The United Reformed Church

Share this article

Latest News

Letter urges Boris Johnson to recognise UK’s nuclear disarmament obligations

HMS Victorious nuclear sub Thirty-one organisations, including the United Reformed Church, wrote to Boris Johnson MP, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, on 16 April 2018 to urge the UK government to use the Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) held between 23 April and 4 May 2018 at the United Nations Office in Geneva, to recognise and act upon the UK's international obligation to work for a world free of nuclear weapons.

The letter also encourages the government to participate in the UN High Level International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament, scheduled to take place between 14 and 16 May in New York, and to use the opportunity to develop relations with non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) and make progress on the UK's disarmament obligations.

Government must put heart and soul into helping Windrush generation

Thousands of men and women who arrived in the UK as children during the first wave of Commonwealth immigration now face being threatened with deportation.

The group, known as the Windrush generation – is named after the HMS Empire Windrush which, in 1948, brought workers from the West Indies to Britain.

Under the 1971 Immigration Act, all Commonwealth citizens already living in the UK (having arrived between 1948 and 1971) were given indefinite leave to remain but the Home Office did not keep a record of those granted leave to remain or issue any paperwork confirming it.

CRCW fights back against BBC Panorama’s negative portrayal of town

According to White Fright: Divided Britain, a BBC Panorama programme aired in January 2018, Blackburn is a community segregated along ethnic and religious lines.

Panorama first visited the Lancashire town, made up of around 100,000 British white people and 40,000 British Asians, in 2007 to report on how the community was integrating. It returned 10 years later with a critical report of an increasingly socially segregated area, described as a ‘national crisis’.

United Reformed Church condemns military action in Syria

The United Reformed Church is pressing the British government to avoid participating in any further military action in Syria and instead to urgently work with international partners to pursue peaceful solutions.

Early on the morning of Saturday 14 April 2018, the UK joined the US and France in bombing government sites in Syria, targeting chemical weapons facilities.

The move was in response to a chemical attack launched by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad on 7 April where scores of innocent people were killed or injured.

Charity residents nest into Church House’s social impact hub

A special gathering was held on 11 April for staff from the United Reformed Church’s London office to meet all the residents of ‘The Nest’ – the top floor of Church House.

Greenbelt moved into The Nest in September, followed by The Trussell Trust’s external affairs department in January, and have since been joined by Street Child United, Single Friendly Church and the UK branch of International Justice Mission, described as the largest anti-slavery charity in the world.