Movement Magazine: Issue 161

INTERVIEW
TIM GEE
Tim Gee is a Quaker peace activist and writer. He has been involved
in various campaigns, including the Occupy movement, and has just
brought out his third book Why I am a Pacifist. He tells us about his
commitment to pacifism, the inspiration of his faith, and how miracles
can happen through campaigning.
So Tim, for those of us who don’t know your work could you tell us a bit
about what you do and how you came to be doing it?
I’d call myself an activist, as that’s what I’ve spent most of my adult life doing,
campaigning. I’m also a Quaker and a Christian, and more recently a writer, all of
which are things that relate to one another. I’ve just finished a series of author
talks with my third book which is called Why I am a Pacifist.
Until I was 16 or so I wanted to be a professional bass player, but the Afghanistan
war changed that. I’d been shocked by the events of 11 September 2001, when
two planes were flown into the Twin Towers in New York. Shortly later the US and
UK started bombing Afghanistan. I thought that if mass killing was wrong in the
US it was wrong anywhere else too. Then there was the war on Iraq, a ‘war for
oil’. When I started learning about climate change caused by oil I began joining
the dots. I’d say that’s how it began.
Has peace work always been a part of your life? How did you get involved,
and how does your faith inspire your work?
The peace influence has always been there, yes. My mum was involved in antinuclear
weapons campaigns in the 1980’s, and her father was a pacifist too
– part of the Friends Ambulance Unit. But there are other influences too. Other
relatives have been soldiers or done other war work.
My point of decision was quite different, it came on the last day of school. We’d
been attacked by a group that had acted violently and homophobically towards
my group. So we ambushed them with eggs to try and ‘teach them a lesson’. We
escaped around the corner and started congratulating each other and drawing
medals on our shirts. Then I just got a very deep feeling inside me that, even
though it was eggs rather than stones or grenades, that still wasn’t the way to
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