Peg Alexander

I am Peg, Nicks youngest sibling. 14 years younger than him.

Because Nick went to boarding school, I’m not sure if we ever lived together – or if we did it was only when I was a baby.

So I have no concept of Nick as a child. But to be fair I have no concept of most of my siblings as children or teenagers, I’ve only really known them as adults. That’s what happens in big families.

So I only knew Nick like most of you will have. As the caring, thoughtful, busy, creative adult he was. In some ways, he was more like a father figure or an uncle than a brother – until much later in life.

So when we did really get to know each other it was as adults. Nick played a role in my life that no-one else ever has. And I cant tell you all how much I miss it, and how much I wish I had realised that more when he was here. But I also think I played a the same role back to Nick.

And that role was that we talked a lot, actually mainly, about our fundamental political and philosophical beliefs. Not about policies, or issues - I talk to everyone about that. But about the fundamentals.

What we believe. Why we believed it. How does that translate. Are those beliefs changing? Trying to make sense of them together. In fact, that’s even what we did on the day that Nick decided to end his treatment.

I was one of the last to get to him and we had about 20 minutes talking on our own. And much of it was just that. XR had just announced a change in tactics. We talked about that, about the future of the planet and the human race, about how he felt that he would be missing finding out what happens. We talked about the challenge of people to understand the scale of the crisis facing us and how to help them face up to it. And of course we talked about death.

This all goes back to I think Nick actually being one of the first in the family to truly see me as an adult.

As a student in London, I joined the Green Party. When I read their full manifesto with its Philosophical Basis it was like a light shining on me for the first time. I understood how I felt about the world for the first time. And Nick I think was actually the only person outside of a group of student greens who got it. The ideas I was talking about were just seen as too radical at that time.

But it was Nick Who asked me about that, who understood, who wanted to know more. I know our endless conversations about how green politics was different, what it means, why we believed it, why (as I really believe) that other political party’s cant be green because it’s a political philosophy. And I know those discussions will have been at the heart of influencing him to join the party too. It was wonderful. I was no longer alone.

I would go on to hold the equivalent of leader in my mid 20s, and various other senior national posts in the party. But Nick would end up being the activist much longer than me, after I gave up.

When I moved into journalism and interviewing people which is what I do now, I’ve never lost that idea that political discussion should be about values and beliefs and I for several years when all TV political discussion was macho and aggressive, I hosted non confrontational political and news discussion TV and radio shows which tried to get under issues.

Me and Nick were always talking about pitching shows to national networks to do this – to get down to values and beliefs, not policies and he supported me in trying to get the networks to pick this up at a time when it was seen as a crazy idea. But we kept talking about the need for this and so I will never give up. If I ever do get another show doing this I know Nick will be feeding me the line or inspiration – whether from somewhere he is not, or just because he has so inspired me to this point.

Getting back to the greeneness tho, after he died I needed to try and put into a few words what that basic political difference and philosophy is without getting into specific policies such as economic policy – which is obviously totally different.

And at the end, I came to the conclusion it’s this. That everything is connected and that we need politics that understands this and starts there. We are all connected. In this room. On this planet. We are connected to the very earth and ground we live on and to all other things that live on it. We as humans – and everything else that lives – are all part of an ecosystem – not just in environmental terms but as part of a whole system of life on this planet. We should all share and benefit from the ecosystem. We need to understand the impact of one action on other actions. Because within an ecosystem you cannot see anything in isolation. You add something in – or take something out - and it changes. Something in this room we all know.

Its not just about the now in time. As you’ll all know, green philosophy talks a lot about the future. But I also think its about the past too.

Whether you believe in life after death or not isn’t the point. Nick is still here. In the ways he influenced us. In the conversations we had with him that made us think or made or laugh or frustrated us or made us feel valued. Nick’s input to the world was probably wider than for many people. He is still part of our ecosystem and I bloody miss him so much.