On the Saturday which the UK Government’s Ministry of Defence promotes as Armed Forces Day Bath Quakers will, as they do most Saturdays, join Bath Stop War in a vigil outside Bath Abbey 1130-1230.

This year Bath Quaker Abbey Thornton has designed this #EverydayMilitarism poster.

Abbey joined Bath Quaker Meeting while attending university in Bath, and has since worked at Friends House. Her poster, designed for use in schools, shows militarism and non-violent alternatives in side by side street scenes. It is designed to make the the current normalisation of militarism easy to discuss.

British Quakers are working to challenge that rising tide of militarism. As part of the Rethinking Security project, Friends have teamed up with ForcesWatch to create trial lesson resources for secondary schools.

• ForcesWatch scrutinises the ethics of armed forces recruitment practices and challenges efforts to embed militarist values in civilian society – more here.
• Bath Quakers are prominent among the Bath Stop War campaigners outside the Abbey most Saturday mornings. You’re welcome to join them in solidarity, or to come and have a peaceful chat with sincere pacifists about the important issues raised in Rethinking Security, and whether nuclear weapons and the rising tide of militarism make the world a safer and better place.