New horizons

THERE IS MORE TO LIFE than Mothers' Union, and so there should be more to this blog than just my (justifiable) criticisms of that organisation. So while I will continue to record such of the happenings in MU land as come my way, this blog will become more of a commonplace book to record other of my musings. Still swimming against the tide, of course...

Communications

I HAVE LONG ARGUED FOR for effective communications in Mothers' Union, so when I was invited to stand as Deanery Communications Officer I agreed. But it is likely to be an uphill struggle.

It's now almost a year since I was unfairly dismissed from my post as Newsletter Editor for Mothers' Union in the Diocese of York, and constructively dismissed as Publicity Officer and webmaster* and to date no new newsletter has appeared, and despite my selling the domain name to Mothers' Union via the CEO several months ago, no replacement web site either.

Nor has there been much else. That might be because of my invisibility - 'they' no longer communicate with me (just as when my friend and colleague resigned from the Trustee Board she was apparently removed immediately from every Mothers' Union mailing list and outlet). But communication has never been good within Mothers' Union in tis diocese. Surprisingly, then, it seems that a couple of months ago the diocese appointed a diocesan Communications Officer and three Archdeaconry Communications Officers. From whom nobody I know has heard a word.

Plus ca change.
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* OK, I wasn't employed so the technical terms are perhaps not entirely accurate, and there is no industrial tribunal to take 'them' to, but the processes of my dismissal were the same so the terms can stand

Updating Blogger

I HAVE SOME EXPERIENCE of using computers and even making web sites, but the recent technical changes to BLOGGER have me baffled. It's hardly user-friendly. But here goes...

Updates

In the last week or so I’ve been moving my home office so I haven’t had time to update this blog with the latest news of the mismanagement rife in the Diocesan Mothers’ Union. But that mismanagement continues, so I chronicle some of the ‘lowlights’ of the last few weeks:

That allegedly racist comment

Someone actually present at the trustee meeting when the allegedly racist remark was made has confirmed the details.  So the Head Girl’s insistence on whitewashing the incident does seem to have been inapprpriate.

Election woes

Several people  asked me to stand as Senior Prefect for the East Riding Archdeaconry following the resignation of the previous incumbent (who, incidentally, has since circulated a letter detailing the circumstances which drove her to resign the post for which she was eminently suited, at which she was hugely popular and successful, and from which she was hounded by the Head Girl and the Board of Governors. It makes for a depressing litany of petty bullying by the ‘management’ and shows clearly that I’m not the only one to have suffered). But after much heart-searching, long discussion with friends, and a lot of prayer, I decided not to stand. My nomination would simply have been a red rag to a bull[1] and would have risked extending the “managerial” bullying to anyone who supported my nomination. For quite a while there was no one capable of doing the job willing to be nominated

At the last minute a suitable and willing candidate for the post did appear, praise the Lord, otherwise there would have been a vacuum inadequately (see “Recruitment campaign. Not.”) filled by the temporary joint caretakers of the post. So members duly sent in their nomination papers. I hear last week that not enough nomination papers had been received... rumour has it that there is a “requirement” for at least six nominations to be received before any nomination is accepted. This despite there being no such provision in the Constitution, and there having been, in any case, at least that many nomination papers sent for the individual concerned. I await further developments with resigned dismay. transparent the process is not.

Recruitment campaign. Not.

A small group of clergy, along with several former members of Mothers’ Union and some potential new members, were well on their way to forming a new branch. They had been encouraged by the former Senior Prefect of the East Riding whom they invited to a meeting to talk about the final details. Who should arrive, unexpectedly, but one of the caretakers of the Senior Prefect post. This person set up her own table at the front of the meeting (everyone else had sat in the body of the meeting: the symbolism is clear) and started to tell the assembled company how to fill in the ‘yellow form’[2], how to send their money to the diocesan treasurer and sundry other such inspiring bits of information. This high-handed hectoring had its effect: a week later the group no longer wished to open a new branch of Mothers’ Union...

I was reminded of a long-time member and experienced officeholder of Mothers’ Union who attended a biannual  Council meeting and came away vowing never to attend another. She resented being “treated like a recalcitrant schoolgirl and being told what to do all the time”: again, I’m not the only one to notice this "managerial" style.
The current (mis)management team seems much more effective at driving people away than they do attracting anyone.

Postscript

I finally got a reply from the CEO (see “Invisibility cloak”) suggesting that perhaps I was right and that his previous reply had been delayed some three months in the post. Who needs a postal strike?

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[1] Those who object to the gender-specific image are free to render it in the more appropriate feminine form...

[2] The annual return, much disliked because it is complex and confused, and because it attracts frequent criticism by the secretariat when it isn’t filled in “correctly”

Whom to believe?

At the meeting at which a Senior Prefect[1]  resigned comments were made which were reported as ‘racist’: these comments are reported in my earlier post.

Following the resignation the Head Girl called a meeting of the Junior Prefects to tell them how things were going to be. At that meeting the  ‘racist’ remark was commented on.

Twenty-four hours later the Head Girl wrote to the Junior Prefect who had raised the matter at the Junior Prefects’ meeting to say that she had investigated the remark and found that it was in fact “used in the context that many seamen are foreign and could neither write nor read the English language [of the labels sewn into the sailors’ hats]. [2] This underlines the danger of repeating words that you haven’t personally heard spoken and are passed on out of context. I hope you will make sure that, if you have passed this on to anyone, you will now correct it.”

I had heard the remark reported on by two people who were present when it was spoken and reported it as racist. Now the Head Girl says it wasn’t like that. So whom to believe?

Well, I wouldn’t presume to suggest who is more credible, but at the Junior Prefects’ meeting the Head Girl said that I had refused to meet her to discuss conciliation over the editorship of the newsletter: she said I had offered only one date which was inconvenient for her. The truth is that I had “sought the advice of the diocesan chaplain who thought the best course of action would be to meet the diocesan president in person, the chaplain acting as a mediator, and I telephoned the diocesan president to suggest this. She, however, declined this conciliatory suggestion and was adamant that she would ‘raise the problem’ at” the next meeting of the Trustees. [source: personal contemporaneous notes].

I repeat from an earlier post: ...Orwell's Ministry of Truth lives on: its purpose was to rewrite history and change the facts to fit party doctrine... to maintain power the party must seem eternally right and strong.

Whom to believe? You might very possibly have an opinion: I couldn’t possibly comment.

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[1] Frankly I’m increasingly tired of terms like president and the like, so let the reader here make the necessary translation.

[2] According to another of my correspondents, most modern sailors do in fact read and write English – the lingua franca of transport organisations worldwide – and even if they didn’t, the Mothers’ Union logo has a high recognition coefficient. So even if the remark wasn’t in fact racist, it was uninformed and wrong.

Small correction

Apparently the reports I heard were incorrect, according to another correspondent, and of course I'm prepared to acknowledge the errors. It is only three not four elections which are - or should be - invalid because of mistakes in the administrative procedures. And it was knitted hats for sailors not for African babies which were rubbished by a trustee as "not even for English" recipients.

Sorry for that. Doesn't mitigate the offences, though.

More invisibility...

According to my correspondents, the management of the York Diocesan Mothers' Union is in dire straits. A third of the trustee board have resigned this year. Two triennial elections have had to be repeated because of administrative errors; a third should be repeated for the same reason, and in a fourth election the CV of a candidate was "edited" before being sent to the electorate. The chairman attempted to shelve a strategy paper the trustees had commissioned, and one member of the board adamantly insisted that his is not a trustee appointment despite a very clear paragraph in the constitution saying that it is. A board member criticised the provision of knitted hats for sailors (see the earlier post) and for premature babies in Africa with the words, "They're not even English."

So the provisions of the constitution, any semblance of managerial integrity and even basic Christian charity seem to have become invisible. Ora pro nobis.

Invisibility cloak

The cloak of invisibilty still works, it seems. I responded to the CEO, and when my letter received no reply or acknowledgement inside a month I sent another copy suggesting generously that perhaps the original had been lost in the post. That was six weeks ago and still no acknowledgement.

Invisible.

Big fish, little fish

The CEO of Mothers' Union has written in person to ask, very kindly, if I might transfer the diocesan Mothers' Union web domain to the central organisation. It's a shame the diocesan administrative people couldn't bring themselves to ask me directly, but then I recognise the technique of rendering someone non grata as a 'non-person' - or an 'unperson' to quote Orwell's 1984 again!

But what a waste: the CEO of a a multi-national organisation of more than 3.6 million members having to concern himself with this little fish in his big pond.

Less than 24 hours after replying that I would of course be happy to relinquish the domain name I was told that the diocesan functionaries "had bought a web site." For £5.99. I look forward to seeing that one!