Make Straight the Path: Brian Quail — A Voice in the Wilderness

He came to mind the way the desert prophets do — a little wind-burned, a little out of step with the world, and wholly unwilling to soften the truth. John the Baptist, with his wild honey and locusts, his rough coat and rougher message, never tried to belong to polite society. He prepared a way. He made straight the path. He unsettled people into honesty.

Brian Quail lived like that.

There was in him the same stubborn, luminous refusal to compromise — the same sense that faith was not meant to be tidy or respectable, but alive, inconvenient, and burning. The old Russians had a word for such people: a Fool for Christ. Not foolish in mind, but foolish in the eyes of a world that mistakes comfort for wisdom. The holy fool speaks plainly, lives simply, renounces applause, and becomes, just by existing, a quiet rebuke to complacency.

We had one of our own.

I first met Brian on the evening of 19 March 2003, at a Scottish Socialist Party rally in Greenock opposing the second Iraq War. Within hours, the bombing would begin. Brian, already known as a tireless peace activist, spoke that night with a kind of trembling conviction — not theatrical, not rehearsed, but rising from somewhere deep and immovable. I was captivated.

He was impossible to miss: an older man, white-haired, oddly dressed, wearing bright red braces, a CND T-shirt, and Doc Martens. Around his neck hung a large silver Russian cross. That, more than anything, startled me — this hardened left-wing peace campaigner marked so visibly by faith.

Someone in the crowd heckled him:

“Aye, you’re bangin’ on aboot peace, but that cross roon yer neck is the biggest killin’ machine the world has ever seen!”

Brian looked down at the cross, then back up, and said slowly, gently, “This? This is Jesus of Nazareth.”

It would not be the last time I watched him disarm hostility with nothing but simplicity, sincerity, and truth.

At that time, I had drifted from Mass and buried myself in Marxism. I did not know Christians like Brian existed, certainly not in left-wing political circles. I sometimes think that if I had not met him that night, I might never have returned to faith at all.

Brian did not preach at people. He never demanded heroic gestures or arrests. Yet his life — steady, stubborn, sacrificial — unsettled our comfortable beliefs. He gave everything to peace, though he never romanticised it. He did not enjoy prison. He did not enjoy cold cells. Once, on our way to Faslane for a four-minute prayer vigil — four minutes, the time it took for Nagasaki to be destroyed — he confessed he felt physically sick every time we went. Courage, in Brian, was not bravado. It was endurance.

Even in later years, when his body began to fail him, he continued. Arrest, prison, witness — again and again. When he could no longer throw himself beneath military vehicles, he still showed up. Presence, for Brian, was resistance.

Yet he was never dour. He could appear in full kilt and Glengarry at republican socialist commemorations, proud and smiling, a man stitched together from faith, politics, and history. At the end of our weekly Catholic Worker meetings, he loved to lead us singing the Regina Caeli in Latin — his voice thin but determined, as if heaven might lean closer if we sang bravely enough.

He had a gift for unsettling rooms. In 2016, at a polished event in St Aloysius’ School, he stood mid-lecture and reminded everyone it was the anniversary of Easter 1916, asking Glasgow Catholics of Irish descent to pause and remember. The air thickened with embarrassment. I felt only pride.

He confused people, too — especially secular activists — with his seamless garment ethic: anti-war, anti-nuclear, anti-death penalty, pro-life. To Brian, consistency was not ideology but conscience.

He encouraged my writing, offered ideas, nudged me forward. I will miss him more than words allow.

Last August, though frail and gaunt, he joined us once more at Faslane to mark the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He sat on a small stool, worn from a lifetime of resistance, yet still present. Around us hung peace banners. We carried a replica of the Nagasaki Cross — the only thing left standing after the cathedral was destroyed and its faithful incinerated. From ruin, a sign of reconciliation.

Brian often despaired. He could not understand how humanity accepted what he called a portable Auschwitz. Many dismissed him as eccentric, unbalanced — a fool.

But he understood something the world prefers to forget: sometimes one must become foolish to be wise.

Brian was wise. The madness was never his.

He stood, stubborn and gentle, a voice in the wilderness, pointing toward another way — a world beyond violence, made possible through the life and witness of Christ. He believed peacemaking was a calling, even unto imprisonment, trusting that faithfulness, not success, was the measure, and that in the end, resurrection would have the final word.

Rest in peace, Brian Quail