I’ve never written anything quite like this before so bear with me for the ride…
June 2018 was a tough AGM for the BMC
The BMC has been going through a tough time for the past 24 or so months and because of that the 2018 AGM, held in Kendal on 16th June, was perhaps the most important AGM that the BMC has had since the current Articles of Association (the BMC’s constitution, i.e. rules) were agreed back in 1993.
Unfortunately those tough times are nowhere near done with yet… When it comes to the BMC passions always seem to run high! So following the 2017 AGM where the stakes were high with the Motion of No Confidence brought by the so called “BMC30”, the drama this year was perhaps in some ways even higher. And who knows what the outcome will be in years to come! I rather doubt that these unsettled times are anywhere near finished.
The Organisational Review
A long re-organisation process [1] kicked off by National Council in February 2017 delivered an insightful report with 51 recommendations as to how the BMC could be reshaped going forward. This process started before the ruined attempt at rebranding the BMC, and that failed rebranding (a story in itself) was a strong catalyst for going the extra mile in trying to make the proposed re-organisation as good as it could be. There’s no doubt then that the Organisation Review Group (ORG) did a massive amount of work to try and get it right. They certainly spent a lot of time getting some good quality member input and presenting a position on the future of the BMC based on several iterations of that input.
There’s a series of interesting write ups on John Robert’s blog. (John was a key member of the ORG.) Please read them if you want more detail on the work of the ORG as I want to look forward here and think about what comes next, as for me a question remains…
What really is “Best”
So often one reads such and such is the “best” solution! How can anyone say something is really the best? Unless you are in some way omnipresent surely one has to accept that there just might be other ways that just might be better. I wouldn’t buy a sandwich for my lunch without some thought about what filling (bacon, tuna, or cheese?) or bread (brown, granary, or white?) I fancy. That is, I like to have options as to what I eat. I like to have options for pretty much everything in fact. Unless I’m absolutely starving, out of time to go elsewhere, and there is just one dried up nearly out of date sarnie left on the shelf! Does that make it the “best” sandwich though? No. It’s just the best one on offer. And I’d rather have a selection – i.e. options – to choose from.
Surely it is arrogant to think one’s own work is faultless and that there is no other choice. Of course this is a human trait I think. When one puts a lot effort in to something one becomes emotionally connected to it, it becomes “yours”. It becomes almost impossible to step back and question, to see it objectively, to accept there might be other ways to crack the nut, and to let go. This is especially true for something like the BMC that is a membership organisation, supposedly run by its members for its members. And every one of those members likely has a slightly different idea in one way or another of what that means in practice. Even more so because climbers are such strong willed individuals – they have to be to tackle some of their adventures.
So no report can be a panacea. Sure it will have significant elements of wisdom. But again, unless you are that omnipresent omnipotent being, there will be other pearls of wisdom out there amongst the membership that remain to be discovered.
An Open Forum
And so it is that Saturday 15th May 2018 saw the BMC host an Open Forum to try and bring the many factions and points of view together to make the “best” a bit “better”. Could a compromise be found? I’d certainly pushed hard to make this happen. At times it felt like I was the only voice anywhere, let alone on National Council, that wanted to find compromise and peace.
Depressingly there were key voices on National Council that actively wanted to stifle the debate and not allow the Open Forum to take place in any meaningful way. 🙁
National Council had agreed to extend the deadline for the submission of resolutions from the membership. Part of the basis for that agreed extension was to allow the Open Forum output to potential result in a resolution, or tweak to an existing resolution, that could bring peace to the AGM. I forcibly and repeatedly put my point of view:
I think we really need to start listening to other people’s points of view. They may be a minority, but ignoring them ensures that even if the “war is won” that will not “win the peace”. This workshop [Open Forum] is the best chance we have of finding a compromise…Peter Sterling [2]
It is worth noting that those tabling an alternative proposal for new Articles of Association only disagreed with 10 out of 51 ORG recommendations. They accepted that change is needed in BMC governance and that the Womble Bond & Dickinson (the ORG and BMC’s legal advisors) view on legal matters to align with company law were necessary.
Compromise
Compromise was found [3], enough of a compromise to enable a large number of those tabling the alternative proposal for new Articles to withdraw their support. This act was aimed at deescalating the conflict. It wasn’t an explicit statement of support for the “official” Articles. The result? Yes, the Articles were made “better”. But were they now the “best” solution? Hardly – anything, everything can be made better – always.
The rules meant that the AGM would still have two sets of new Articles proposed to the membership:
- Option A – the official National Council, Executive, and staff [Staff? Huh?] recommended Articles. These Articles were characterised as delivering the highest level of Sport England defined governance, i.e. Tier 3 compliance.
- Option B – the alternate Articles. These Articles were an update on the standing Articles from 1993 and therefore could only be anticipated to gain Tier 1 Sport England governance compliance.
The choice between Tier 1 and Tier 3 was pitched as the defining characteristic of the vote. Would the BMC be recognised by Sport England as a serious grown up organisation worthy of the highest recognition and therefore access to public grant funding? Yep, it was largely about the money!
However, for me I think this characterisation is a red herring. The tiering is nothing but a side effect of a key principle embedded in the Articles as demanded by Sport England’s definition of good governance. That is, where the power lies. Having a Board in ultimate control. Or having the membership in control. The strength of this voice of membership determines how Sort England see the BMC as a National Governing Body (NGB) for our sport… I get this, it seems right that an organisation receiving public funds should be well governed to help ensure those funds are well managed. But was the cost to democratic membership representation worth paying? Should the principle that the BMC is run for its members by its members be given up in pursuit of public grant funding that is widely anticipated to further reduce and even possibly vanish altogether in years to come?
Gerrymandering
Notwithstanding any of stuff above the BMC Office swung in to full-on propaganda mode…
One would expect an organisation like the BMC to be capable of delivering a pretty powerful media campaign. It is after all part of its core remit – to represent members’ interests, to lobby opinion, etc.
But deserving campaigns, like Mend Our Mountains, hardly seems to get a mention compared to the all-out effort by the BMC Office to sway members votes for the “official” Articles. There were endless emails, multiple commissioned articles from famous climbers, support from those with vested interests (mountain training, climbing walls, etc.) all telling members how to vote. One email from the Office literally did that – “Vote Option A”.
Just imagine how news agencies would react if staff (civil servants) at a Government Department started emailing us before a General Election telling us to vote for the Conservatives because their manifesto gives greater access to public funds that means more civil service jobs will be secure!
The Memberships’ Choice
So it was no surprise to me whatsoever that the vote for Option A was strong. 92% in favour in fact. So why did I resign from National Council? And why did I oppose Option A?
The answer to the first question is simple if disappointing – National Councillors were told that they could not actively support anything but the “official” Articles. Censorship. Therefore, if I was to oppose Option A I had no option but to resign.
As to the second question, that too is really quite simple too!
Broadly I think the Option A, with the hard won compromises we’ve achieved such as the MoU [3], are a good set of Articles and almost certainly the way forward for the BMC’s constitution. However, for me they still have one key factor that leaves them flawed… To have a Board that is self selecting, not elected, and with no oversight from any other group is too risky for me to support and I will vote against them at the AGM.
Is it wrong for me to seek to improve these Articles? Everything, anything, can be improved and made better. Patience can deliver a even better outcome that more people would support… For me this is too important to get wrong, even a little bit wrong.Peter Sterling [4]
Only time will tell if I am correct…
Notes
- I was in part responsible for drafting the Terms of Reference for the ORG’s work, May 2017.
- From the National Council Slack forum, April 2018.
- A key component of the compromise was my idea to create a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the proposed Board and National Council. This MoU could then be used as a tool to give National Council a degree of control over Board activities, without resorting the nuclear option of calling a General Meeting, thus helping ensure that the “voice of the membership” was not ignored when it was inconvenient to the Board.
- From my posting on Facebook, April 2018.