still attends Croydon Meeting.]

Elinor Smallman, 29 May 2026. The Friend is the weekly magazine read by British Quakers. It is essential reading for Quaker affairs. To subscribe, or read other articles, go to https://thefriend.org.

By Ruth Kettle-Frisby.

Andy Burnham has spoken movingly and effectively for statutory accountability on many occasions, notably in favour of Hillsborough and environmental justice.

However, he also disappointingly denied the people of Greater Manchester clean air via an Ultra Low Emission Zone, which would have received a politicised backlash from the right, but could have been a highly effective use of his Mayoral powers, saving lives and improving children’s health. 

Continue reading “Andy Burnham Not the Answer” →

By Michael Gilson. Biographer of little known Richard Sudell.

Quaker suburban garden evangelist Richard Sudell deserves a little time in the spotlight:

“We shall in the future create towns and cities of undreamt beauty and purpose. I foresee a noble architecture arising amidst a landscape fashioned to meet the desires and aspirations of man.”

Heroes don’t have to sport chiseled jaws and carry guns on behind-enemy-lines missions. They don’t even have to climb mountains or sail oceans.

Sometimes they can be balding with a winning smile and soft voice. They could even carry flowers as their weapon of choice.

Instead of fighting wars they might even be imprisoned for refusing to do so. The quote above comes from one of my heroes, the balding, gentle, conscientious objector Richard Sudell.

It is fair to say Sudell came armed with flowers, millions of them. As much as anyone else he was responsible for the transformation of millions of acres of post war Britain into a patchwork of beautiful colour.

Among many other things Sudell was the most widely read garden instruction writer of the first half of the 20th Century.

The Daily Record, Ideal Home, 47 (count them) books, and even Wills cigarette cards all carried words of gentle encouragement written by him to inspire a new, peaceful, army.

The suburban gardener, millions of them not the stereotype that we think of today, but new council house dwellers and inner city slum escapees handed something they’d never had before.

Namely a small piece of open space outside their front or back doors.

But what to do with this 400 square yard piece of earth? Enter Sudell.

Forgive me for writing about Richard today. Many of you may already know that he is the central character in my book Behind the Privet Hedge: Richard Sudell, the Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain (Reaktion Books).This week two years ago it was published and Richard came blinking into a little bit of a spotlight.

The book tells the story of the explosion of gardening that took place in the years after the government launched its Homes Fit For Heroes campaign of house building to ensure those returning from the trenches did not have to return to the inner city deprivation from whence they came.

In those years before and after World War Two more than half a million acres of new garden were created, mainly for those who had never had such a thing before.

This was the unwritten story of the real birth of the British suburban garden and the root of the nation’s reputation as a land of gardeners. The level of enthusiasm these new residents brought to their gardens could often seem like a collective fever.

Yet they needed guidance, someone to tell them what a start looked like, how to plant, grow and overcome setbacks.

And they needed it given in simple language promoting garden styles that would not guarantee failure. Most had little spare time to create works of art.

So the labour-saving garden was born, with simple delineated straight line borders, tea roses, pansies and small kitchen gardens for growing leeks and potatoes at the back. The patron saint of crazy paving, as I called him, Sudell had found his purpose.

He became a potting shed name, his painfully practical instruction journalism helping turn the war weary grey nation into a kaleidoscope of colour.

I spent more than four years researching the hitherto unwritten garden story using this forgotten man as my conduit. By talking to his grandchildren and diving deep into archives a picture emerged of a man of beautiful manners but steely determination. I developed a lot of affection for him.

As can be seen from the quote above he really did have a vision of a new Britain arising out of the death and destruction of the wars.

It would become a more egalitarian society in which land and an uplifting environment was available for all.

Humble and modest he may have been but as a Quaker and life-long pacifist he had steadfastly refused to fight in World War One.

His punishment was three spells in prison during which he was allowed only a bed without a mattress to sleep on, bread and water to eat and drink. I thought prisoners having to sew mailbags was a myth, something from the films, but this is what he had to do in solitary confinement day after day.

He saw through his sentences without complaint, even though some COs never recovered from the experience, but it gave him a steely side which often led others to underestimate him.

A working class Lancastrian who left school at 14 to become a boy gardener, he survived the snobbishness of the garden cognoscenti to become the founder of the Institute of Landscape Architects (now the Landscape Institute) which hoped to play a leading role in the reimagining of Britain.

In the end though he was, above all, a dreamer.

A century ago he really did believe Britain was capable of change, the lessons of war helping to give birth to something radical but beautiful, great cities, awe-inspiring landscape, a nation understanding the rhythms of the season, using flowers, trees and vegetables to lift the spirits. Hell he even landscaped gas holders.

Sudell died in 1968 but, if he were alive now, it’s certain he would see a country a million miles from the vision articulated above.

It’s tough for us to imagine, as gardens disappear under tarmac for the SUV, that Sudell and others really did view the flower as a weapon in a war of societal transformation, on a level with economics and health promotion.

Beautification was a thing.

But maybe, above all else, the lesson Richard taught me on our long journey together, through the shelves of dusty archives and on the couches of helpful people I had never met before, was that you do have to have that dream. Something to believe in.

Two years ago, to mark the publication of the book, I bought one of Sudell’s favourite blooms, a hybrid tea rose called Betty Uprichard for my garden.

With her wonderfully suburban name Betty is maybe a little blousy, bred back in the 1920s to withstand the pollution that often swept across city-skirting suburbia.

Roses like her were sniffily dismissed by the Francophile Jekyll-inspired gardening classes who favoured the delicate wilder blooms. You won’t find many Bettys in National Trust gardens.

Yet Sudell understood that the new army of gardeners desired beauty but also practicality. Flowers that would thrive with little effort.

His support for working class gardens was one of the reasons he was so easily dismissed, written out of the horticultural history books of the last century.

As I look out of my window while writing I can see Betty’s salmon blush pink petals glittering through the astonishing heat haze. Hopefully when the breeze rises again her perfume will drift wide.

She’s my small tribute to Richard the dreamer.

[Behind the Privet Hedge is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid.]

Michael Gilson 2026. See his blog and subscribe.

[Please note that articles on this website represent only the views of their named authors, and not necessarily the views of Quaker Socialists in general, or of the Quaker Socialist Society in particular.]