Victorian Friends celebrated the 80^th birthday of Helen Bayes in a joyous gathering at the Victorian Quaker Centre in June 2024, so imagine my surprise when Helen told me she had attended her first Meeting for Worship for longer than her 80 years. How was this possible? The answer – Helen first attended Meeting for Worship in utero! After that auspicious beginning she was pushed in a pram to the Ashton-on-Mersey Meeting House (now Sale Meeting House), just beyond Manchester. Her pram was parked outside near a window, through which her mother, inside the Meeting House, could keep a close eye on her baby but it wasn’t long before young Helen was climbing over the benches as the notices were read out by the Clerk. That is one of Helen’s earliest memories.

As a child of the Meeting, Helen developed a social conscience at a young age and was inspired by hearing about the work of Friends in Africa and India. She recalls attending Ban the Bomb marches of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in Sale, Cheshire, while an adolescent. At the age of sixteen, Helen was accepted into membership in her own right. At Nottingham University, Helen was involved with Young Friends, as she undertook a course in Social Administration which prepared students for careers in social services.  Her first position was as a Social Planner in Newcastle upon Tyne, prior to migrating to Australia at 22 years of age. What strikes Helen about her Quaker childhood and youth is how “the way you live and what you choose to do” was nurtured within her.

It is not surprising then that Helen has always sought to make a difference, for many years combining paid work, volunteering and raising four children. From her position in the Department of Social Security in Canberra to improving the inter-country adoption system, to the year she spent in PNG on ways to reduce corruption and nepotism, Helen’s life has been one of service. She also worked in the office in Geneva for DCI (Defence of Children International), advising country sections on promoting the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and tackling problems such as child soldiers, and child labour and trafficking. Helen pursued the issue of children’s rights further when she spent three months at Woodbrooke on an Eva Koch scholarship.

In her 2003 James Backhouse lecture, Respecting the Rights of Children and Young People: a New Perspective on Quaker Faith and Practice, Helen placed children’s rights in the historical context of how early Friends raised their children. 

In This We Can Say, Helen writes about Leadings and Concerns, saying that “…there is a range of divine communications which we are able to receive individually, when we are open enough…” (page 98, 2.54). Helen knows this experientially, having had a lifetime of Leadings on which she has acted.

Following her strong Leading to help establish the Silver Wattle Quaker Centre, Helen served as the inaugural on-site director of Silver Wattle for over three years. Later, with the support of the Victorian Quaker Fund, she developed and facilitated a course for Peace Activists at Silver Wattle. Helen and her partner, Friend Jim Palmer, remain committed to Silver Wattle Quaker Centre.

Faithful to the Peace Testimony, Helen is well-known among Australian Friends for her role as a Quaker Grannie, appearing in many actions ranging from Pine Gap to arms trade conventions. In the past year Helen has regularly joined other Friends in Melbourne as we walk behind the Quaker banner for peace in Palestine. Her spiritual life continues to be embedded in Quaker practices and testimonies.