[matilda] Why Matilda is important to me

[Benjamin Major]

Not just a direct response to Kathleen's e-mail, though it is that, but also 
some very very related thoughts... And Joe, meeting confrontation with 
agressive confrontation once again- you must not do this so much; but I do 
agree it was a rude e-mail, and now here comes a considered take on it:


Yesterday evening I had a wonderful time at the craft evening which has been 
organised by Lucy; it came the evening after a big all night party, which I 
also attended. The two events (a techno party one night, a knitting workshop 
the next) are not things that might be usually connected in the general 
consciousness and it's not something I can imagine happening anywhere else, 
but their diversity revealed something of the beauty of Matilda- culture 
comes in many forms and for me full enjoyment of life comes from keeping the 
mind open to all of them + being able to make it yourself rather then being 
a passive consumer.

Not everyone at Matilda is just up for getting of their faces and shagging 
each other. in fact, I can't think of any that are. Most have a large degree 
of self-discipline or otherwise have been-there-done-that... No doubt if you 
went a few buildings up the road to ****crasher then that is what you would 
find, but not here... I do often wonder how many people who come through our 
doors at parties have an appreciation that the building is not just an old 
warehouse where occasionally there is big fuck off party; but hey, you can't 
have an appreciation until you've been told otherwise and hopefully we'll 
get a few more people signed up to the announcements list through these 
parties.

D is very correct to point out the e-mail exchanges people have tell the 
full story, or even a small part of it. If I was in the position of the 
person who wrote that earlier e-mail, and had only seen the Matilda 
collective through the veil of this e-mail list, then I am sure I would have 
unsubscribed long ago. Very often people make a knee-jerk reply to the 
entire list (usually on the theme of parties) that probably should have 
stayed personal.

Matilda is a right important place for me right now. I often wonder where 
people, especially the younger members of the collective, have come from in 
their journeys to Matilda so far. I have a suspicion that many of them, not 
all, may come from quite liberal, middle class families. You see (and here I 
write some personal stuff which doesn't belong in a list e-mail at all but I 
feel the need to say it because I feel the need to wear it on my chest so to 
speak) I have grown up in the Sheffield council estates. In S5, one of the 
most 10% most highly deprived wards in the country statistically speaking. 
That I have come to have a degree (not in politics I'm afraid, K) when 98% 
of my fellow school colleagues didn't even go on to further education is one 
of very lucky circumstance only (my brothers and sisters  set the precedent 
by going to university, but before them neither my mum nor dad got the 
opportunity too).

What I'm coming too here is not the degree, a piece of paper which I now 
hardly think of at all; its rather that special opportunity to see the world 
from so many different perspectives in such a short time, it's given me the 
chance to come in to Matilda with some confidence (but still not great 
confidence) and to come furnished with creative and open-minded ideas that 
are a result of being exposed to so many inspiring people over the last 
several years. For most working class people though, the story is not the 
same. These people would not have the confidence to come and wave their arms 
around in a silly fashion at meetings. They would not have the confidence to 
cook for loads of people. They wouldn't have the confidence to be clowns. 
They instead laugh at such things; the kids of Parsons Cross would ridicule 
them; and who the hell could blame them?

But its an ongoing quandary for me. I am committed to spending my life 
helping those who are voiceless and excluded in finding at least a sliver of 
the things that I have been lucky to enjoy. To be able to go to a craft 
night if they want to, and not ridicule it and call it 'sad'. And yet how to 
do this and not slip into condescending; in what form does the help come? 
Does Matilda invite people from the estates of Sheffield and attempt to show 
them how great life can be if you live like we do? The elders of the 
Ecuadorian Achuar tribe, apparently, say when offered help against the 
destruction of their environment by oil companies: "If you are coming here 
to help us don't bother. But if you see your fate inter-weaved with ours 
perhaps we can help each other"

Something's been upsetting me at home recently, on Sunday it left me in 
tears, which receded once I got to Matilda and the craft night. As my dad 
gets older he keeps making very racist comments towards the TV (that's all 
my dad does now retired; sit in front of the TV day and night, day in day 
out), the only exposure he gets to the outside world is through that little 
portal through which some reporter who more then likely has a 
Murdoch-determined agenda he or she has to stick too. My dad's occasional 
utterances have been along the lines of "send 'em back to where they came 
from!" or "we don't want em!". I can't tell you how sad this makes me 
feel... It is not hard to understand though, with reflection, the bitterness 
that exists towards the other, if all you ever see is that little portal of 
light... and without a fuller alternative story being told by others (a 
bigger picture) we should not be surprised the bitterness arises.

But if my own dad, a generous and kind man who worked his way up from being 
an engineer in BT to being the manager of a large team (and took a leading 
position in the companies union I must add) can make such sore fascist 
comments that are so filled tinged with hopelessness, then what of the rest 
of the thousands of working-class people in Sheffield? A wave of intolerance 
is certainly swelling up under our feet. One day it will surge to the 
surface. I do get scared- I do wonder what kind of violent world my nephews 
and nieces and future children and grandchildren will be growing into. I 
won't go as far as K did in her e-mail and claim "the only ones actually 
DOING anything are the fascist kids while you lot play your comfortable 
games and think you're cool." But I will put the question out to ponder-

When the storm arrives will we be able to sit it out comfortably in the 
knowledge that we've done the best we can to tell a different story and to 
broaden the perspectives of others whose fates are totally intertwined with 
ours... Or did we waste the time getting off our faces at parties?

I think we will be able to go for the former. Because we are an intelligent, 
creative and dynamic group and anybody who has spent time in the building 
must know that. And we have stories to tell. DT has some very intelligent 
opinions about the way the space should be opened up, but there can be no 
opening-up for the sake of it, no damn talk of outreach... When we get out 
of them-and-us mentality and a few people in the collective (who I won't 
mention) drop their constant confrontational attitude towards everything, we 
will realise how our interconnected our destinies are...

Good night moles.

Benjamin

(Ps. Did you help steward at Peace in the Park Kathleen? If so, then thank 
you for that.)