Politics among Friends

...The subject was closed for another year...

...The six members represent a wide range of Quaker opinion and background...

...A number of hands were already raised...

...They do not want again to have to make the hard choice between justice and peace...

...The old man paused but did not sit down...

...From the beginning, the Fiduciary has supported Quaker hospitals, homes for the elderly, and myriad other Quaker causes without investing in alcohol or tobacco, or in companies "with excessive involvement in the military and in companies with questionable practices regarding racial minorities...

...We are simply helping American firms to keep the status quo of apartheid...

...The signatory companies of the Principles, it is charged, simply paper over their shortcomings with half-inch-thick reports and continue in their old ways...

...His question was rhetorical...

...The numbers are not overwhelming, but the Meeting is conscious of being the direct inheritor of William Penn's Holy Experiment...

...The Clerk, a former headmaster, was patient but firm...

...We should divest our holdings and make every effort to convince American business to withdraw from South Africa altogether...

...The government backed down (so the story goes) and Shell's workers got their families...

...Friends were far from unity...

...The task force interviews corporation executives, and gathers information from other sources...

...Friends are wary of the high rhetoric and the quick solution that will lead to violence...

...This is not a simple question...

...Shell, however, insisted that 85 per cent of its black employes be allowed to have their families with them at the worksite...

...Again there were murmurs of assent...

...If progress is to be made for non-whites of South Africa in the near future, it will not be because the laws of apartheid have been repealed, but because they have been eroded...

...Out of a three-century-old tradition, the Society of Friends does not make decisions.by taking a vote...

...As you know, the Yearly Meeting depends on a reasonable income to support its pensions, school endowments, and trust funds...

...Murmurs of "I approve, I approve," swept across the big rectangular room with its surrounding balcony...

...Their questions display a concern not only with their corporate image but also with apartheid itself...

...They were in the midst of the most difficult issue of the week-long session...

...They include the current chairman of the Fiduciary as well as vigorous opponents of any business with an apartheid state...

...Only thirty-one of the roughly 200 Fiduciary holdings have South African connections, and in most cases these constitute a tiny percentage of the corporation's total business...

...Bartram thinks not...

...The pass laws keep most of South Africa off-limits to blacks, who need special papers to travel off the reservations...

...The government wanted to put the blacks into a standard dormitory arrangement near the mine...

...Do Friends find themselves in unity...

...But Quakers are traditionally pacifist, and when the war came many of them refused to fight...

...corporations, when they have been so moved, have had some success in lobbying the South African government...

...Obviously, the larger the company the more economic leverage it can bring to bear in getting around the restrictive laws...

...As Tom Brown said, they had been through all these arguments the previous year, when, unable to reach unity, the Meeting had approved a compromise minute...

...In the silent worship that followed, several of those who had expressed themselves most forcefully rose to reaffirm their love and respect for those who had differed with them...

...For this reason, it was long looked upon as the most prestigious of the twenty-some Yearly Meetings in North America, and is still regarded with some veneration by the younger Meetings...

...the continuing pressure of Friendly Persuasion and by turning the searchlight of truth in the appropriate directions, to do better...

...that no one in this room wishes to support an unjust system in South Africa or anywhere else...

...Tom Brown proposed a minute that the task force should be authorized to continue its work...

...But the aim of the task force is not to coerce any company—even if it could—into policies that will match Quaker principles, but rather to awaken, through dialogue, the concern of the policy makers...

...In any case, it is difficult to achieve meaningful reforms in a country where many of these forward steps are, in fact, violations of the law...

...I think it is safe to say," he began...

...The meetinghouse was once within walking or buggy-driving distance of many Friends' homes— Friends who at Yearly Meeting time would provide hospitality for out-of-town attenders...

...Meeting the task force criteria (or the Sullivan Principles) requires the government to look the other way— and there is evidence that it will sometimes do this...

...That may make us feel pious, but we shall be impotent...

...All of them are donating their time to this cause...

...But U.S...

...What their task force does, therefore, and more particularly how it arrives at what it does, takes on considerable extra-Quakerly significance...

...Twenty of them have been "examined...

...How, for instance, can a corporation help blacks to find places to live when the pass laws restrict blacks rigidly to the Bantu-stans, the black reservations...

...The Quakers hope, by...

...The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an independent activist arm of Quakerism, made headlines by divesting all of its South African holdings more than three years ago, without, by the way, suffering any serious financial loss...

...It is easier for a stockholder, even a minor stockholder, to come into a corporation office and ask to speak to the president than it is for an ordinary concerned citizen...

...In hindsight, most Friends would now agree that gradualism would have been preferable to the fratricidal blood bath that officially abolished slavery, but left—and leaves—the ideal of equality unrealized more than a century later...

...Then the task force feels it has no other alternative than to recommend divestment...

...he asked...

...Since a Meeting for Business is, for Quakers, simply an extension of a Meeting for Worship, they assume that the Holy Spirit will guide them to unity, and that, as they say, "way will open...

...The task force had now made a beginning, and it was up to the Meeting to say whether Friends wanted to continue on this moderate path...

...How much of this questionable activity are we to regard as tolerable in placing our investments...

...But Friends must realize that our only chance of bringing some little pressure on the South African situation is through our business connections there...

...If we divest we shall merely sell our holdings to people who may have no conscience about the matter at all...

...But Sullivan and his organization have stepped up their campaign within the past year, and the Quaker task force has been maintaining close communication with them...

...Others argue that this only reinforces the concept of keeping the blacks literally "in their place...

...Furthermore, even though it causes Friends some discomfort, Quakers are aware that their behavior is often looked to as a model for other "right-thinking" people...

...And if the executives refuse to talk...

...Some feel, for instance, that corporations should locate their plants within the Bantustans, which can then collect the taxes on the properties and thereby increase the income and power base of the blacks...

...But almost all company officials are willing to talk...

...There is, for example, the story told about Shell, which wanted to open a coal mine in Cape Province, and applied to the government to get workers out of the reservations to work the mine...

...Only it should be noted at once that Friends do not quite accept the idea of compromise...

...There was a momentary silence which the Clerk chose to interpret as the sense of the meeting...

...At the gathering in the Arch Street Meetinghouse members of the task force patiently tried to "speak to" the questions...

...There is some argument, however, on what direction the reforms should go...

...Only 3 per cent could have their families with them...

...The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting knows that the same dilemma confronts the trustees of hundreds of universities and colleges and of other charitable and religious bodies under pressure from their conscience-stricken constituencies...

...In the century before the Civil War the Yearly Meeting had wrestled with even greater moral anguish over the issue of slavery...

...How can the Society of Friends," she wanted to know, "with its testimony of equality, and its belief that there is a divine spark in every human being—how can we continue to accept dividends—a share of the profits— amassed by exploiting the non-white workers in South Africa...

...Warren Sylvester Smith is a professor emeritus at The Pennsylvania State University...

...If the response of the Philadelphia Quakers seems something less than a clarion call to end apartheid, it must be remembered that the Society of Friends, particularly in the Northeast, is haunted by an uneasy memory...

...Practically all visitors to South Africa agree on one thing: Outside pressure is absolutely necessary for any kind of reform...

...It is up to the Clerk to determine a "sense of the meeting...

...The sums are not earth-shaking by Government or Wall Street standards...

...These criteria are, in fact, close to those of the so-called "Sullivan Principles" of the ICEOP, which have come under heavy criticism—not for their intent, but for their lack of teeth...

...All thirty-one corporations have been contacted...

...Out of all the talk emerges, finally, some reccommendations: Of the twenty companies already examined, the securities of seven are to be retained, at least for the time being...

...The task force recommends retaining stocks of only those corporations which show evidence of integrating facilities, practicing equal employment, increasing the number of non-whites in management, recognizing the right of non-whites to political and union activity, helping black employes to find the kind of housing they want in the places they want to live, and investing in black education and job training...

...He recognized a middle-aged woman who rose and spoke quietly but with suppressed emotion...

...The assembly was showing signs of weariness...

...But the weight of such* an action is not the issue...

...But could they not continue this same process even if Quakers divested themselves of all questionable securities...

...Strong dissent cannot be overridden, and matters are not considered settled until the Clerk can read a minute and hear no strong disapproval...

...Philadelphia Friends have never been lacking in experienced investment advisers (another saying: "They came to do good, and did very well"), and there is general satisfaction with the way the funds have been handled...

...Task force members are careful not to be shunted off to public relations people...

...To watch a skilled Clerk, therefore, guide several hundred Friends toward an acceptable measure of consensus on a controversial issue is a different kind of experience, like nothing else in the parliamentary or ecclesiastical world...

...They believe that when two points of view conflict, prayerful waiting can always provide a third view which will somehow subsume the other two and will be nearer "the truth...

...So the divestment issue is largely symbolic and has little to do with either the dollar income of the Fiduciary or the effect on the firms whose securities would be sold...

...WARREN SYLVESTER SMITH AND SELDEN WAYNE SMITH Tom Brown, presiding Clerk, looked out over the 400 or 500 Quakers who had persisted into the evening of the fourth day of Yearly Meeting in the old Philadelphia meetinghouse...

...Instead, it relies for information on a number of organizations which do visit and correspond with South Africa, such as the Investor Responsibility Research Center in Washington, the In-terfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility in New York, and Leon Sullivan's International Council for Equality of Opportunity Principles (ICEOP), based in Philadelphia...

...They want to talk to executives who may influence policy making...

...Eight are in limbo awaiting more information...

...Task force business is a heavy addition to jobs and normal family life...

...Today, most of the out-of-towners move easily from the Twentieth-Century world of the Holiday Inn across the street into the settled quiet that begins every Friends' gathering...

...The Fiduciary has complied...

...The Yearly Meeting here described in progress is the parent body of the 14,000 Quakers who live in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey...

...I personally believe that if terrible violence is to be averted in that part of the world, progress toward equality must be made through the means at hand...

...I would ask Friends, too," he continued, "to consider how few corporations would be wholly consistent with our principles—whether in South Africa or at home...

...The Clerk nodded toward an octogenarian, obviously a respected man, who carried his years well and spoke clearly...

...I would remind Friends," he interposed, "that these arguments were all presented with great thoroughness to this gathering a year ago, and that the minute we are now considering is whether we shall continue the work of the Task Force which was authorized at that time...

...When they do, the interviewers usually find them not only willing to answer questions, but eager to ask them...

...There is a well-worn joke: "Quakers believe in the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, and the Neighborhood of Philadelphia...

...Often, Bartram says, company officials expect the task force to be just another group of Quakers demanding something...

...All this is in the long Quaker tradition of "speaking Truth to Power...

...But there were areas of stubborn quiet...

...Occasionally decisions so reached have repercussions far beyond the old brick walls of the Arch Street Meetinghouse...

...Its budget does not permit individual trips to South Africa...

...The heart of the problem in Philadelphia is the Friends Fiduciary, an independent corporation which the Yearly Meeting created some years ago to handle its investments...

...The ownership of stock is a means to a hearing...

...But the AFSC is not directly responsible to any yearly meeting, and needed only the agreement of its board of trustees...

...The setting of their annual March gathering is the brick-walled compound at Fourth and Arch Streets, an Eighteenth-Century haven of quietude set apart from the urban bustle, unique even in so history-conscious a city as Philadelphia...

...But such disagreement over means is all part of what the Quaker task force calls dialogue, and dialogue is a key word of their particular mission...

...The "third view" had resulted in a six-member task force charged with proposing "ways and means to reach greater understanding and clarity on appropriate procedures, so that we may use our investments to result in increased benefit to the oppressed people and recognition of the dignity of all persons in South Africa...

...A more difficult situation faces any of the yearly meetings...

...In spite of this, and in spite of internal disagreements, they manage, under the moderating clerkship of Howard W. Bartram, to accomplish task force business...

...The other five are, as Bartram put it, "no longer on the same path" as Friends, and the task force recommended divestment...

...On the Quaker conscience a penny weighs as heavily as a goldpiece...

...From the beginning Friends were deeply involved in the abolitionist movement, and a few of them were highly visible in the rabble-rousing days of the late 1850s...

...While we own securities we can at least try to exert some Friendly influence on the management...

...The task force does not rely solely on interviews...

...Seiden Wayne Smith, his son, is an intern with the American Friends Service Committee...

...The Quakers know they are being watched...

...The government was adamant until Shell dispatched a high-level executive to the Prime Minister and threatened to defy the government and create a public incident that would again focus international attention on South Africa's repressive pass laws...

...Still, $30 million is no pittance...