CAMRA AGM & Member's Weekend part 1

Fraught - causing or affected by anxiety or stress.

That was how I felt best described the way we felt recovering over a quick couple of pints in between sessions after a breathless  start to the CAMRA AGM/Members' weekend in Liverpool held this past weekend.

Others have described the mood in the conference room on Saturday as "divided", Tim Martin chairman of Wetherspoons described it jokingly as a "bear pit", and Im sure there were plenty more adjectives flying round social media that afternoon that may have given some flavour of what was happening.

This was the 4th conference Ive attended, though that still makes me a relative newcomer to these things, and I attend them on the basis its a weekend city break usually in a different beery part of the UK. Theres a members bar, there are organised trips (some good/some not so good) and a good list of local great real ale pubs to visit, plus you get to see a side of CAMRA that maybe doesnt always get covered in full in WhatsBrewing. This is where the heart and soul of CAMRA the volunteer organisation is on show, where the detail of the campaign is dissected and the passion of members for the campaign is demonstrably on show.

"Proposal to adjourn defeated. Special Resolution 1 now being discussed. #agm2016"

Anyone reading just that tweet from the official CAMRA AGM account might be forgiven for not appreciating the significance of what had just happened, or was happening, it looks a fairly procedural piece of AGM business at a glance, though admittedly it will take me far more than 140 characters to explain it properly (and I dont apologise for that, as the detail is important).

Even though its the first time Ive witnessed such a proposal being made, the sharp intakes of breath and reaction among members in the hall to it, suggests its not something thats occurred that often in the past either.

What in effect was happening was a proposal was being put, which required a near instant vote, to immediately adjourn the whole AGM & conference, including suspending all the voting for special resolutions, conference motions and elections for the national executive and conference policies committee.

Had the proposal succeeded, everyone would pretty much have then had a free weekend to explore Liverpool instead, Id describe its impact at least, as being akin to Her Majestys Opposition asking for a motion of no confidence in the government to be passed.

It was still fairly early in the morning and I hadnt had enough coffee to wake me up fully, so it wasnt initially clear to me why this proposal was being pursued as the fallout from it would be massive, "CAMRA members vote to stop own conference" seemed a remarkable thing to be even considering, what had caused this ?.

When Id read through the conference motions I hadnt seen anything Id felt would be controversial or likely to lead to extended debate,so it wasnt that, and it wasnt necessarily about the Revitalisation project  either (though there later appeared to be some fundamentel issues with this) as it wasnt a topic down to be debated. What I, and I suspect the 170,000+ other CAMRA members, had missed completely were the Special Resolutions.

Special Resolutions

"Any motion seeking to amend the Memorandum and Articles of Association is a Special Resolution.  A Special Resolution must give the precise wording of amendments, additions or deletions of or to specified Articles or Sections.  Once submitted, it will not be amended or corrected by Conference Procedures Committee for any reason".

Normally special resolutions are mainly house keeping in nature. Either corrections where mistakes have been spotted, updates to reflect the ever changing legal minefield organisations operate in, or changes to CAMRAs policies as the world changes over time.

Special resolutions generally refer to the specific articles, they arent as self explanatory as conference motions, so you not only have to go and try and read those specific documents to understand what the resolution refers to, but also what it changes, and the implication of those changes.

Additionally this year proxy voting online for special resolutions had been introduced, in an attempt to make CAMRA seem more upto date. Now proxy voting has always been allowed by post, though few have ever taken the option, and by allowing online voting this year, more than 5000 votes were cast, which seems on the face of it a good thing more votes, more members taking part.

However with only 1400 registered AGM/Members weekend attending, and certainly less than that in actual attendance, it was clear regardless of the way the votes in the hall went, the proxy votes would always outnumber those votes, so the resolutions were already fundamentally passed regardless. Although it also wasnt clearly understood whether members could be prevented from voting online and in the subsequent ballot at the AGM/Member's weekend, or that the online voting system was secure enough.

Special Resolution 3 (Revisions concerning additional methods of voting at Conference)

Article 43 - This change would pave the way for the potential use of voting methods at Conferences (as opposed to AGMs) that are additional to the traditional show of hands on motions. For example, subject to NE approval, “remote” online voting could be introduced for Conference motions.

Those issues aside the bigger problem though was the special resolutions had been poorly framed and worded and it was clear even the Chairman Colin Valentine wasnt aware how badly framed the resolutions had been made, it hadnt been intended to extend online voting for conference motions as was in Special Resolution 3 as these are the more open to debate motions, and the discussions and points made during the members weekend, do swing votes.

Conference motions (unlike special resolutions) can be and often are amended to clear up ambiguities or make better motions, motions can also be remitted where they are sent to the national executive for review. If online voting was extended to conference motions none of those options would really be open to use anymore, and in anycase the online votes would carry the result before the debate had even happened.

But as a special resolution once submitted, can not be amended, so we were stuck with the words and all that it entailed, and it appeared stuck with the results before anyone had even spoken for or against them, which is what had led to the adjournment proposal as the only way for the special resolutions to be sent back and given a proper review to fix them

Of course none of this discussion, and alot of it was very passionately,strongly & even angrily delivered, it was certainly a chastening experience for the Chairman and national executive as they largely had to sit there and take it, would have been heard by any of the members who had already voted online,they might even not be aware these issues existed, they might not care, nobody knows.

Unfortunately I think the ensuing mess of Special Resolutions only became apparent as each one was debated in turn and increasingly the numbers voting against each special resolution increased, but by which time the adjournment proposal had already been defeated, albeit by no more than a 100-120ish votes and was the only motion in the entire weekend which required tellers to count votes, which shows it was alot closer than it was merely defeated.

One might have thought that was enough drama for the whole conference, but there was more to come which Ill cover in seperate post.