Friends Relief Service
The Friends Relief Service was a voluntary humanitarian relief organisation formally established by a committee of Britain Yearly Meeting in November 1940. Largely staffed by pacifists and conscientious objectors, its aim was to provide humanitarian relief and social welfare to civilians affected by World War II. Key areas of operation included British cities affected by The Blitz, and refugee camps throughout north-west Europe, the Balkans and the Middle-East. One of its teams was also amongst the first humanitarian groups to reach Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The organisation had three changes of name: Friends War Victims Relief Committee ; Friends War Relief Service and the Friends Relief Service. The FRS was closed down on May 29, 1948.
Origins and establishment
When the Blitz began on 7 September 1940 there was no official Quaker body capable of acting in response, nor any Quaker organisation through which British Friends could make any relief contributions. Two groups of concerned Friends from the Friends' Ambulance Unit and the Bedford Institute Association, who were already in East London, began to offer aid in the bomb shelters and to assist in organising evacuations. The work was hampered, however, by a lack of formal arrangements to mobilise available resources. Representatives of the FAU, the Bedford Institute Association and other action groups met and made a request for the establishment of an official committee to take responsibility for the spontaneous Quaker relief action that they had started.After consideration, the Britain Yearly Meeting executive committee, Meeting for Sufferings, decided to establish an official Friends War Victims Relief Committee on the 1st of November 1940. It was the fifth committee of its kind established by Quakers, there had been previous civilian relief committees established in the Franco-Prussian War, the Russo-Turkish War the First Balkan War and World War I. They had their headquarters in an office at Friends House, Euston Road and appointed Roger Wilson as secretary.
Organisation
The first Friends War Victims Relief Committee meeting was held on 7 November 1940 at Friends House and was composed of 40 older Friends most of whom had experience of relief work that had been gained abroad in the past. This committee met monthly and had ultimate formal responsibility for the service, reporting to Meeting for Sufferings.In January 1941 an executive committee was created, charged with responsibility for carrying out the decisions of principle that the main committee had made. It consisted of 13 members who met weekly, 10 of whom were actively involved in the service and three Quakers who were not. Additionally at this time officers were appointed to look after publicity and finance. From May 1941 substantial service departments were created to administer particular aspects of the work, including transport, works and equipment, hostels and a quartermaster's department, some of which were joint organisations with the FAU. In February 1942 the committee and the civilian relief section of the FAU were united as the Friends War Relief Service.
In September 1942 the first Representative Conference was held. This consisted of representatives from every level of the FRS. All members of the services were encouraged to bring forward their concerns through their representatives; no subject was barred. This became a regular six-monthly meeting to work out the constitutional procedure of the organisation and to consider the direction of FRS work.
Planning for the end of the war and the role of the service in its aftermath began at as early as February 1941. In the autumn of 1942, the British government's Board of Trade Relief Division summoned all voluntary societies that they thought might be interested in European post-war relief to a meeting. This resulted in the establishment of the Council of British Societies for Relief Abroad in January 1943. The joint war organisation of the Red Cross and the Order of St John acted as the formal channel between members of COBSRA and the military.
Following all of these discussions, the Friends War Relief Service was redesigned, becoming the Friends Relief Service. The general administration continued as before, but the service was shaped into three sections:
- General Section - for all the work being done in Britain
- Refugee Section - incorporating the work of the Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens
- Overseas Section - to handle all the short-term work abroad and then hand over to the Friends Service Council as emergency relief ended.
Ethical Concerns
The call for civilian relief operations in Europe came before the work of the military forces was over. This posed several difficulties for FRS. As an official Quaker organisation, as a matter of conscience, they would not allow themselves to be involved in military operations. They also refused to wear a military uniform. Britain Yearly Meeting confirmed that they would not send members of FRS to any field of operations wearing khaki. Uniform had not been worn by FRS members working in the UK, members were identified by wearing the Quaker red and black, eight pointed Quaker Star.The British Army had been issued a non-fraternization order, they were not permitted to have anything but formal relationships with Germans. This order was also applied to British relief workers in Germany. Quakers were well aware of the crimes of the Nazi regime, as the Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens had been helping people to leave Germany and Austria since 1933, but they, and other members of the FRS, believed that to "draw distinctions on the basis of nationality" was wrong, and that they should be free to treat others as individuals and to use their own judgement.
Compromises were made, FRS agreed to wear battle-dress style uniforms in grey, and it was agreed that they had the right to withdraw on the grounds of conscience and to deal with Germans as they saw fit. Although solved quickly, these ethical issues did cause minor delays in teams going into the field.
Membership
There were about 550 men and women in full-time service in FRS, dispersed over 50 working locations. Meeting for Sufferings asked that the proportion of Quakers to non-Quakers in the service be maintained at about 40%, in order to preserve the Quaker ethos in the work, and in the end about half of the total number of workers were Quakers. Other workers were pacifists or those who felt happier using their skills in a Quaker environment than in a more formal organisation. Most were of military conscription age, with a few older pacifists who came out of retirement to help.FRS workers underwent a rigorous selection process, only 10% of those who applied were accepted. Those working abroad were required to have the right language skills.
Training
Quaker relief training was a spiritual and social experience, designed to train relief workers to live adaptably in unforeseen circumstances. A sense of confidence in human relationships was given supreme importance. Workers were also trained in how to deal with uncomfortable living conditions, conditioned by physical exercise, given technical instruction on relief problems such as hygiene and feeding organisation, given language instruction where necessary, and taught courses on political, social and cultural conditions in Europe. Additional specialist training included refugee administration at Bloomsbury House, driving and midwifery.The first relief workers were trained at 'Spiceland', a training centre consisting of the Spiceland Quaker meeting house and Blackborough House in Cullompton, Devon. Training was also carried out at Selly Oak, Birmingham. New premises for training were found in 1943 at 'Mount Waltham' in Finchley, North London, and towards the end of the war training was also carried out in Swiss Cottage and Kensington.
Work in the United Kingdom
Roger Wilson described the work of the Friends Relief Service in Britain as "rendering personal service on a human level to those whose physical resources were fairly, or even quite, adequate but who for a variety of reasons were incapable of using them" From 1940 to 1944 the FRS developed into a fairly large relief organisation in Britain, with 200 workers in the field and a transport system capable of linking together more than 50 centres throughout the country.Air Raid Shelters
Teams supplied first aid and canteen help to air raid shelters in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Coventry, Bristol, Southampton, Glasgow, Plymouth and Hull.Evacuation
Quakers noticed that older people had been left out of official evacuation planning. The official system had then offered bombed-out older people accommodation in old workhouses, insensitive to the emotional horror this would have for the working classes. FRS teams firstly evacuated older people to Quaker meeting houses and halls in the country, and then set up evacuation hostels which, at their peak in 1942, cared for 450 elderly evacuees. The lessons that FRS members learnt through this work was collected in a report for the Nuffield Trust, providing useful evidence for future work into the needs of older peopleThe evacuation work went on to include children, mothers with babies and disabled people. Between 1940 and 1946 FRS operated 80 different hostels. FRS members also worked to ease tensions between groups of evacuees and the residents of the areas they were moved to. Much of this work was supported by local Quaker meetings.
Welfare Work
When heavy bombing ceased, in May 1941, the FRS began to focus on social work with British civilians impacted by the war. In collaboration with other Christian groups, they ran clubs for young people in the cities they had supported during the bombing, whose homes and environments had been destroyed and who might have one or both parents absent or engaged in war work. Members of the FRS were also placed in Citizens' Advice Bureaux around the country, and they operated a mobile Citizen's Advice Bureau.In Liverpool they set up a Friends Service Centre, where locals could come for support and to use workshops to repair their furniture. The responsibility for this centre was handed to the Quaker meeting in Liverpool in 1945, and it remained open until 1949.
In Birmingham the FRS formed a committee with the local Adult School Union to create the Burlington Hall Neighbourhood Centre, which provided social clubs and classes for all ages. This became independent in 1945, and was open until 1970, when it was subject to a compulsory purchase order by the Corporation of Birmingham