Taking back control: a note on Matthew Bolton’s “How To Resist” (2017)

Matthew Bolton has been at the heart of Citizens UK‘s successful Living Wage campaign. In 2017 he published a really valuable book: How to Resist: Turn Protest to Power (Bloomsbury, London).

The case can be made that this book has the wrong title, and Matthew says as much right at the start: “in the word ‘resist’ there’s a danger of starting off on the back foot, of handing over the initiative to others: someone else has the plan and we are just reacting to it” (page 2). The book isn’t about resistance; it is “about how those without much power can come together and change things” through community organising, which it presents as “a method and tactics for how people can take on those with financial power and authority, and win” (page 3). What matters for Matthew is not just the winning, though: it’s about democracy.

Democracy doesn’t just mean ‘to vote’, it means people power. It means embedding political action into our day-to-day lives, in our communities and workplaces. It is a vision of a society where power is distributed amongst the people, not concentrated in the hands of the few. It’s not an end state, but a constant struggle for people to fight for a seat around the decision-making table. (pages 4-5)

Matthew astutely links this to the Brexit vote and the election of Trump, two political events with the idea of ‘taking back control’ at their heart. His book presents a method for taking back control: “Not through a once-in-a-lifetime referendum vote or through a one-off symbolic protest, but through practical tools that can be used in your everyday life to give you more influence over decision-making and to realise your power as a citizen.” (page 23)

A copy of the book is available in Bromley’s central library. Or will be, when I return it tomorrow.