Getting to know Matthew again
By Gill Hay
When someone I care about dies suddenly I’ve often felt a huge loss that I didn’t get to know them half as well as I would have liked, and my reaction to Matthew’s death was no exception. So when his partner asked if anyone in Rhizome wanted any of his Rhizome-related books I quickly said yes, hoping to find out more about him.
The box of books arrived yesterday. It was heavy but not so heavy I had to open it before moving it. I left it to settle in my mind overnight – and the cat sat on it too. Once I finished other things today I opened it with some apprehension, not knowing what to expect, but I was surprised to feel a rush of pleasure about finding out more about Matthew. He was an inspiration to me and here he was, inspiring me again.
Important things happening often take time. I now find I have custody of 33 books that Matthew bought, was given or acquired somehow. Most are obviously second hand with other people’s names written in them. Some even have another person’s address stickers on the front so I’m guessing they were valued books by them too. Many are first editions, which may have never been reprinted. Most are of their time or place, like windows opening on the energy and commitment of their authors there and then, exposing their passion for inspiring others.
Matthew’s written his name in some of them – in pencil. Seems he was always treading lightly in the world; maybe he thought of them as only being in his custody too? And when I say I ‘have custody’ of them, I have in mind not just that others might like to read and use them from time to time, but also that I’d like Matthew’s children to have them one day if they want to get know more about this part of his life.
Some of the books I’ve heard of, even read parts of, years ago, but many I’ve no knowledge about. Only one of them do I have a copy of – Resource Manual for a Living Revolution – albeit mine’s a later edition. It’s clear that, like me, he referred to his copy a lot; it still has his bookmarks in it. I made a mental note to compare his copy to mine, to see if I can find the overlaps in our interests there.
And when I saw another book I immediately had this vivid memory that I’d told Matthew about meeting the author, and Matthew told me he’d just bought his book. We compared our thoughts about the author, recognised we shared a similar perspective.
Anyway, tonight I wrote a list of Matthew’s books and sent it to other Rhizomistas. One replied by return to say that Beyond Adversary Democracy is the best book ever written about (deliberative) democracy. It seems we each made different connections with Matthew’s passions.
The passion of his that I connected to was non-violent direct action, something he obviously had quite a few books about, and about which he was completely committed and loved training people in doing. In fact, this is how I got to meet Matthew for the first time – I’d seen a note somewhere that he was looking for a co-trainer for a session at a UK Feminista conference about how to do non-violent direct action. I was a reasonably experienced trainer by then, a feminist, and had taken action at Greenham Common, so I phoned him. It seemed to be a simple decision for us to do that training together. When we met en route he explained his approach in more detail, the training together went really well, and participants went away to take action. I’d no idea then how many years we’d be working together.
Seeing these books of Matthew’s reminded me of our conversations over the years about the power of non-violent direct action, nationally and internationally, and particularly during the ‘Arab Spring’ in the 2010s. I’ve really missed not being able to talk to him about the effects of the UK government criminalising people taking non-violent direct action here. In recent years that’s been the done using the Public Order Act which came into force in May 2023, justified by referring to non-violent direct actions by Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain. The government’s escalation now with the proscription of an organisation, Palestine Action, is apparently being used to criminalise other non-violent protesters against famine, war crimes and genocide.
What would Matthew make of it all now, when people in the UK are being arrested for wearing ambiguous t-shirts deemed to be about supporting Palestine? I think I can guess.