Remembering John Woolman outside Vanguard HQ in London.
The Bristol EarthQuakes group organised a Meeting for Worship outside the Vanguard offices in the City of London on 7 October 2022. Vanguard is the second largest global assets management company, with huge investments in fossil fuels. The date of the Meeting was exactly 250 years after the death of John Woolman. EarthQuakes wanted to commemorate Woolman’s spiritually inspired defence of our planet against the consequences of human greed and aggression, and to link this to the present-day environmental crisis.
Click here to see a video of the event
The action was planned in solidarity with a campaign by American Quakers against Vanguard’s reckless investments. At the same time, the Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) in Pennsylvania USA was directly linked into the London action through an online Meeting for Worship organised by another American environmental project, Quaker Earthcare Witness. As EarthQuakes gathered in the City, the EQAT Friends were gathering for worship outside the home of the Vanguard CEO, Tim Buckley.
Bristol Quakers brought a well-rehearsed choir to London to lead the singing as 60 Friends and other supporters walked slowly from St Paul’s Cathedral to the Vanguard offices in Walbrook. Helen Yeoman’s beautiful song ‘You will never take away my voice’ movingly expressed both sadness and determination. It chimed with a banner quoting John Woolman – ‘Nature hath a Voice’.
The leading banner of the procession quoted from Advices and Queries:
‘We do not own the world and its riches are not ours to dispose of at will.’
A letter to Tim Buckley was handed in at the Vanguard offices, asking Vanguard to assess and report the impact of their investments on the climate and to benefit their investors by supporting transition to a low carbon economy and a liveable future.
