I volunteered with Merrick through Prison Fellowship. We were Group Facilitators together at HMP Gartree on the Sycamore Tree course (based on the principles of Restorative Justice and Victim Awareness) from 2013/2014. I then trained to be a tutor for the course. When the course ceased delivery at HMP Gartree, we both went to HMP Onley to deliver the course there with various teams.
When Merrick passed away, I sent the following memories to the chaplaincy team there.
Merrick was a valued member of the Prison Fellowship Prayer Group based in Market Harborough and this was where I first met him in late 2013 or early 2014. He soon got involved with volunteering, training as a Group Facilitator and becoming part of the team delivering Sycamore Tree at nearby HMP Gartree. What struck me then and thereafter about Merrick was his genuine love, care and concern for those who were in prison, and for prison leavers too, borne partly out of his amazing life experiences as a diplomat, but in getting to know him over the years it was obvious that there were other influences and memories that shaped his thinking too and motivated him to do what he did.
In May 2019 he sent an email to our local prayer group when he was part of the team delivering Sycamore Tree at HMP Onley. In it he told us how he explained his role as a Group Facilitator to some of the learners in his group:
“To some I’ve tried to put my role in context by (without spelling it out) adapting John Donne’s meditation, ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ Any man’s misfortune / unhappiness / lack of opportunity / lack of parental love & encouragement etc. diminishes me because I am involved with mankind.
We Group Facilitators, I say, volunteer because we care about them. We want them to succeed. We are all in this together. We talk about the negative ripple effect of a prisoner’s crimes and their own. But equally important is the beneficial ripple effect that their changed attitude to life could have around them once they rejoin society.
Ideally, I’d like us to make the relationship between the GFs and the men on the course a bit more personal in the sense I have described, so that they understand at the outset that we have a bond with them, albeit only for six weeks. Sycamore Tree is, therefore, not just an academic exercise or a bureaucratic hurdle to be surmounted, but rather something that the GFs see as an opportunity for the participants to create a new ‘personal road map’. The bits of paper we ask them to fill in, and the other aspects of the course, are part of a wider, more important goal. If we can get that across, then I feel we’ll stand a better chance of getting men to focus and reducing that high recidivism figure.”
On another occasion Merrick told me in an email when we had talked about The Buttle Trust:
“Frank Buttle is my hero, a remarkable clergyman, financial wizard and fundraiser, whose Trust, opened after he died in ( I think) 1953, supported both me and my brother at Oxford. Without his help we could not have remained at the university. Although I had a scholarship it was not enough to cover the fees and other costs of undergraduate life. Years later I learned for the first time that I was only the second (in 1959) ” Buttle Boy” to be at Oxford. The first had been a Hungarian refugee who fled after the revolution of 1956.
If you were to ask me why I want to support prisoners and ex-offenders, one answer is Frank Buttle. His extraordinary life and the trust he left, though I never knew him, changed my life and taught me the meaning of loving one’s neighbour. I pray that he will be content, despite my many shortcomings, with what I did with his support! Even after more than 60 years, the name of Frank Buttle is one that I revere.”
Following the pandemic and the fact that we had not been able to go into prison for a long time to deliver Sycamore Tree, Merrick found himself facing various health challenges, alongside some specific frustrations around renewing his clearance to be able to continue volunteering with Prison Fellowship. And so very reluctantly he was forced to face up to those challenges.
In one of Merrick’s last emails to me in the autumn of 2022, he apologised for what he regarded as a slow response to an email I had sent him saying, “Sorry to be slow about responding, but I’ve been digesting some of the realities of my life and health! I do want to continue to support PF and its ideals as much as I can and offer support to ex-offenders in various ways. There’s life in this old dog yet! But volunteering is a two way street and recently it has been frustratingly one way for me and also I’ve been forced to admit that I can’t halt the march of time lol.”
Merrick was one of the most selfless people I have ever known in the way that he so generously gave his time, care and attention to those in prison and following their release, alongside his openness in sharing with them his own life experience. I will remember Merrick for his openness and honesty and the wonderful gift he had in showing people in prison, not just in the UK but all over the world that they were valued, that they mattered and that there was hope for the way they could live their lives in the future.
I still continue volunteering as a tutor and Group Facilitator for Sycamore Tree. This week I have just completed delivering a course at HMP Leicester and this morning have been a Group Facilitator at the new HMP Fosse Way and helping, with others to support a new tutor delivering the course for the first time.
I often think of dear Merrick. I miss him as I am sure you do too.
Janet Smith (Sycamore Tree Tutor and friend of Merrick’s)
Readers may also be interested to know that Merrick had wished for part of the Oscar Wilde poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” to be read at his funeral. While his family decided against this, we have included it here as it obviously moved him.
