This topic is already such a mess that I don't guess a few ramblings from a "neutral" party can do any harm...
Rather than talk about the application of the CROW act, I'd like to share some general observations that I think apply to both UK and US cavers. These primarily have to do with ideas of governance. That we ever came to need someone other than ourselves to govern our caving activities is, like it or not, a product of caver overpopulation. Informal groups of dedicated cavers are more than capable of organizing, accomplishing, and documenting. Even solitary individuals can and have done much productive and fulfilling caving without any help from organizations. Such "independent" groups and individuals have historically been required to supply their own motivation to cave. This led to diverse and individualized and impressive accomplishments that had only relatively little to do with boasting in the mainstream.
Now, caving is viewed as a "sport" and is often undertaken in the most superficial ways imaginable by people without anything approaching an honorable level of dedication and respect and understanding and affection. A large population of vaguely motivated individuals with a common interest; the formula for an National Organization. One of the jobs of such an organization is to grow itself, and so the BCA and NSS both help create problems of conservation and claim to prioritize their solutions.
It is interesting to see prophecies of organizational collapse in this thread. Mr. Rose, for example, apparently refers to the destruction of the BCA as a worst case scenario. I believe that the opposite is true. I would that both the BCA and the NSS be dismantled. This wish is not the result of a wish to have things for myself, or to exclude anyone. It is a wish for a cleaner, saner, more noble form of caving, open to anyone willing to work for it. The removal of broad enfranchisement and mainstream exposure could do much to bring into balance the critical aesthetic and biological caver/cave ratios. Besides, look at ourselves! The arguments in this forum and in other forums and in magazines and meetings are an embarrassment to our dignity and are the direct result in focusing on a particular brand of governance instead of the only real way to accomplish anything worthwhile. That is: to be good to one another.
No secular law can give anyone freedoms that cannot be had more completely and happily by compliance with moral law. So all of the work being done on the CROW debate is done in an attempt to win an argument that is not worth winning, and that does not need to be won, at least by anyone who cares about the health of caves and of their fellow more than the health of their ego. Forget that nonsense, and be good to people. Let the BCA burn, and be good to one another.
I do not think that many of the individuals involved in campaigning for or against this issue are blatantly harmful, but there are obviously lots of egos involved. I believe that if everyone involved really wanted to learn and do what was best, not for "caving" as a sport, or for their reputation or legacy, or for their Organization, but for caves and for people, that the entire issue would vanish, along with lots of other issues. I also believe that this has zero of happening.
Let me wrap up by saying that I am not speaking against organization of work and activity. Most significant jobs of work can only be done collaboratively, and there is value in knowing what has been done before you or by geographically removed contemporaries. I believe though, that any organization that outgrows its bounds risks doing damage and being poisoned by struggles for influence and control. The proper bounds of a caving organization would necessarily be geographical, but to define and adhere to them would require much thought and significant restraint. Nothing of much use can be done by the BCA or the NSS that cannot be done by smaller, more intimate, attuned, and localized groups.
Battle on!