This is a short note from Arrangements committee (QiLAC):

Dear Friends,

We’ve had a few messages in our inbox asking about the regular pattern of our QiL Area Meetings as across London many of our worshipping groups start to think about setting dates for their own meetings in 2027. We provide this note with the hope it brings some clarity.

QiL meets on the second weekend of each month. We ask that minutes from Local Meetings are received two weeks in advance to give enough time for our clerks to discern a suitable agenda for the meeting.

We have created a new page on this website to try and capture all the information about our business meetings in one place: access to documents, dates of upcoming meetings, and the information I have just shared. You can find it here: https://quakersinlondon.org/business/

As always, if you have any feedback or thoughts you’d like to share about the arrangments for our Area Meetings, QiLAC are listening! Please get in touch and let us know at arrangements@quakersinlondon.org.

Your Friend,

Sam

On behalf of Christine, Daniel, Gerry & Gillian (Arrangements Committee)

This film review was submitted by a London Friend. Have you watched a film that you’d like to share with Quakers in London? Email quill@quakersinlondon.org to share it on The Quill.

Directed by Annemarie Jacir, Palestine ’36 is set during the Arab Revolt of 1936–39 against British rule, a period most of us in Britain were never taught about. That absence from our education is uncomfortable in itself. It raises questions about whose histories we learn, whose suffering we recognise and how readily we confront the part Britain played in shaping the world we see today.

The film doesn’t follow one hero. Instead, it moves between several households and communities, bringing villagers, rebels, townspeople and officials into the same unfolding events. What struck me most was how ordinary life feels at the beginning. People farm, argue, read the paper and worry about money. Jacir takes time to show us people living their lives before history sweeps them up, and because we have spent time with them, what happens later hurts all the more.

One of the film’s real achievements is the way it makes a largely overlooked period of history feel immediate and human. The revolt is not presented simply as a series of political events or military confrontations, but as something that reaches into homes, relationships and everyday decisions. We see how people respond differently to growing injustice, how difficult choices become unavoidable, and how the consequences of political power are lived by ordinary people. The film also makes clear that Palestinian history did not begin with the events we might hear about most often today. It gives us a chance to understand something of the longer roots of Palestinian dispossession and resistance, and to see the people involved as more than symbols in a political argument.

There is a strong sense of place, too. The landscape and villages feel integral to the story, not simply a backdrop against which history unfolds. Knowing that the film is set in Ramallah brought this closer to home for me. Ramallah is also home to the Ramallah Friends School, where Quaker educational work began in 1869, long before the events depicted in the film. This longstanding connection between Quakers and Palestine is a reminder that the region is not simply a subject of historical study or political debate. It is home to communities with their own histories, relationships and hopes for the future. The school’s existence also reminds us that these connections have endured through periods of profound upheaval.

The film tells this history firmly from a Palestinian point of view, bringing to the foreground experiences and perspectives that have too often been marginalised in Britain. For me, that is part of what makes it valuable. It asks us to pay attention to a history we may know very little about, and to consider what we might have missed by not knowing it. It also made me think about this year’s Salter Lecture, The Middle East: a moral catastrophe?, delivered by Rachel Shabi. Her reflections on the erosion of international law and the failure to uphold universal human rights consistently resonate with the questions raised by the film. Both invite us to look beyond immediate events and consider the histories and choices that have shaped the present. They also challenge us to ask whose experiences are recognised, whose suffering receives attention, and whether we apply our moral principles consistently, even when doing so means confronting our own country’s history.

As a Friend, the film made me think about what it means to bear witness. The Quaker peace testimony is not simply an opposition to war; it asks us to look at the conditions that make violence possible, to recognise the humanity of those caught up in it, and to resist the idea that suffering is inevitable or somehow deserved. The testimonies to truth and equality matter here, too. Truth asks us to face histories that may unsettle our own national story, while equality challenges us to consider whose lives, voices and losses are given weight. These are principles that must be applied consistently, rather than according to political convenience or familiarity. Watching Palestine ’36 felt like a reminder that bearing witness begins with being willing to look, to listen and to learn, even when what we encounter is difficult. It also raises the question of what responsibility follows from knowing more than we did before.

So, would I recommend it? Yes. It makes a neglected history accessible without losing sight of the people who lived through it. If you know little about the 1936 revolt, it is a worthwhile place to begin. If you already know the history, it offers a moving opportunity to sit with its human consequences. It invites us to reflect on our own country’s past, on the stories we have inherited or ignored, and on what peace, truth and equality ask of us now.

Submitted by London Link Group

From 9th to 11th October, 36 young people and 7 volunteers gathered at Watford Quaker Meeting House for a London Link Group weekend, the group’s first visit since 2013.

Highlights included baked potatoes for 47, a build-your-own “Quaker Subway” lunch, newspaper hockey, mafia, board games and a firepit epilogue in the Meeting House garden. On Saturday, Michael led a session on Nonviolent Communication and how it can help put the Peace Testimony into everyday practice, and on Sunday those who wished joined Meeting for Worship.

Everyone went home a little tired, but with friendships nourished and hearts heartened.

Read the full report on the London Link Group blog →

LDG have provided an update on Friends’ progress in transferring their membership to Quakers in London. If you haven’t recived your membership transfer email, please contact membership@quakersinlondon.org.

On 20 September, some Friends in Membership of one of the 7 AMs in London were the first to fill in a form requesting to transfer their membership to Quakers in London (QiL) at the end of the year. By 1 October, more than 500 Friends (53% of those in Membership of one of the AMs) had already completed the paperwork.

This article is for those who haven’t yet completed the process because they are having problems with the form filling, or worried about the implications of joining QiL.

Through discernment over many years within each of our AMs and, more recently, working together as the Joint London Area Meeting (JLAM) every AM has agreed to become part of QiL Area Meeting at the beginning of 2027, and to formally close the current AMs soon after.

You need to actively agree to transfer into QiL just as you would leave one AM and ask to join another if you moved to another part of England. Quakers in Britain hold membership at AM level (not at Yearly Meeting or Local Meeting) so – by the time your old AM closes – you need to have agreed to join QiL or you won’t be in membership anywhere. In effect, you will have resigned your membership.

We hope you will all agree to transfer, but it is your decision.

Every AM within Britain Yearly Meeting is a charity and that’s necessary so that they can own meeting houses and hold AM or LM bank accounts. Some are Charitable Incorporated Organisations and some are Charitable Companies. In October 2025, JLAM (with the minuted authority of each AM) opted to take over LQPT’s current charitable registration (Minute JLAM 25/19), which is legally structured as a Charitable Company. You can find the whole minute here. As a result, the legal governing document, which is called the Articles of Association, has been updated to suit Quakers in London rather than LQPT. You can read more about the Articles of Association here and see the final draft here.

When you transfer into QiL you become a member of that Charitable Company as well as a member of the AM in Quaker governance terms. As an Area Meeting and a worshipping community, how QiL works will be governed mainly by Quaker Faith and Practice chapter 4 and by the QiL terms of reference and other documents that we develop ourselves. We will also need to follow the Articles of Association for certain technical issues. There is no risk to members of the Charitable Company because it is ‘limited by guarantee’ – and the only potential liability is to pay ‘up to £1’ in the extremely unlikely event that the charity were to close with debts.

In the words of Beth Allen from Bromley Meeting ‘We need to be an ordinary well-run organisation, with good structures and sensible practices, which we then make extraordinary by transcending, not discarding them.’ Qf&p 8.25

Whichever type of charity JLAM had chosen, you would have had to complete a form to transfer. And the form gives you a chance to say what information you want to receive and whether you want to be included in a directory available to other members.

If you decide that you don’t want to join QiL then you can do most things as an Attender, but we hope that you will be part of our London-wide AM as a Member.

If you want to complete the form and don’t know what to do, don’t worry:

• If you’re in Membership of one of the London AMs and haven’t received a personalised email with your form, send a message to Chris Martin (Assistant Clerk Membership) at membership@quakersinlondon.org and he will sort it out.
• If you’re not sure how to fill in your form online, maybe someone in your LM can help?
• If you – or someone you know – needs a hard copy, message Chris (membership@quakersinlondon.org) and he can give you a hard copy.

Chris and others are happy to come and visit anyone at home who would like to talk all this through or get some help. The important thing is that everyone who wants to transfer their membership, does so. Ideally this should be completed by the end of the year, but we’ve found a way to make it possible to transfer latecomers in the early part of 2027 too.

Please trust the discernment of the last eight years, ‘Live Adventurously’, fill in the form and transfer your membership.

The London Development Group

London Development Group’s (LDG) Legal Subgroup shares an update on the Quakers in London Articles of Association, including a summary of the feedback received and action taken in response.

The final draft of the Articles of Association is available here with changes made since JLAM on 12 September tracked. The next step is formal consideration at a meeting of LQPT Members on 13 October 2026. The LQPT ‘members’ are the 7 existing AMs.  For the purpose of discernment, the AM is represented by the Clerk to the AM Trust as the ‘representative member’. These Friends are representatives (not delegates).

In October last year, JLAM minuted that – from 2027 – all London Quakers in Membership would be ‘members’ of the Charitable Company, thus ensuring the full engagement by us all in the work of QiL. 

The London Development Group Legal Subgroup is grateful for the questions and comments from Friends by correspondence, at JLAM, and at various zoom calls over the last few weeks. At the end of this note, there’s a chart that summarises the feedback, responses and says whether or not any change is being made. There were some useful comments that have improved the Articles. We are not making changes on other points raised for a variety of reasons including that what was flagged isn’t actually in the Articles of Association; that what is proposed contradicts what other Friends are asking for and/or what JLAM asked LDG to do; or that we have already received legal advice that we can’t change it.

The Legal Subgroup has been working on the Articles since October 2025 with advice from Bates Wells legal team to implement what was asked in JLAM minute 25/19:

‘● LQPT will act as the receiving entity, with the 7 Area Meetings and London Quakers transferring all assets and liabilities into it. 

● At the point of merger, the LQPT charity will change its name. 

● At least initially, the charity will have Charitable Company status but we could choose to change this to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) at a later date. 

● We will use the existing charitable objects of LQPT, which are sufficiently broad, but may choose to change them in time. 

● The legal members of the charity will be all Quakers in membership in London, in line with the principles of spiritual Quaker governance.

We ask that the LDG carries out a review of the articles of LQPT to look further at what else is needed to reflect our Quaker practice and values and to ensure all our current Local Meetings are included’.

This is what we have tried to do, making the minimum necessary changes needed to create a document that will work for QiL. Certain types of changes to governing documents require Charity Commission permission and it can take a long time to get it. The London Development Group has not made any changes that require permission. They anticipate that QiL and its trustees will review the Articles again and may consider making further changes in the future – but this is for future discernment.  

In July 2026, at an LQPT meeting for Members, representatives reviewed the draft articles and made suggestions that were incorporated. The amended version has been on the QiL website since early August so that all Friends across London could feed in questions and comments as many have. In addition, Member Representatives have consulted within their AM as needed.

A table summarising the points raised in correspondence, at JLAM, or in zooms by 20 September 2026, the response and any action taken is available to read and download below: