Stuart’s GoldWing Blog

The GoldWing Owners Club of Great Britain (GWOCGB) is a National Club rather than a grouping together of local clubs, so Membership is of the National Club, not of its Regions. The Regions might operate their own bank accounts as if they were separate clubs and they might function in many ways as if they were separate clubs, but according the GWOCGB Rules, Regions exist only as sub-divisions of the National Club and have no separate identity. No Member of GWOCGB can be required to pay subscriptions to a Region and any Member of GWOCGB can attend any Regional Meeting as of right. Under new powers the National Committee acquired at the recent AGM, they can expel anyone they like, which has the effect of expelling the member from his local Region too.

So Members from outside a Region can turn up uninvited and mob handed anytime they wish.  And GWOCGB’s National Committee can organise and encourage such an invasion if they wish, as they did recently when Lancs & Lakes Region seemed to them to be acting just a little too independently for their taste.

GWOCGB is ruled – there are lots and lots of of rules – very much from the centre, in Big Government style.

GWOCGB Members can exercise their voting rights at any Regional Meeting too if they wish, even though it has so far  been regarded as bad form to do so, especially on a local issue.  In principle of course encouraging Wingers to feel welcome to visit other clubs (in this context other Regions) is a good way of promoting friendship and cooperation and also breaking down any barriers which might otherwise develop. But having the right to attend another club’s meeting barriers and the right to vote on any issue is potentially very disruptive; for example it makes it possible to sway any decision at a Regional meeting simply by importing like-minded members from outside the Region to vote in your support.

Lancs & Lakes Region of GWOCGB experienced GWOCGB-style “support” on an unprecedented scale when they tried to hold a Regional EGM in October. The idea of the EGM, which had been scheduled in advance (in order to give due notice to all Lancs & Lakes Members and also to take place after the Blackpool Light Parade) was to consider the Region’s future after a turbulent year during which relationships with the Club’s National Committee had become seriously strained. The only other item on the agenda was what Lancs & Lakes Committee felt had been victimisation of me personally by the National Committee. Since all the problems with the National Committee were linked to the Light Parade, of which I had been the Lead Organiser, it was important that I would be present.

The National Committee were invited, so they could have their say and also answer questions. There was no proposal to break away from GWOCGB, nor indeed any other specific proposal for a way forward, just a wish to open a discussion about the Region’s way forward in general terms. But in the weeks leading up to the EGM, indeed with effect from the day of the Light Parade, I was summarily expelled from the Club by the National Committee, so the issue of their victimisation of me had become even more contentious.

The National Committee then raised objections to me being present at the EGM, because I had been expelled. The Lancs & Lakes Reps responded by re-designating the planned EGM a “Meeting of Friends of Lancs & Lakes”, ie a non-GWOCGB meeting, which I could therefore not be prevented from attending. This device re-established the prospect of what Lancs & Lakes had wanted to do in the first place; hold a private meeting and hopefully sort out some problems, before even considering resorting to anything as radical as breaking away from GWOCGB.

But the National Committee were absolutely determined to exclude me from the proceedings. Faced with the re-designation of the EGM so that I could not be prevented from attending, they convened a meeting of their own, to which all GWOCGB members were invited, the day before the EGM was to take place. They hired a room in a four star Lancashire Hotel in which to hold it, wrote to all Lancs & Lakes Members telling them that their own EGM had been cancelled (without mentioning that it would still take place under another guise) and encouraged them to attend their special Open GWOCGB Meeting instead. They also encouraged as many GWOCGB Members from other Regions who could get there to attend to. This was to be a GWOCGB Meeting, from which I, as an expelled person, was therefore excluded. They really didn’t want anyone to hear what I had to say.

There had been another Open GWOCGB Meeting about a month previously in Rugby at which a female Lancs & Lakes Member, accompanied by one other female Member, without discussing her concerns or intentions with the Reps, claimed that she and “ninety percent” of Lancs & Lakes were being kept in the dark by their Reps and Regional Committee, and were reliant on information from the National Committee. This Lancs & Lakes Member had been in dialogue with the National Committee beforehand. There was talk of a vote of no confidence in the Lancs & Lakes Committee.

While this was going on, most of Lancs & Lakes were enjoying a Regional meeting, a Ride Out and then welcoming party at my home for the Central Florida Drill Team, quite oblivious to what was being said in their name in Rugby. The idea that anyone in Lancs & Lakes had been kept in the dark was nonsense. Everyone who came to the Regional Meetings had been told the basics of the difficulties with the National Committee. The Committee’s decision to run the Light Parade independently of GWOCGB had been supported at a Regional Meeting by a unanimous vote. It had also been explained that the Lancs & Lakes Committee were trying to avoid any further unnecessary contentiousness with GWOCGB, and especially with the National Committee, at least until after the Light Parade, hence the EGM was scheduled to take place after it, when the whole thing could be discussed openly.

At the National Committee’s specially convened (rival) Open Meeting in Lancashire, on the day before the re-designated Lancs & Lakes EGM, there was a large turnout. The National Committee’s supporters had turned out in force. I am told that despite four hours of lively argument there was little if any meeting of minds. Nor was there a vote of no confidence in the Lancs & Lakes Reps or Committee after all, the National Committee deemed it inappropriate. The National Committee also refused to answer any questions about or to allow any discussion of me or my expulsion. Perhaps they were content to have raised a fuss – and therefore a distraction from what they might otherwise have had to face the following day.

The following day Lancs & Lakes was able to hold its own (private) meeting as planned. The National Committee did not turn up, although they were still invited and had said they were coming. I told my story, which included a list of questions which I would have put to the National Committee if they would let me. I also answered questions from the Region and then left, not least so that Lancs & Lakes could talk freely. The outcome of this Meeting, which was very heart warming for me when I heard about it afterwards, was that most of them were for petitioning the National Committee to rescind my expulsion there and then.

This episode of the Lancs & Lakes would-be EGM and the National Committee’s disruptive response to it can be interpreted in various ways. What were the National Committee trying to achieve? Were they as determined as they appear to have been to disrupt Lancs & Lakes attempts to flush out and discuss the problems? It seems, at the very least, a very odd and very heavy handed way for a National Committee to handle the affairs of a Club which has the stated aim of promoting friendship among Wingers.

Unfortunately the original objectives of the Lancs & Lakes EGM – a private discussion among friends about problems with the National Committee and their victimisation of me (and then my expulsion) and the way forward for Lancs & Lakes – were all compromised by the disruption of the National Committee’s rival meeting and their failure to turn up to the EGM to answer questions. The future of Lancs & Lakes remains an open question and it will presumably now do so until the Region’s AGM in January. At Lancs & Lakes’s November Regional Meeting, both Joint Reps and the rest of the Regional Committee announced their intention to stand down at the AGM.

Maybe GWOCGB Members from other Regions will invite themselves to the Lancs & Lakes AGM too, as they did to the North Wales Wings AGM in November, to give “support”.

GWOCGB’s AGM took place two weeks after Lancs & Lakes abortive attempts to hold an EGM. Once again the National Committee would not allow any discussion of my expulsion and they made no attempt to address the issues of concern which I had raised. There was no point in me challenging my expulsion with the National Committee because having decided to expel me themselves (without a hearing of any kind) they were also going to be involved in any appeal I wanted to make too. So instead I wrote a letter to all GWOCGB Members telling my story and listing the questions I would have asked the National Committee if they had been willing to turn up to answer them, as they said they would.

There are a total of over a hundred questions, many dealing with issues of honesty. If you are a GWOCGB member and would like to read my letter and the full list of questions, it is still available at on the Lancs & Lakes website where you can sign in to the GWOCGB Members section using the same password as GWOCGB’s own website.

Postscript:

The document referred to in the previous paragraph was removed from the Lancs & Lakes website shortly after the Region’s AGM in January 2009 when a new Rep took over but it can be viewed here: A Letter from Stuart Ormerod.  The episode it describes has been overtaken by lots of events, but for those who would like to know what really went on during the turbulence of 2008,  it’s maybe still worth reading.

In February 2009 a new independent GoldWing Club, GoldWings North West, was formed in Lancashire by Members of Lancs & Lakes (including the whole of the previous year’s Regional Committee) who had decided not to renew their GWOCGB Membership because of dissatisfaction with the conduct of the  Club’s National Committee.