Background;
Following a poll of its members in 2014, the BCA began a campaign for the CRoW Act to apply to caving as per the mandate the poll had given them (62% in favour).
The campaign ran unimpeded for around a year and was fully supported by BCA council. Throughout that time, pressures were brought on BCA suggesting the campaign was unconstitutional because of a sentence in the constitution which states, ?That the owners and tenants of property containing caves have the right to grant or withhold access?. This was discussed at length in council and rejected as the law of the land takes precedence over the constitution and therefore there was no impediment in pursuing a campaign to change DEFRA?s interpretation of the law as by their own admission there view is not definitive.
However, pressure came to a head at the BCA AGM held on Mendip last June and resulted in the following motion being passed;
?Proposal: To remit the issue of section 4.6 of the Constitution to Council for consideration to return with a properly worded proposal presented at the next General Meeting. Meanwhile BCA will concentrate on conservation and landowner relations. ?
At the BCA council meeting in October last year the matter was not even on the agenda and not discussed. Later, assurances were received that the matter was in hand and the executive?s proposals would be delivered to the January council meeting. At that meeting the wrong set of proposals (an early version) was sent out by mistake and so no discussion could take place. A week later the correct proposals appeared by email circulation.
The BCA legal officer and others re-acted that the executive had not understood the problem. A detailed analysis was then produced by him which demonstrated that the new proposed amendment to the constitution could still be used to disrupt a CRoW campaign or future positions BCA may take on behalf of its members. In fact the analysis suggested that it was worse than the existing.
Due to the late action, time was now very short for properly tabled proposals and the necessary time needed for caving groups (the regions, clubs, etc) to discuss them. I therefore offered a simple solution which stated; ?This motion proposes that the first sentence of section 4.6 of the constitution be removed?. Shortly after Bob Mehew also correctly tabled two further motions.
The meeting on Saturday
The key item on the agenda that you ask about was item 7, described as ?constitutional amendments (proposals) ? (to be circulated)?. A four page document, put together by the exec was handed round at the meeting. This included the amendments related to 4,6 and the CRoW campaign and a series of six further amendments to go through at the same time such as proposals on proxy voting, postal ballets etc. (Estimates for the cost of this postal ballet varies between ?3000 and ?10000 BTW)
As indicated by the photograph, motion (c), properly proposed by me, had been re-interpreted by the author unlike any of the other proposals in the four page document. I certainly didn?t feel therefore that my proposal was being given fair representation.
The question was then asked which of these proposals was being put forward by council as per the motion from the AGM. The exec seemed unprepared for this and suggested that they favoured motion (b). There was an attempt to vote this through as the council favoured motion, but this didn?t get to a vote as it was pointed out that there were other motions to consider. In the end, an informal show of hands for each of the three motions showed that more supported motion (c) than each of the others. Therefore it was decided that council couldn?t agree and all three motions would go forward to the AGM.
Anyone still awake? So the next question was how were three different motions for the same thing going to be handled at the AGM especially as one would contradict another. The chair suggested that he would take a vote at the AGM on which motion would go forward to formal vote but it was not made clear what would happen.
At one point I overheard a private conversation which suggested that if motion (c) received support at the AGM, the first sentence could be removed and then another motion taken which could then replace it. I did not feel that this was within the spirit of the process. I know that a number of groups, such as the Derbyshire Caving Association and the Council of Northern Caving Clubs have discussed all the motions presented to them and have either unanimously or overwhelmingly supported the motion to remove that sentence and not replace it with another.
Therefore, when I returned home at 9.30 and still within the midnight deadline for motions to be proposed I tabled the following extra motion to the BCA secretary which was acknowledged and accepted.
?This motion proposes that the first sentence of Section 4.6 of the BCA constitution be removed. (For clarity this means that the sentence should be removed and not replaced by a similar sentence such as (a) or (b) of Proposal 1 as presented to the BCA council meeting on 25th March 2017. In fact, if this motion is supported then no further amendments should be made to section 4.6 of the BCA constitution at this General Meeting)?
I realise after all this I haven?t answered the question posed above. Look, it doesn?t reflect well on the organisation but volunteers put a lot of time into BCA and you?ve got to respect them for that. My only complaint is that there is not enough positivity or progress and there are too many people battling to keep things how they were 30-40 years ago.