Ipswich Unitarians Black Lives Matter Statement

One of our core Unitarian principles is that we are all equal and do not discriminate on any basis. This stance informs all our actions. We support the Black Lives Matter movement as an extension of our core beliefs.

Historically Unitarians have been involved in the anti-slavery campaigns. Along with many others, prominent US Unitarians such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Lloyd Garrison and Samuel Joseph May were active in the struggle, as well as Egbert Ethelred Brown in Jamaica and in the UK Unitarian Minister William Roscoe, William Smith MP (grandfather of Florence Nightingale), Rev Thomas Cooper (Unitarian minister in Framlingham) and Clementia Taylor, born in Norfolk, who founded the Ladies London Emancipation Society. Locally in more recent times, the Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House has been supportive of multi-ethnic integration, including in the early 1950’s offering our Hall as a venue to the newly formed Ipswich Caribbean Steel Band, and from 1980 onwards hosting the Interfaith Civic Celebration of Community for several years. In the late 1970’s the then Minister Rev. Cliff Reed and the congregation were involved with the original launch and the work of ISCRE (Ipswich and Suffolk Council for Racial Equality), which continues today.

As Unitarians, we remain vigilant in educating ourselves to question, recognise, and challenge the many forms of prejudice and unconscious biases we may embody. To unlearn some of our prejudices requires a collective and individual commitment on our parts. We are intentional in amplifying the voices and experiences of all people who have faced racial, economic, or gender-based discrimination, harassment or violence. By offering support to Black and Ethnic Minority led or supported organisations, we understand the need for policy reform and structural changes within our national community to balance and create a more equitable and fair society for all. We wish to play our part in the potential changes and transformations that will lead to racial and economic justice in the UK.

It is incumbent upon our congregation:

• to honour the dignity and value of every person, and to work to protect safe, secure and healthy life chances for all.

• to offer support to campaigns promoting social justice and anti-racist movements that work towards equality for all people.

• to examine our own conscious & unconscious prejudices and to undertake the self-work to change.

• to act with courage in challenging examples of racism on both an individual and a structural level with the goal of raising awareness and changing behaviours.

• to educate ourselves about Black and Ethnic Minority histories, and to support all efforts to deepen understanding of the lives and experiences, past and present, of these groups.

Above all we rely on every member of our congregation to consider their additional individual commitment and to act upon it.