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Friends Relief Service
AbbreviationFWVRC - FWRS - FRS
Formation1940 -1948
TypeVoluntary humanitarian and relief organisation
HeadquartersFriends House, Euston Road, London
Parent organization
British Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

Friends Relief Service

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The Friends Relief Service (FRS) was a voluntary humanitarian relief organisation formally established by a Committee of the British Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in London on 7 November 1940. The organisation had three changes of name:  Friends War Victims Relief Committee – (November 1940 – February 1942); Friends War Relief Service – (February 1942 – September 1943); Friends Relief Service – (September 1943 – May 1948). It was funded mainly by contributions from American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), British and American donors and gifts from the Lord Mayor of London’s Air Raid Distress Fund. It was largely staffed by pacifists and conscientious objectors during World War II. Its Headquarters was Friends House, Euston Road in London. Its members numbered about 550 men and women in full-time service, most of military conscription age. Its purpose was to relieve the distress and suffering caused by war. FRS organised and provided humanitarian relief and social welfare services during the bombing of British cities during 1940 and 1941 alongside Friends Ambulance Unit and undertook significant work with old people in evacuation hostels. From 1944 to 1948 (under the protection of the British Red Cross Society and UNRRA), the Service contributed essential provision of relief to civilians, refugees, POWs and Displaced Persons, following the Allied invasion of Europe. FRS's Relief Sections operated in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria; in Palestine, East Africa, Gibraltar, Morocco, Italy, Greece and in Poland. FRS was wound up on 31 May 1948 when it handed back remaining responsibilities to Friends Service Council.

Fiona Reid and Sharif Gemie note that 'The history of the FRS also highlights the key challenges of faith-based humanitarian agencies, namely how to focus on the spirit of the work while acknowledging the importance of material needs and working within the political and financial restraints of the relevant authorities'.[1]

The work of Friends Relief Service was referred to in the 1947 award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Quakers worldwide and accepted by the Friends Service Council and the American Friends Service Committee.

History

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When ‘The Blitz’ began on 7 September 1940, London was heavily bombed by the German Luftwaffe for 57 nights. In response to this emergency of unprecedented destruction, loss of life and suffering, there was no official Quaker body capable of acting, nor any organisation through which British Friends could make any relief contributions.[2]  The first relief work was undertaken spontaneously by two groups of Friends.  Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) was an unofficial, independent but Quaker-related body undergoing training in East London hospitals. Staff and volunteers at Quaker mission settlements in East London, grouped together in the Bedford Institute Association at Bethnal Green, Hoxton, Ratcliffe (on the path of the line-bombing and others at Forest Gate, Barking and Walthamstow were on the edge of the Blitz area), stepped in to help in those areas. A third group from the Woodbrooke Quaker adult education centre in Birmingham who were undergoing relief work training, joined the London relief workers. The three groups worked in an uncoordinated way, with a lack of defined responsibilities, which caused muddled action and hampered the mobilisation of available resources in the Quaker relief effort.[3] The Executive Committee of the Society of Friends in Britain - Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) decided to establish an official Friends War Victims Relief Committee (FWVRC) - sometimes shortened to ‘War Vics’, on 1 November 1940 to manage Quaker relief efforts. Aligned to a main Quaker tenet, its primary purpose was the relief of distress and suffering caused by war.[4] 

For the first four years, the work focused on domestic relief, with FRS working alongside the FAU’s civilian relief sections, and other voluntary bodies, in air-raid shelters and ‘rest centres’ set up for the victims of bombing in cities around the UK. Between 1940 and 1946, they ran a total of 80 evacuation hostels, mostly for the elderly, adapting Quaker Meeting Houses, village halls, adult education centres and other buildings they could convert. The volunteer workers contributed to welfare work including the running of Citizens' Advice Bureaux, food canteens, recreation, facilitating shelter committees, adult and child education[5] etc. before the permanent official organisations of the area began to co-ordinate an emergency wartime policy.[6] There were about 200 members working in each field. The Service developed into a fairly large relief organisation operating over a wide area with a transport system capable of linking together more than 50 centres throughout UK, with a building an equipment centre maintaining a variety of premises.

In January 1941 officers were appointed to look after publicity and finance. American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) was asked to help with financing the relief work and sent regular monthly contributions of $10,000 from March 1941 to January 1943. Then, as FRS’s fundraising department gained experience, AFSC gave less, diminishing and ending in June 1944. Other support came from the British War Relief Society of New York, an anonymous American donor and gifts from the Lord Mayor of London’s Air Raid Distress Fund.[7]

A conference of FWVRC and FAU undertook a thorough appraisal of the Service in the autumn of 1941. The result was a substantial re-organisation of the Committee and the amalgamation of FWVRC and the civilian relief section of FAU into Friends War Relief Service (FWRS) in February 1942. The whole of Quaker relief work was brought under one unified organisation.[8] The new body worked out its ultimate idea of Quaker relief, focusing on the 'corporate concern'[9] of the whole the Society of Friends and how that could be applied to the Service. A conference at the end of September 1942 at Selly Wood in Birmingham, focused on working out the sense of common responsibility[10] within the Service. At this conference, the central features of Quaker organisation and philosophy were woven into the fabric of the new organisation.[11]

In preparation for the inevitable end of the war, a conference was convened by the permanent Quaker body, Friends Service Council, at Jordans in February 1941, at which American and British Friends considered and planned in detail the Service's future involvement overseas. This conference led to the consideration of what Quaker committee in Britain ought to take responsibility, the shape of actual Quaker overseas relief, and the relationship between civilian overseas relief organisations and the military authorities.[12] Although FWVRC was the traditional Quaker ad hoc committee for post-war relief work, since the 1920s Friends Service Council had come into being and handled continuous overseas mission work, social work and also sporadic overseas relief work between WW1 and WW2. FSC had the most knowledge of post-war relief in Europe. Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens (set up 1933, originally known as Germany Emergency Committee) had done work in Germany before 1939. But, FSC had no experience of, nor mechanism for organising hundreds of relief workers. In the spring of 1942, FSC, FWVRC (now FWRS) and FAU agreed to the establishment of a special ad hoc Post-War Service Committee. Working under FSC, its duty was to organise the Society of Friends’ interest in post-war relief, including the training of potential overseas relief workers.

In the late autumn of 1942, the British government’s Board of Trade Relief Division called a meeting of all voluntary societies and urged them to get together to establish joint machinery for consultation and co-ordination for post-war relief.  This meeting resulted in January 1943 in the establishment of the Consultative Council of Voluntary Societies for Post-War Relief and Rehabilitation, later renamed Council of British Societies for Relief Abroad (COBSRA).  Because Friends Post-War Committee had no machinery for putting British relief workers into the field, the Society of Friends decided to establish a new single emergency committee - Friends Relief Service Committee. The new Service was redesigned, primarily to put it into shape for overseas work, and by the late summer of 1943, it was renamed Friends Relief Service (FRS) and in this new consolidated position, it was to be able to represent Quaker interests on COBSRA.[13] The new FRS central Committee was shaped into specific operational sections controlled by a Ways and Means Committee.  

Following the opening of the Second Front in the war in Europe on 6 June 1944, FRS members were ready for relief operations in the second phase, with civilian relief in the liberated areas of France.  However, the call came for assistance with civilian relief before the work of the military forces was over.  This posed problems for FRS as an official Quaker organisation, because the Quaker Peace Testimony prevented Quakers from being involved in war or with armies in any way. But at this point in the war, the Civil Affairs branch of the British Army was the only possible civil authority that FRS could engage with until the indigenous civilian governments were re-established – which took a long time. The Joint War Organisation of the Red Cross and the Order of St John agreed to act as the single formal channel with the military while taking under their wing all the other COBSRA members who would retain their group identity. Finally, FRS agreed to working in principle to working in conditions where the army was the ultimate civil power, provided certain safeguards about right of relief service to withdraw on grounds of conscience were accepted.

Another problem FRS had to overcome before going to Europe was all relief workers were given the status of officers and required to wear British Army khaki military uniforms. FRS did not want to identify themselves with the military and in military areas as this could be associated with autocratic behaviour and a disassociation from military action is a large part of Quaker religious testimony. If FRS was associated with the military, that would hamper reconciliation. FRS Committee and Meeting for Sufferings, in May 1944 decided that FRS would not send members to any part of the world in khaki. Because the uniform issue was not resolved by June 1944, the first group of British relief workers left without FRS. FRS finally agreed to wear a battle-dress type of uniform overseas and was given special dispensation by the British Army to wear Quaker grey.[14]

A final difficulty that FRS had to negotiate was when the British Army commander General Montgomery issued a 'Non-Fraternisation' order in 1945 which also applied to civilian relief workers. A Quaker team was then ready to go to Germany, but the unit withdrew and asked for mutual understanding over the order. A way was found by face to face recognition of primacy in human relations in relief, not categorisation by nationality, and then FRS teams entered Germany on acceptable terms.[15]

Directorship, authority and structure

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FRS admin group - Friends House Departments

Committees

The first official FWVR Committee was established on 1 November 1940 at Friends House. It was the central committee of about forty Friends who had had previous experience of relief work overseas. It took ultimate formal responsibility for the work as a whole and considered important matters of principle and organisation; co-ordinated relief services of existing Quaker groups, investigated new openings, raised and allocated funds, supported local efforts and enabled the training of relief workers. While relief at home was its initial function, it was to be responsible, in conjunction with Friends Service Council or appropriate bodies for developing relief work abroad when opportunities arose. It was re-organised as FWRS Committee in 1942 and finally restructured as FRS Committee, in 1943. It was led by a Chairman who was responsible to Meetings for Sufferings. The Chairmen were J Cuthbert Wigham (November 1940 to 1941), Christopher Taylor 1941 to 1943 and Russell Brayshaw from 1943 to 1948.[16]

An Executive Committee was formed out of the main committee in January 1941. Reformed and strengthened in 1942, it took responsibility for the whole, detailed, deliberate and calculated planning of the day-to-day work of the organisation, administration and policy. The new 1943 main committee was divided into sections: the General Section Committee (incorporated the Hostels and Evacuation and Clubs and Settlements Committees) for work at home, the Refugee Section and the Overseas Section with its new Committee handled all the short-term work at home and abroad. The Ways and Means Committee oversaw this division of administration and pull the work of these sections together. A Personal Services Committee oversaw work of Personnel department for all membership matters. The Post-War Service Committee having considered the nature and scope of the relief service, delegated recruitment and educational work to departments of FRS. 

Representative Conference

Established September 1942, it met twice a year over a long weekend. It had a main committee and sub-committees. It brought together at the same time independent and older Friends, administrators and field workers, who together considered and reviewed policy and organisation. Its nomination committee reviewed the membership of the Executive and the appointment of the General Secretary Conference became a central part of FRS' machinery. It made FRS a highly democratic body[17] - all members were encouraged to bring forward their concerns through their representatives to the Conference. It worked out the constitutional procedure of the organisation, the most important of which were the principles of moral responsibility of groups for social action. The six-monthly review of this Conference provided a mechanism to adjust procedures and policy to the rapidly changing life of an emergency relief organisation. 

Secretariat

A General Secretary was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of the Service in November 1940 to pull the earlier spontaneous work into shape, give it some orderly administration and support it with personnel, supplies and funding.[18] The standing Quaker machinery of local Monthly Meetings was called in for provincial work to build on work initiated by local ad hoc groups.[19] From 1944 the secretariat cleared up functional confusion and provided effective procedures for closing down work at home in good order and preserving the continuity necessary for rapid expansion of the work overseas.[20] FRS General Secretaries were Roger Wilson (1940-1945); Richard Naish 1945-194?[date required]; Lettice Jowitt 194?-194?[dates required] and Joseph Brayshaw 194?- 1948.[date required]

Administration and service departments at Friends House[21]

From May 1941, substantial service departments were added to the organisation’s administration to deal with particular aspects of the emergency work. There were central and regional office headquarters, a quartermaster department, the residential hostels for members. As the Service developed, departments at Friends House, which included Finance and fund raising; Personnel, for all matters relating to members of the Service; an Information Department dealt with publicity, meetings, subscription lists, produced and distributed four films and provided an extensive intelligence service for the Overseas Department. After 1944, the Emergency Relief Office's function reduced as emergency work at home receded, becoming a Personnel Office, sifting requests for help by various statutory and voluntary bodies and allocation of jobs. The Club and Settlement Department which had run club and settlement programme in the target areas contributed to social work in those neighbourhoods, was separated from Emergency Relief Officer’s control and metamorphosed into a Social Services Department. The Evacuation Hostels department's work included the specialist selection of evacuees and their allocation to suitable hostels. From 1940-1946 it administered the running of about 80 hostels for evacuees. The majority were for old people, by 1941 provision for the elderly took shape. Evacuation schemes in various parts of country, assisted families improve bad accommodation and provided welfare. At the end of 1940 social welfare schemes got underway with the transfer to more steady, rather than emergency social work. Another important activity was members in Citizens’ Advice Bureaux in London and provinces. the CABs became one of most valuable of all wartime developments in the field of social work; FRS members familiar with current legislation and regulation that affected ordinary citizens helped in post raid information and advice services in many parts of the country, provided a crew for a mobile CAB which could go anywhere, quickly.

The amalgamation of FWVRS and FAU in February 1942 opened the way to greater efficiency by creating joint departments. The Clothing Department was responsible for receiving, sorting and baling, storing and packaging tons of clothing and sending it to countries in liberated Europe. Clothing with food became the prime instrument of Quaker material relief in the post-war chaos of Europe. The Equipment Department furnished and equipped evacuation hostels set up by FRS from 1940 and later close them down. It expanded into Works and Equipment Department and dealt with providing and repairing equipment and buildings. Work Party and Equipment Department were combined in to a single Works and Equipment Department in January 1943. This included a full-time sewing party making curtains, dying material for upholstery and repair jobs. A Workshop was set up for repairs to equipment and packing cases for foreign convoys were constructed there. On unification FRS and FAU transport sections became the Joint Transport Organisation (JTO) and after meeting home transport needs, it trained drivers for overseas relief work. With start of work overseas in 1944 the Overseas Department developed rapidly its Supplies Department organised and managed various supplies for FRS activities at home and abroad.

Membership and training

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There were about 550 men and women in full-time service in FRS, widely dispersed geographically, over 50 working locations. About half were Friends, almost all pacifists and most were of military conscription age (18-21), with a few older men and women pacifists, who gave up work or came out of retirement to help. All had undergone a rigorous selection process, from which only one in ten were accepted. This was followed by intense training courses. Members were housed in residential hostels, not paid a salary, but were provided with complete maintenance in kind.[22] The Service adopted wearing the red and black eight pointed ‘Quaker Star’ to identify its members.[23] Uniform was not worn until Sections went to Germany in 1945.

Quaker relief training was a more a spiritual and social experience, designed to train relief workers to live adaptably and imaginatively in unforeseen circumstances, maintaining an inward balance in world full of tensions and frustrations. They were trained to develop and maintain a capacity for purposeful living in the midst of degradation, and a sense of confident daring in human relationships was given supreme importance.[24] Initially, the first relief workers were trained at ‘Spiceland’, a large house with land at Collumpton in Devon. It was designated a Training Centre for training young men and women pacifists for emergency service and various kinds of relief and hospital work. After Spiceland closed, UK training centre was based at Selly Wood near Woodbrooke for home training 1943-44. New premises for training were found in a house named ‘Mount Waltham’ in Finchley, London, which became the Overseas Training Centre in autumn 1943.

Mount Waltham courses were jointly run with FAU at first. The main elements were: uncomfortable living conditions, strenuous  outdoor emergency exercise; language instruction at various levels; technical instruction in relief problems – hygiene, feeding organisation, international arrangements for refugees; camp management, courses on political, social and cultural conditions in Europe. 'FRS workers took great pride not in their 'qualifications' but in their common sense and practical experience.'[25] The training centre later moved to 'Woodstock, in Elsworthy Road, Swiss Cottage and then finally to Onslow Gardens in central London.  Specialist training included refugee administration at Bloomsbury House, driving and midwifery. Roger Wilson asserted that in many ways FRS were the best prepared of many British relief workers in post-war Europe.[26]

Training also extended to Quaker relief workers outside Britain. Roger Wilson went to US to discuss British relief and CO service and training with American Friends in 1943. His book Relief and Reconstruction[27] became a text book in US relief training and contributed to relief work-co-operation in Europe.

FRS operations 1940-1948

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FRS grouped selected members for work in particular locations into Sections. Operations of the FRS Relief Sections and the selection of their members were controlled by FRS Headquarters at Friends House, London. Sections in Europe had their own local headquarters.

In the UK 1940-1944

Emergency relief and welfare work was undertaken in the bombed areas of London, Coventry, Bristol, Southampton, Glasgow, Plymouth, Hull, Tyneside and Merseyside. Evacuation accommodation was at first offered at local Quaker meeting houses and other accommodation in the provinces and then at hostels at locations throughout the country.[28] FRS evacuee welfare schemes operated with isolated groups of families from Portsmouth were helped with welfare and to improve bad accommodation, at Swadlincote, Weston and Buriton near Petersfield and at Filey on the Yorkshire coast, at Oxford and at Bournemouth.[29]

Overseas

The various voluntary relief societies operating under the protection of the British Red Cross in Europe from 1944 were divided into teams and each team was allocated a number, e.g. R(elief). S(ervice).100.  'They were responsible for providing practical relief - de-bugging camps, spraying people with DDT, organising clothing distributions, setting up feeding centres and providing basic medical services - yet the FRS attached more importance to their conversations with displaced people than to the provision of services'.[30]

FRS Sections were active from 1944 to 1948 in the following places:

France 1944-48

FRS decided to offer assistance to French organisations directly rather than to send a mission of its own. It helped the small French Quaker relief groups - Quaker Secours and American Friends in and around Paris; in parts of France neither battle zones nor important in Lines of Communication. FRS insisted on serving with and under French relief organisation and worked under Entr’Aide Française. FRS’s transport service played a significant role in the rehabilitation effort, particularly in Normandy where the teams won the respect and thanks of the French authorities. Next in importance was the supply of clothing and food which was poor in the south of France. FRS also assisted with homelessness in Caen, where two-thirds of homes were reduced to rubble. The sections also worked in various camps for Displaced Persons, Prisoners of War, deportees, refugees, collaborators and also with prisoners in civilian prisons, distributing clothing, carried post for prisoners and worked for improvement in conditions in all these settings. FRS withdrew from French relief work by mid-1946, but their work repatriating of PoWs continued into 1948.[31]

Germany 1945-48

This was the area of FRS’ most extensive of operations overseas. 160 members were active there in 1946, working under the British Red Cross from Red Cross Zonal headquarters at Vlotho on River Weser, near Hameln. The bulk of supplies from societies in London were pooled in a central warehouse, then distributed according to need. There were three main fields of activity:

  • work in concentration camps which included newly-liberated Belsen and by June, 1945, FRS teams were deployed in a variety of relief, rehabilitation and repatriation work with many thousands of DPs (including Germans and other nationalities, ex slave labourers, Volksdeutschers, ex-POWs and Jews of every nationality; Russians and Poles unwilling to return to Poland) living in over-crowded conditions in temporary camps in locations around Germany, at Brunswick (Braunschweig), Goslar, Langendreer and Waltenscheid in the Ruhr.
  • assisting in the rehabilitation German social welfare systems and services for Germans in Germany, previously structured on Nazi lines, in a state of chaos and collapse. FRS provided relief especially in bombed areas, in particular in the towns and cities of the Ruhr. By the autumn 1945, the German civilian population in bombed areas were suffering acutely from shortages and administrative chaos. First, at Cologne, 85 per cent of Cologne’s buildings were in ruins and streets impassable, FRS became the first British Quaker team to provide relief to the German civilian population, distributing food and clothing to children and the elderly and helping with reconstruction.  Similar work was carried out in Solingen by a FRS team led by German Quaker Magda Kelber. FRS worked under the German Public Health authority, on transport, night emergency ambulance service, collecting scattered hospital equipment; evacuating overcrowded areas; supplying clothes, food, medical supplies, bedding, furniture for homes and hospitals. They also helped with juvenile delinquency, especially in Berlin, where social collapse, inadequate housing and Occupation took their toll. By May 1948, a total of 770 tons of food and 10,000 bales of clothing had been provided for relief in Germany.
  • the last phase of FRS work was in providing relief among very large numbers of ethnic German refugees whose homes in the Sudeten territories and lands which were ceded to Poland at end of the war, were compulsory moved into Germany, The British Zone received half a million from Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia. There was homelessness on a gigantic scale – they were crammed into every possible space in the British Zone. In outlying districts, where they outnumbered the native population.  In north-west Germany at Land Oldenburg in 1946, where overcrowding of the refugees grew serious, an FRS team worked for two years.

As well as the main spheres of relief and welfare work, the FRS were reluctant to comply with the Army order that relief workers were not to fraternise with German civilians and eventually ignored the order. An example of the Quaker policy of ‘no discrimination’ came from William Hughes, who had been expelled from Germany for the help he provided to Jewish families.  In 1947, he began to visit, under Quaker auspices, the six large internment camps in the British Zone were former Nazis were imprisoned and reported on the conditions under which they were held, assessed their need and supplied them with reading materials. FRS asked for a review of the long, slow methods of screening, processing and court hearings and indiscriminate internment of these men. Finally, in January 1948, the Boards sped up their work and all camps were closed except for war crimes suspects.

Austria 1945-1948

The British Zone in Austria was the remotest, included many refugee camps of ex-Army Poles, Yugoslav dissidents, White Russians, Hungarians, Yugoslavs, (some of whom had fought with the Germans and who would or could not go home) and Volksdeutsche – ethnic German refugees who fled Communist regimes to the east), came into the zone from 1945 to1947. In Vienna the urban population faced bombing in some quarters, shortages of accommodation, food, fuel and clothes since 1944. FRS provide feeding schemes for the elderly and children. FRS also helped children of Nazi schools in Berlin continue their education before repatriation, helped ‘wandering’ youth and also visited Nazi leaders in internment camps. FRS was also able to assist some Austrians in re-uniting with relatives in Britain.

The Netherlands 1945-46

FRS worked under local Dutch welfare organisations in small teams at Betuwe on the dyke between the Rhine and Waal rivers and at Zetten, where the dykes had been flooded by Allied bombing and surrounding areas were under water and also on the island of Walcheren where dykes burst by the RAF had submerged most of the island (below sea level anyway). FRS assisted the returning population in repair and cleaning of homes and helped improve bad living conditions and overcrowding.

Palestine, East Africa, Gibraltar, Casablanca, Italy 1942-1948

FRS worked with Polish and Greek refugees who were sent to camps in Palestine. FRS provided relief and welfare services and assisted with their repatriation from 1945 to 1946.  Other Polish refugees were sent via Iran and India to East Africa to camps in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Tanganyika (Tanzania), where FRS assisted them from spring 1944 to 1948.

The British government had compulsorily evacuated thousands of Gibraltarians to UK in 1940 intending to transfer them to the West Indies, but rather placed them in hotels and blocks of flats in and around London. FRS was concerned with their treatment by the Ministry of Health. In 1944 the Gibraltarians were moved to transit camps in Scotland and Northern Ireland. FRS assisted in their repatriation in August 1944 and stayed on to help deal with over-crowded conditions, homelessness and difficulties under the continued military occupation.

In FRS’s first venture overseas, sections worked with European refugees and Jewish refugees from Salonika who had found their way through Spain to North Africa between 1942 and 1943.

FRS sections were sent to Italy to take over relief work with refugees from FAU in 1944. Starting in Rome, and at the transit centre at Bari, they spread throughout Italy.

Greece 1944-1946

FRS first worked in prisons in Athens, then in Macedonia, Salonika, Chios, Samos & Ikaria. In the eastern Mediterranean COBSRA had organised the voluntary societies, but after spring 1945 the British Military handed over civilian relief functions to UNRRA under whom FRS and others had to work in an initially uneasy relationship. In Macedonia, FRS helped desperately poor people, living in remote, inaccessible villages, hampered by feuds, unsettled, changing frontiers in the north and by political instability. FRS introduced constructive relief in Macedonia to raise standards of living including improvements to farming, organising summer camps for TB suspect children; introducing carpet weaving for villages of Chalkidiki in south-eastern Salonika; and assisted in the establishment of a maternity hospital and a girls’ boarding school to try to address the low social status of women and their neglected education. FRS distributed clothing, and helped in the resettlement and repatriation of returnees to the Islands. FRS' work finished in the islands in May 1946.

Poland 1946-1948

A joint Anglo-American Quaker Relief Mission, managed from Philadelphia and London, acted as a single unit. FRS teams assisted in social welfare in a small area with Kozienice in Kielce Voivodeship, chosen as the centre of the relief project. The team’s work came to an end in 1948.

Evaluation and achievements

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Commenting on FRS' work as a whole, Roger Wilson asserted, 'Our work was rarely, if ever spectacular. That was as it should be, for the worst damage of war lies not in its infrequent spectacular episodes, but in the slow, steady corruption of the human spirit as it falls away from its previous standards and ideals and finds itself drawn into the hopelessness engendered by the cynicism and impersonality of a world at war. F.R.S. found its sense of vocation in ministering to this degradation of the spirit. We did not do this very well, for both our faith and our skills were no more than second rate; but in the Service we came to have a wonderful sense of common responsibility before God that gave happiness, peace and strength, often in greater measure than many of us had known before.'[32]

On emergency relief and welfare work on the home front, Wilson said, 'The value of the work over the whole period is somewhat difficult to assess; it may, however be claimed that the presence of some active, keen, full-time men and women, with a real interest in the methods and practice of voluntary social work was of the greatest value to the existing social services. Their contribution was not spectacular; sometimes it was crude and a bit insensitive; but there is no doubt that useful work was done not only in the service itself but also in maintaining and spreading the idea of voluntary social work.'[33]

Wilson noted in particular that the official system of Poor Law administration for the care of the homeless and for evacuee welfare, especially in the offering of accommodation to bombed-out old persons in workhouses which held such a horror for them, failed. 'What FRS as a voluntary relief organisation was able to do, was what the modern industrial state never learned to do – to render personal service on a human level to those who had physical resources but were incapable of using them – old age, unbilletable, lacking in ability for life in the shelters. FRS offered them the primary physical necessities and especially an expression of sense and values through personal relationships in physical situations which were more demoralising than physically disastrous'.[34] Although the scale of FRS evacuation work for the elderly was never large, what was unusual was that probably for the first time in the UK, considerable numbers of young people took responsibility for looking after groups of elderly people with a sense of humanity that was lacking in the traditional English Poor Law care of the old. Other religious bodies had done work in the care of elderly but none had thought about the problem, analysed its elements and called attention of community to the need which they were meeting. FRS made 'a contribution towards the growing awareness of the community for the need to care for old people in kindly, informal surroundings.[35]

Members of FRS made important contributions to the work of Rowntree Committee of the Nuffield Trust, which made a large-scale survey and enquiry into the needs of the elderly. Its report - Old People - became a classic work on the subject. William Sessions gave important evidence before the Committee of Enquiry into the Law and Practice Relating to Charitable Trusts (Nathan Committee) on his knowledge of York charities and FRS experience. Friends used experience gained in and through FRS to help old people’s welfare committees developing in many districts. A film by Alan Pickard ‘Those who are Old’ aroused public interest; and in 1945 FRS produced a practical handbook, Hostels for Old People, embodying experience of FRS workers, which was well-received.[36]In these ways, FRS made a valuable contribution to the understanding of old people's needs in twentieth century Britain.[37]

References

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  1. ^ Reid, Fiona; Gemie, Sharif (2013). "The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People In Europe after the Second World War, 1945–48". Quaker Studies. 17/2: 223–243 – via Liverpool UP.
  2. ^ Wilson, Roger C. (1952). Quaker Relief – an account of the relief work of the Society of Friends 1940-1948. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. p. 1.
  3. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. p. 325.
  4. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 325–326.
  5. ^ "Quakers in the World - Friends Relief Service in World War II".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  6. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. p. 3.
  7. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Rielief. pp. 11–13.
  8. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. p. 77.
  9. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 94–101.
  10. ^ Wilson, Roger C. (1943). Relief and Reconstruction. Pendle Hill, Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill Pamphlet Number 22. pp. 28–32.
  11. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 94–101.
  12. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 102–103.
  13. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 102–106.
  14. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 115–117.
  15. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 118–121.
  16. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 335–336.
  17. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 96–100.
  18. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. p. 4.
  19. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 326–327.
  20. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. p. 87.
  21. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 77–93.
  22. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 90–93.
  23. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. p. 326.
  24. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. p. 109.
  25. ^ Reid, Fiona; Gemie, Sharif. "The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People after the Second World War, 1945-1948'". Quaker Studies. 17/2: 237.
  26. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. p. 111.
  27. ^ Wilson, Roger C. (1943). Relief and Reconstruction. Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill.
  28. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 30–58.
  29. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 59–76.
  30. ^ Reid, Fiona; Gemie, Sharif (2013). "'The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People in Europe after the Second World War, 1945-1948'". Quaker Studies. 17/2: 235.
  31. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 127–167.
  32. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. p. 322.
  33. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. p. 29.
  34. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 15–16.
  35. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. p. 41.
  36. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. pp. 42–43.
  37. ^ Wilson (1952). Quaker Relief. p. 43.

People associated with Friends Relief Service

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Archives

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Much archival material on FRS has survived and forms part of the organisational archive held at Library of the Society of Friends,Friends House, Euston Road, London and this is expected to be catalogued and made available for consultation by 2022. The archives cover every aspect of FRS' work at home and overseas.

Further reading and viewing

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  • Roger C. Wilson, Relief and Reconstruction, Pendle Hill Pamphlet 22, (1943), Pendle Hill, Wallingford, Pennsylvania.
  • Francesca M. Wilson, In the Margins of Chaos - Recollections of Relief Work in and Between Three Wars (1944), London, John Murray.
  • Malnutrition (Quaker work in Austria 1919-24 and Spain 1936-39), by Nora Curtis and Cyril Gilby (Studies in Relief Problems, Oxford, 1944).
  • Nutrition and Relief Work: a Handbook for the Guidance of Relief Workers, Council of British Societies for Relief Abroad, Oxford, 1945
  • Hostels for Old People (1945), Friends Book Centre.
  • The Nuffield Foundation: Old People: Report of a A Survey on the Problems of Aging and the Care of Old People. London (1947), Geoffrey Cumberledge, Oxford University Press.
  • Roger C. Wilson, Authority, Leadership and Concern – a study in motive and administration in Quaker relief work 1940-1948 (1949), Swarthmore Lecture. ISBN 0901689858
  • Magda Kelber, Quäkerhilfswerk, Britische Zone 1945-1948 (1949) Bad Pyrmont, Leonhard Friedrich Verlagsbuchhandlung.
  • Margaret McNeill, By the Rivers of Babylon: A Story of Relief Work Among the Displaced Persons of Europe (1950) London, Bannisdale Press.
  • Roger C. Wilson, Quaker Relief – an account of the relief work of the Society of Friends 1940-1948, (1952), London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
  • Greenwood, John Ormerod, 'Friends and Relief' in Quaker Encounters. Vol 1. (1975) York, William Sessions Limited.
  • Smith, Lyn (1998). Pacifists in Action: Experience of the Friends Ambulance Unit in the Second World War. York: William Sessions Limited. ISBN 1-85072-215-3.
  • Von Borries, Achim, Quiet Helpers: Quaker Service in Postwar Germany (2000) London. Published Jointly by Quaker Home Service and the American Friends Service Committee. Online version: https://www.afsc.org/sites/default/files/documents/Quiet%20Helpers%20%28Quaker%20Service%20in%20Postwar%20Germany%202000.pdf
  • Jennifer Carson, The Friends Relief Service - Faith Into Action: Humanitarian Assistance to Displaced Persons Camps in Germany, 1945-1948, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2009.
  • Carson, J. (2009) ‘The Quaker Internationalist Tradition in Displaced Persons Camps, 1945-1948’, in N. Baron and P. Gatrell (ed.), Warlands. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 67-86.
  • Sharif Gemie, Laure Humbert, Fiona Reid, Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War 1936-1948 (2011), London, Continuum. ISBN 9781441142139
  • Fiona Reid and Sharif Gemie, ‘The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People In Europe after the Second World War, 1945–48’ in Quaker Studies 17/2 (2013) pp.223-243. Online at: https://liverpoolup.cloudpublish.co.uk/read/?id=34129&type=journal_article&cref=Anonymous+-+Open+Access&peref=&drm=soft&exit=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk%2Fjournals%2Farticle%2F34129%2F&p=6&uid=LUP&t=1613146111&h=54990034f19fabf8f0ac4356d04e448e
  • Nerissa Kalee Aksamit, 'Training Friends and Overseas Relief: The Friends Ambulance Unit and the Friends Relief Service, 1939 to 1948', PhD thesis, West Virginia University (2019). Online at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8490&context=etd
  • FRS journal The Star 1941-1948.
  • FRS Films: What is One Among so Many? (1943); Those who are Old (Alan Pickard, 1944); France - The Hard Road Back (c.1945) While Germany Waits (1946)
  • FRS official photographs

See also

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Wartime Relief and Humanitarian Organizations

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