In reply to Alan James, ROCKFAX:
Well done for starting this.
One of the big problems at the moment is the decline of BMC areas. This has a lot to do with chairmanship. If the area chairman or chairwoman is not suitable ... knowledgeable and wise enough, interesting and charismatic, jolly and welcoming, shrewd and firm etc etc etc then the area tends to die. Chairpeople who observe this happening should really seek to replace themselves. The BMC leadership needs to keep a watch on this and try, through the semi- democratic procedures to ensure the areas stay up to speed and that good chairing is evident. The main clubs need to take care to ensure that their formal representation on areas is given thought and attention and that a suitable person is asked to attend with full voting powers linked to the club's membership size.
The recent experience in the Peak is an object lesson - no names no pack drill - but, following some ups and downs, the present spirited chair and area secretary now helps a lot to make it work.
The geographical spread of the area is also a problem and the timing of meetings might solve that problem ... for example SW might have meetings at weekends at suitable climbing spots ... in Winter Torbay or Barnstable might be a good places(in the evenings of course) rather than in cities in mid week, to counteract that problem. Similarly London and SE Meetings might on occasion be held at Tonbridge Wells on a Saturday night or even tack Swanage and Portland onto that Area and hold them there (I note the comment elsewhere on this thread about the distance of Weymouth from Bristol or Penzanze. It certianly seemed more London focussed to me when I lived down there so maybe London and SE is its natural home?
The areas are critically important for if they fail to send well informed and usefully quizical people up to Management Committee the quality of debate on that body will deteriorate and poor decision making or inadequate vetting and ratifying of bright shiny new policies will be the result.
For example ... to take a recent case concerning the Rheged Mountaineering Exhibition (which has gone rather pear shaped in terms of its finances in recent months) ... I am amazed that the Area reps on the Management Committee did not insist at the outset on a week by week formal record of attendance and revenue being made available to them from the start as a foundation for a very acute attention to that project's "progress". Rheged is much like a play production and if attendance fails to live up to expectations the theatre goes dark within weeks, sometimes days. It is very worrying that the BMC Management Committee was so lacking in probing energy at this time of major project initiative (and risky spending) not to be enquiring energetically into these matters ... it failed to break through a swathe of leadership platitudes and make sure that they knew what they were doing. I can only assume that this is the result of allowing the Area Committees to deteriorate so that the quality of committee reps is not up to scratch. It is not always necessary for the Chairs and Secs of the areas to attend Management. Informed members can fill the roll and then report back to their Area Chairpersons. It may be that running an area AND giving a full contribution to management is too much. There should also be a very firm working link between Areas and the General Secretary and the president or delegated Vice Presidents.
These are now vitally important matters if the BMC, already staff bloated, is to retain a realistic contact with the rank and file of the sport.
The other thing that needs to happen is for those attending areas (from small clubs or as individuals) to seek (at some stage) to join one of the main institutional clubs of the BMC and thereby increase their political punch and breadth of knowledge and contacts. The old clubs are often scorned and derided by the young. This is a mistake as they are the scaffolding that holds the whole show in place. It thus follows that they are important institutions to join and foster even though their exert no direct influence on the day to day affairs of the BMC. The alternative is that we all become a disparate rabble with no more contact to the affairs of our representitive body than the average AA member has with that organistion.