Joining the Quakers
1969
Gill and Betty were both Quakers since they were in their late teens, long before they got together.
Gill:
“I joined the Quakers because my parents were both pacifists, my father
was a conscientious objector but they were Church of England and I
found the Church of England attitude on pacifism and war to be quite
un-Christian really so was looking for something else and so ended up
with Quakers who were a very visible presence on all these CND marches
I used to go on as a teenager and young adult, so that’s how I came to
it, it wasn’t anything to do with sexuality at that time. I drifted
away for a few years but came back to them.”
Betty: “I’d been involved
with Quakers a little bit in the States because that was the time of
the Vietnam war and I had been involved in the conscientious objection
side of things. When I first came to London, I started to attend
meetings in ’69.”
Contributed by: Gill Coffin, 63, Betty Hagglund, 50