Quaker House Belfast .

The Quaker House Belfast project makes a contribution to peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Their work is underpinned by the values of the Religious Society of Friends, including a commitment to peacemaking and equality.

Quaker House Belfast was set up in 1982. By 1982, of course, the conflict in Northern Ireland, in its late 20th century form, had already been going on for over a decade; and there was already a history of Quaker activity. The two Belfast Meeting houses had opened their doors as temporary sanctuary to people fleeing riots. Will Warren had spent six years based in the Bogside as a one-man peace presence during the most trying of times. By 1980 and 81, the years of the hunger strikes, the level of violence had decreased but it was clear to all that the territory was in for, in the IRA’s own phrase, a ‘long war’; long too, would be the road to peace.

In truth, there was no visible road at all. The request from non-Friends that Friends should set up a permanent centre for political peace work was itself an acknowledgement that they had a certain standing in Irish affairs (relief work during the Famine, 1845-50, is still remembered) which was a resource for peace; but it also stemmed from a (perhaps belated) recognition that the work of peace was a long haul.

It is far from easy to discern how useful Quaker House has been on the long road to peace in Northern Ireland. There is no league table. Occasionally, someone from the political world has surfaced with a testimony. Mo Mowlem makes several references in her book, Momentum, and told a Friends House audience in September 2002 that the work done in her time “was invaluable. They did an incredible amount in a house where everyone knew they could be trusted. I wouldn’t have been able to talk to such a cross-section of people except for being able to meet in that house. They told me who to listen to. Without them my life would have been much tougher than it was.”

Indisputably, what influence there may have been has been indirect, and exercised not alone but in conjunction with a whole diverse sector of peace and community relations organisations, as well as critically placed individuals such as some clergy. One detached academic commentator considers it reasonable to conclude that this voluntary ‘peace and conflict resolution’ sector has had an impact on the development of the peace process, by fostering new social forces, including enabling individuals and groups to find a way out of the worst modes of polarisation and violence.

At the start, Quaker House was a project of Quaker Peace and Service, its work overseen by the QPS Northern Ireland committee, comprising Friends from both Britain and Ireland Yearly Meetings. The representatives reported to the committee, which offered ideas and guidance as to general directions, while always observing a proper distance between this and the necessary confidentiality of representatives’ encounters with politicians. More latterly, however, the project was floated from the formal Yearly Meeting structures, partly so that it could be seen to be more grounded in Ireland rather than London, and partly so that it could find more of its own finances (while retaining a measure of direct subvention from the YMs).