High Pro­files mag­a­zine has pub­lished a nice inter­view with Alas­tair McIn­tosh, a Quak­er aca­d­e­m­ic, author, and activist. It’s not all about his Quak­erism but then it’s nice to see some­one using it as a just a piece of their iden­ti­ty. I love see­ing our roots laid out in the same sen­tence as a cri­tique of the Mur­doch press, etc.

The North is the part of Eng­land to which the rad­i­cals retreat­ed under Nor­man vio­lence, and I sus­pect that’s part of why the more rad­i­cal side of Eng­land comes out there. Quak­erism devel­oped main­ly in the north and west of Eng­land and I sus­pect that non­con­for­mi­ty comes out of that rad­i­cal spir­it – which needs to be rekin­dled, not in ways manip­u­lat­ed by the Mur­doch press or the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty or Ukip but much more in the way that William Blake under­stood, of con­nect­ing with the spir­it of the land. 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that we ran a nice piece by McIn­tosh in the Feb­ru­ary issue of Friends Jour­nal. He talked about Thomas Mer­ton, the Catholic monk with Quak­er roots. Again, our spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in context.

Alas­tair McIntosh