BMC Set To Embrace Democracy...

Taking its cue from George Dubbya Bush, the British Mountaineering Council is looking at introducing democracy to its voting procedures before its West Didsbury offices come under sustained attack...

The whole issue kicked off in October 2003 when one of the issues raised at an Extraordinary General Meeting concerned the voting structure of the organisation and in particular the power wielded by affiliated climbing clubs thanks to their block votes.

Since then a working group has been set up to look at the voting process and has come up with various proposals including what's basically a 'one member, one vote' system for all BMC members, independent or club affiliated. If adopted, this would abolish the club block vote right away and give independent and club members the same voting rights.

After a lot of bureaucratic to-ing and fro-ing which we can't really be bothered to go into, the end result is that the proposals are going to be discussed at local BMC Area Meetings and, if endorsed, would then go to the AGM in April.

Anyway, the bottom line, if you're a BMC member, is that if you want to have a say on the new voting procedure proposals, then you need to rock up to a BMC Area Meeting, the details of which you can find on the relevant page of the BMC web site.