Letter from Kevin Power and Response from Viv Harte
Dear GASI Members and Committee Members,
I would like you all to read my following remarks.
1.The new Constitution from 2017 is an off-the-peg one from the Charity Commission (CC), drafted by people who have been appointed to jobs and not elected to posts. Are bureaucrats the correct people to advise about whether the constitution they have produced is a better one for democratic efforts than our original Constitution? What was in place until 2017 was based on the original one of 1952 which had through time had some agreed and voted on changes made to it. That is, it was altered entirely by Members and Committee after due consultation among members and voted on. We know how to manage democratic procedures. However the 1952 Constitution is rooted in the history and tradition of the Society, unlike what is now foisted on the Society by the CC.
This makes barely any mention of the President’s post, certainly not formally in a number of paragraphs, and no mention of how s/he might be elected. It concentrates on Trustees etc. It needs throwing out entirely and the 1952 one reinstated so we can understand our history, traditions and electoral procedures. (Can we imagine the USA throwing out its Constitution and taking one from the CC?). The CC is a government agency and not a democratically run organisation. Its employees are just that, and not elected members. Trustee posts etc are for gigantic charities like the National Trust that has an estate of billions of pounds of property. Our Society has less than £250 000. No member will run off with a few thousand pounds and ruin their reputations.
- The AGM. There needs to be clear direction when receiving documents through email for this event, that it will be assumed by those running the meeting that all documents have been read so that at each stage on the agenda the meeting goes directly to questions and comments. No more being read to. It is a complete waste of time and frustrating when members need the time to hold elected members to account.
- Respect for the Chairperson. This is wholly necessary. Whatever you feel about the Chairperson, s/he is running the meeting and the practice of ‘speaking through the chair’ i.e. speaking only with the Chair’s permission, has to be upheld.
- A need by all present to respect the fact that the AGM is a business meeting and not a group-analytic meeting. The agenda is there to be upheld. Interruptions are outlawed. A business meeting is entirely different from a group-analytic meeting in that there definitely is someone in place who is directing the meeting. Unlike group analysis which is essentially non-directive.
- All members of the committee should be handed a guide on how to run meetings and work in them. How to behave in meetings. When I first was Honorary Secretary, and in the midst of a very chaotic committee at that time, I found
The Right Way to Conduct Meetings, Conferences and Discussions (Paperfronts)
Published by Elliot Right Way Books, 1994
ISBN 10: 0716020165 / ISBN 13: 9780716020165
which though published in the year MCMXLVIII (1948) and republished in this series in 1994, gives clear and optimistic directions for such meetings and how to run small voluntary organisations. Still available online for around £2 or less. It helped me bring some order to chaos and was the basis for very successful meetings once a new President came along.
- AGM and Committee meetings are business meetings, and not G.A. meetings. They are directive and directed. Participants have to do preparatory work and fit in with the agenda as published.
- I sense a definite move, from what I glean from the MC members, and from the differences of opinion that have arisen since last Autumn, that MC meetings are themselves being run like they were group-analytic meetings. I think this definitely gets in the way of doing the business on the agenda. I see no point in agenda items that are Free Floating discussions. There is always agenda’d business to get through. So get through it. If there are differences of opinion then have debate and discussion about them through the Chair’s management and then take a vote! Record the vote! This is basic democracy following a debated item. There is nothing wrong with such a vote, and the Committee members stick with it, and if member/s do not like it, then resign. Basic democratic procedure that is followed by Parliaments and by Trade Unions and all other democratic bodies. Group Analysis, if one reads even the current constitution, is about clinical work and research. When SHF spoke of group-analysis being a democratic learning tool, he made no suggestion to throw out procedural democracy also. Democratic learning is about how to listen to the other arguments, take a view, or take several views, move to a procedural vote and count the show of hands. We have to act maturely.
- If the current policy of holding AGM’s always online continues, it means we shall never have a meeting face to face with the committee members ever again. Even at the last Symposium at Belgrade there was no AGM, despite the large number of members gathered together every three years. I think the lack of face-to-face meetings with the MC and membership is severely damaging to communication that, as we must know, eases misunderstanding and brings insight. IGA(London) hold their AGMs face-to- face with onscreen and they work well. This needs to be adopted from next year onwards so contributions from the floor can resonate across the meeting. Whereas meetings online have no dynamic presence above and beyond the words spoken. All sounds are artificial and microphoned. No actual human voice gets heard unmediated by electronics, only machined-produced ones. They are two dimensional whereas face to face is at least 3 dimensional. The basic tenet of our Society is wholly concerned about meeting in person!
Thank you for your attention.
Hello Kevin
I am responding to point (7) and the comment you make “. . . MC meetings are themselves being run like they were group-analytic meetings.” This may have happened in the past but this is not the case now. We have a good deal to get through on each MC meeting agenda. We focus on the tasks we have to address.
Thank you for all your comments above. They are helpful.
Best wishes
Viv