Rachel Parkinson is a Methodist Minister, currently taking two years to “Live Life in a Different Way”. Here she offers some thoughts on joining a Peace Pilgrimage to the DSEI Arms Fair.
I am not a natural campaigner. Whilst I’m wholeheartedly on the side of values foundational to God’s healed, renewed creation – love, justice, peace etc – I find it harder to settle on how they translate into political demands in these in-between times. This certainly applies to the arms trade. Whilst I’ve been moving towards pacifism for years, I’m not sure I’m there yet. I’d rather write a ten thousand word essay on the arms trade than choose ten words to put on a placard!
And yet I have very serious concerns about developments in the arms industry which are well summarised in JPIT’s The Future of Arms resources published last year. How then to make a stand?
The answer for me was to join the Peace Pilgrimage from Oxford to the DSEI Arms Fair at the ExCel Centre in London in September. About 20 people – many of them Quakers – made the pilgrimage as a sign of resistance to the way things are and a sign of hope pointing to how things can be, to a future beyond the arms trade. We pledged to challenge the violence in ourselves alongside the wider culture of violence which pervades our world.
I learned a huge amount from daily conversations along the way with other pilgrims, many of whom were experienced campaigners and activists. I’m now equipped with new models of thinking about conflict and the use of weapons and have been able to give voice to my own deep motivations around seeking peace.
However the pilgrimage was in itself a small laboratory for experiments on making and keeping the peace. It was no small task for 20 adults of varying abilities to walk many miles a day; to feed ourselves; and to live together in fairly basic conditions. There were often conflicting opinions on how this might best be done. We all learned important lessons about ourselves and about each other. This might be the Pilgrimage’s greatest legacy – that we are all a little more useful to the world as peace practitioners on account of our experience together.
Before the Pilgrimage I was worried that I might be accosted by people who would accuse me of naivety. I worried that if they pushed me I might end up agreeing with them! In fact more or less all the opinions we got were positive ones – toots on car horns, bicycle bells rung, thumbs up from passers-by. In fact, to my surprise, I ended up wishing that I had encountered more opposing views. Because surely the best way to go forward in the promotion of peace is to model good listening and honest conversation – even if we don’t feel we have all the answers.
There is more information on the Peace Pilgrimage at peacepilgrimage.org.uk
