‘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.
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.
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.
‘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!
By Elinor Smallman in the Friend magazine, 29 May 2026.
Eye [The column in the Friend] was delighted to hear Friend and author Joyce Trotman interviewed in a recent episode of the BBC’s Private Passions.
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.
By Gill Becket, Co-Clerk of the Quaker Socialist Society (QSS).
On SATURDAY 13 JUNE 2026 at 3pm (held online).
Minutes
A quiet time for gathering was held.
Committee members were introduced.
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.
Appointment of elder: We appointed Mick Langford as elder for this meeting.
Presentation of 2026 accounts and Treasurer’s report (already circulated).These were accepted and agreed.
Committee report (already circulated). This was accepted.
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
QSS members are encouraged to offer themselves for service on the committee at any time.
Minutes of the AGM held online on 14 June 2025 were agreed with no matters arising.
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.
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.
By Abimbola Johnson, as reported by Rebecca Hardy in the Friend magazine.
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.
26th June 2026
‘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.
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.”
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.”
“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.
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.
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.
Richard Sudell pictured shortly before his death in 1968.
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.
A simple interwar garden as drawn by Richard Sudell in one of his 47 books
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.
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.
And another, if slightly more ambitious.
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.
No 20th Century suburban garden would be complete without oval bed for tea roses or other shrubs. Note Richard’s formal garden wear!
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.
Now we are getting advanced with interplanting borders!
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.
Inspired by the patron saint of crazy paving
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.
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Michael Gilson 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.]
If you’re going to read just one book on antisemitism then I suggest this one. In Off-White, Rachel Shabi offers a thoughtful and perceptive exploration of contemporary antisemitism and the ways in which it is often misunderstood within modern political discourse. The book’s central concept: Jews as ‘off-white’, captures the ambiguous position Jews frequently occupy in Western racial frameworks: sometimes recognised as a minority with a history of persecution, yet at other times treated as part of a privileged white majority. Shabi argues that this ambiguity leads to antisemitism being misunderstood, particularly in progressive environments that view racism through the simplistic lens of dominance, oppressed and oppressing.
Rachel Shabi’s prose is clear, direct and accessible, avoiding jargon while remaining analytically precise. She describes antisemitism in historically informed terms, showing how it operates differently from other forms of racism. Rather than portraying Jews as inferior, antisemitic narratives frequently depict them as secretly powerful or manipulative. By highlighting these patterns, Shabi avoids glib explanations and instead offers a careful account of how antisemitic ideas evolve and persist in different political contexts.
Shabi’s own background plays a significant role in shaping her perspective. As the daughter of Iraqi Jewish (Mizrahi) immigrants to Israel, she writes from the position of what might be called a ‘minority within a minority.’ She describes the historical marginalisation of Mizrahi Jews within Israel’s early Ashkenazi-dominated institutions and the cultural pressures that encouraged Middle Eastern Jewish communities to adopt European norms.
This personal and historical perspective informs her broader argument that Jewish identity cannot be neatly classified within conventional racial categories that emphasise skin colour.
Her discussion of Mizrahi history also highlights common mistaken political narratives about Israel. The majority of Israel’s Jewish population comes from Middle Eastern and North African backgrounds, often refugees expelled from Arab countries. This challenges the depictions of Israel as a European colonial project, while her critique of Ashkenazi dominance and social inequalities within Israel prevents the discussion from becoming defensive or one-sided.
Crucially, Shabi writes explicitly from the political left and identifies strongly with progressive values. This allows her to address antisemitism within progressive movements without resorting to conservative or nationalist agendas. Antisemitism must be recognised wherever it appears, including in spaces that see themselves as committed to anti-racism. Her discussion of the portrayal of George Soros and his Open Society Foundations illustrates this point: criticism of wealthy political actors may be legitimate, she notes, but conspiracy narratives surrounding Soros often use longstanding antisemitic tropes about hidden Jewish control.
Because Shabi criticises both Israeli social hierarchies and antisemitic tendencies within progressive activism, Off-White examines antisemitism without aligning itself with any single ideological camp. This is the book’s central achievement.
The book broadens the conversation rather than narrows it. By combining personal experience, historical analysis, and political reflection, Shabi encourages readers to recognise antisemitism wherever it appears, including in spaces that see themselves as committed to anti-racism. Off-White is a timely and thoughtful contribution to current debates about racism, identity, and political responsibility.
Ol Rappaport (May 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.]
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