Friends in Deed: 50 Years of Quaker Service Australia (review)

The involvement of British and American Friends with international aid work has been one of the most heavily chronicled aspects of Quakerism in the twentieth century. The efforts of the small but dedicated organization, Quaker Service Australia (QSA), has, however, largely escaped notice. Heather Saville’s Friends in Deed is a history of the QSA’s relief and development work that aims to rectify that gap in the scholarship. In her study of the QSA Saville makes clear that she is an insider, sometimes describing its actions using the pronoun “we.”

Rather than moving chronologically the book instead is an examination of the various service projects that QSA has undertaken since its founding in 1959. In addition to an introduction, the book is comprised of twelve chapters, nine of which focus on QSA work in specific countries. Saville writes that projects she considers “raise fundamental questions about development, particularly how Friends approach it.” (pg. 4) She is particularly interested in how the effectiveness of QSA’s work should be evaluated in light of contemporary discussions of international development. Because of this focus, the book might be equally as helpful to an audience interested in international aid work as it is to those concerned with Quaker history.

The projects that the QSA has undertaken in its five-decade long history are diverse, including supporting humanitarian work during the Vietnam War, teaching English in Cambodia after the genocide, supporting a “peace centre” in South Africa under apartheid and engaging in micro-lending in India. Some of these projects involve often surprising connections with prominent personages and locations. For example, anti-Apartheid activist and martyr Stephen Biko was briefly associated with QSA-supported work in South Africa. Saville presents QSA work as always well intentioned, and usually successful at materially improving the lives of people it aimed to help.

Several factors somewhat limit the usefulness of Saville’s book to scholars. The focus on the projects of the QSA can leave the details of the organization’s structure in Australia underexplored. The lack of an index is a problem, exacerbated by the fact that the book is not arranged chronologically and people and locations appear in multiple, non-sequential chapters. Most of the sources that Saville utilizes are interviews with Australian staff or reports from the organization, so the voices of the people affected by their programs only appear infrequently.

Despite these limitations, Friends in Deed is a welcome contribution to the current literature on Quaker service work. Though the QSA’s activities are on a much smaller scale from organizations like the American Friends Service Committee, Saville’s book makes a compelling case that they are still worthy of study. The sympathetic portrayal of QSA that emerges from the work shows a tiny organization that nevertheless impacted large numbers of people internationally and played an important role in letting Australian Quakers live their values.