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Report from the ECF AGM in Manchester: 14 October,
2023
by Tim Wall, NCCU Delegate
Key Takeaways:
1. The
ECF AGM in Manchester on Saturday October 14, 2023 voted in as a Non‑Executive
Director Sarah Longson, despite being warned by the Governance Committee that
the proposed imminent appointment by the ECF Board of her husband (Alex
Longson) as Finance Director would constitute a likely conflict of interest.
2. The
NCCU’s membership proposal (£25 for all adult members in a single category)
was defeated heavily by an alliance of the block vote wielded by CEO Mike
Truran’s allies, along with delegates who said that Bronze members would rather
give up playing league chess than pay £7 extra for a single membership
category.
3. The
meeting instead voted for one of the Board’s membership options: Combining
Gold and Silver memberships at £33, while retaining the Bronze membership
at £18. In effect, this raises the membership fee by £6 for Silver Members,
reduces it by £6 for Gold Members and creates a bigger barrier (upgrading
will cost £15) for players playing in their first congress or tournament.
Late Start
The first issue at the
AGM was a forced change of venue, which led to the meeting starting 1 hour
and 15 minutes late.
The original venue, the
NatWest offices in Manchester city centre, had to be abandoned after a prolonged
fire drill disrupted proceedings. Delegates reconvened at the Edwardian
Radisson Hotel 500 metres away and the meeting finally got under way at
2:45pm. This reduced the time available for the meeting, and meant that the
key debate on reforming the membership categories was somewhat rushed, as
it was near the end of the agenda.
Credit should be given to
Council Chair David Eustace, who ran the meeting politely and efficiently
in general, despite the difficulties and time pressure, and Andrew Walker,
the ECF webmaster who kept the hybrid part of the meeting on Zoom running
remarkably smoothly. I don’t know exactly how the meeting was for the
participants on Zoom, as I was in the room in Manchester and we generally
only heard the Zoom participants rather than seeing them. Because of echo
issues, participants in the room were encouraged not to join the Zoom call,
and Zoom participants were only heard in audio, not seen in video.
Participants in
Manchester included:
David Eustace (Council Chair),
Stephen Woodhouse (Board Non-Exec Chair, carrying various proxies for CEO
Mike Truran and others), Nigel Towers (Director of Home Chess), Nick Faulks
(Finance Committee chair), Robert Stern (Governance committee chair), John
Reyes (various), myself (NCCU, Northumberland, Gold Members, plus various
northern organisations and proxies), Chris Fegan (Chess in Schools and
Communities), Dave Clayton (Leyland Rapidplay), Mark Murrell (Essex), Adam
Ashton (outgoing Finance Director), Gareth Ellis (Merseyside and Cheshire
& North Wales) and Damien McIlvenney (Manchester, at the chair’s
invitation).
Online, participants
included Malcolm Pein (International Director), Rob Willmoth (Membership
Director), Aga Milewska (Women’s Chess Director), Sarah Longson (UKCC and
Non-Executive Director candidate), Katarzyna Toma (Non-Executive Director
candidate), Michael Farthing (Voting Registration Officer), Stephen Mann
(Doncaster Congress), Stephen Greep (Non-Executive Director), Mike
Waddington (Gold Members), Adrian Elwin (proxy for North Essex League &
Bury St Edmonds Congress), Gavin Cartwright (Silver Members), Roger
Lancaster (Watford Junior Chess), Satish Gaekwad (SCCU) and Paul Cooksey
(Berkshire). (Apologies to those I’ve missed.)
Committee Reports
The meeting was
essentially in four more main parts: reports from the Board and Committees,
contested elections, uncontested elections, and the most controversial
policy issue – proposed changes to the membership structure and pricing.
The Board Report and
Strategy Statement were light in substance, and were glossed over and noted
as delegates clearly wanted to get to other key issues.
The Finance Committee
report, moved by Nick Faulks, was approved with a couple of objections,
over its criticism of the 2022 Chennai Olympiad expenditures and its criticism
of the NCCU’s membership proposal.
Non-Executive
Director Election
Votes:
Sarah Longson 125
Katarzyna Toma 99
Against all 17
Before the hustings for
Non-Executive Director took place, Governance Committee chair Robert Stern
warned the AGM that, as the Board had indicated it was ready to appoint
Alex Longson, Sarah’s husband and fellow director of the UK Chess
Challenge, as Finance Director, this would create potential conflicts of
interest. In Robert’s (very diplomatic) language, the outcome of both Sarah
and Alex being on the Board simultaneously was described as “sub-optimal,”
due to the non-executive directors’ role in examining the work of the
executive directors.
However, the AGM took a
different view, electing Sarah by a slim majority (with the support of CEO
Mike Truran, who nominated her, and International Director Malcolm Pein,
who canvassed delegates on her behalf in the weeks before the AGM).
Malcolm Pein appeared to
dismiss suggestions of conflicts of interest by saying that the ECF really
needed a Finance Director as it prepares to receive £500,000 in government
funding for the development of elite chess, and that therefore Alex Longson
would be very soon proposed and supported for the role.
In Sarah Longson’s pitch
for the post, she claimed that she faced “discrimination” in standing for
the role, and that comments about conflicts of interest were unwarranted. Sarah,
who currently sits on the Board of the Chess Trust and is an ECF Junior
Selector and a former Women’s Chess Director, said she would bring a “fresh
approach” to the Board, without going into specifics.
In her comments to the
AGM, Katarzyna Toma (a Women’s Grandmaster from Poland who now plays for
England) stressed that her outsider status would help her hold the Board to
account, and emphasized the importance of tackling discrimination against
female players and building up the junior pyramid at all levels to develop
the game in England.
Home Chess Director
Election
Votes:
Nigel Towers (incumbent)
210
Tim Wall 46
Against All 4
The incumbent, Nigel
Towers, a close ally of CEO Mike Truran, scored a widely expected landslide
victory.
As the incumbent, Nigel’s
programme has been to maintain the status quo, with minor improvements. He
has managed to construct a large voting majority, as the key players who control
the votes at Council, plus a majority of grassroots county and other
organisations, view his record as one of reasonable competence,
particularly as the ECF’s main competitions have eventually got back to
normal after the Covid pandemic.
However, there is an
alternative view that I tried to put forward, that we need an ambitious
programme of development. There remain serious underlying issues with
English chess: congresses struggling financially, despite increased
entries; problems with the affordability of venues; a lack of strong young
players coming through the ranks, comparative to other countries; a lack of
commercial sponsorship for the game; and a clear shortage of trained
arbiters.
I also advocated for a
National Chess Centre in the centre of the country, to help the development
of the game nationally, and a number of other initiatives, contained in my Election Address.
My main aim in standing was
to raise issues and put forward an alternative. To a certain extent,
therefore, my candidature was a limited success – insomuch as Council
delegates listened to my case.
But it does raise a
difficult issue: That any candidate will struggle to get elected in the ECF
currently, unless you have explicit support of the CEO, Mike Truran. Anyone
not having his support finds that there is a well-orchestrated campaign
against them – this has been my experience in the 2020 and 2023 elections
for Home Chess Director, and the 2022 election for Non-Executive Chair of
the Board.
Uncontested Elections
Votes:
Council Chair: David
Eustace – For 231, Against 2
Membership Director: Rob
Willmoth – For 222, Against 12
FIDE Delegate: Malcolm
Pein – For 220, Against 4
Finance Committee
members:
Ray Clark – For 224,
Against 5
David Eustace – For 232,
Against 1
Governance Committee
members:
Michael Farthing – For
217, Against 5
David Eustace – For 217,
Against 4
Peter Hornsby – For 217,
Against 11
Watson Associates were appointed
as auditors for a third year running.
Silver Membership Eliminated,
Gold & Silver Combined
Arguably the AGM’s most
important item of business, the vote on membership categories, was crammed
into the last hour of the meeting – a factor that definitely affected the
length and quality of the debate.
The Board had prepared
two options for changes to membership categories, while the NCCU had its
own proposal:
Option 1) Gold, Silver
and Bronze to be combined at £33 a year, but existing Bronze members would
be allowed to stay Bronze at £18, until they let their membership lapse or
entered a congress.
Option 2) Gold and Silver
to be combined at £33 a year, while Bronze members would continue at £18 a
year.
Option 3) In contrast,
the Northern Counties proposed a flat rate of £25 for adult membership,
combining Gold, Silver and Bronze and allowing all members to be able to
have congress and FIDE-rated games rated for free.
Option 4) No Change.
At the heart of the
debate over membership, in the NCCU’s view, is whether all members should
be treated equally, and be allowed to have free rating of all forms of
chess. We felt that this idea was well represented in the NCCU proposal, and
we prepared figures for the AGM showing that there would not be a significant
negative effect on membership revenues. Unfortunately, the Chair did not
show these figures to delegates, despite a request that he do so. [See here as separate document.]
Nigel Towers, for the
Board, and some other delegates argued that a significant number of Bronze
Members would stop playing league chess if they were asked to pay an extra
£7 a year. Bronze Members rep Gareth Ellis, citing anonymous sources, said
that “whole divisions” would give up playing chess if the £25 membership
fee was introduced.
In contrast, the Board’s
two options each had significant drawbacks: Option 1, where existing Bronze
Members would only keep their £18 level until their membership lapsed or
they entered a congress, has been widely seen as unfair and impractical,
while the problem with Option 2, now adopted as policy, is that upgrading
from Bronze to Gold will now cost members an extra £15, widening the gap
between league and congress players, and potentially hitting entries at
local congresses.
Consultations on the
membership options with ordinary members of the federation were, as usual,
inadequate. Despite the Board having had six months to come up with
proposals, they only did so at the end of August. Then, the Board only did
a surveyed about which of its two options members preferred. After the
NCCU’s proposal was submitted in early September, no extra option was
added, and members were not given the option to choose ‘No Change’ over
Board Option 1 or Board Option 2.
The ECF Gold Member reps
(myself and Mike Waddington) did carry out an objective ECF Office-emailed Gold
Members survey about all four options, with the NCCU’s proposal the winner
by a mile (127 votes compared to Options 2 and 4, which each got 20 votes,
while Option 1 got 6 votes). Silver Members’ reps told the AGM they emailed
Silver Members in the few days prior to the meeting, but their results (a
majority for No Change) could not be independently verified.
To decide the membership
categories, the AGM staged a game-show style knockout voting system, where
the two ECF Board options would be voted on in a Quarter-Final.
The winning Board option
would then go through to a Semi-Final vs. the NCCU £25 option.
And finally, the winner
of the Semi-Final would go through to a Final vs. No Change.
In the debate, the Board
were given the floor three times to promote their options (one for each
vote), whereas the NCCU were only given the chance to speak to their
resolution once, after the Quarter-Final vote.
Membership Options –
Results
Round 1: Board (1) v
Board (2)
Board (1): (One category
£33, pre-existing Bronze members £18) – 40 votes
Board (2): (Two
categories: Gold £33, Bronze £18) – 215 votes
Round 2: Board (2) v NCCU
(3)
Board (2): (Two
categories: Gold £33, Bronze £18) – 211 votes
NCCU (3): (One adult
membership category £25) – 54 votes
Round 3: Board (2) v No
Change (4)
Board (2): (Two
categories: Gold £33, Bronze £18) – 136 votes
No Change (4): - 122
votes
It was decided by a vote
of 214-25 to abolish the posts of Silver Direct Members Representatives,
and to create two more Gold Member Reps.
The Board is to prepare
recommended membership fees for the remaining categories at the April 2024
Finance Meeting.
Conclusions
On the Non-Executive
Director and Finance Director elections, I feel this was very poorly
handled by the Board and AGM. It is not a question of the individuals
involved, but of the key principle that Non-Executive Directors should be
independent and impartial. This is stated clearly by the UK Institute of Directors’ instructions on
Non-Executive Directors:
“Non-executive directors are expected
to focus on board matters and not stray into ‘executive direction’, thus
providing an independent view of the company that is removed from
the day-to-day running. NEDs, then, are appointed to the board to bring:
- independence
- impartiality”
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Board
should have listened to the Governance Committee’s warning, and strongly
discouraged Sarah and Alex Longson from simultaneously standing for the
Board.
Perhaps the further key conclusion from this AGM is
that the ECF needs to adopt a “one direct member, one vote” system for
elections and other key votes to allow full democracy – as virtually every
major organisation in the country does. Without this change, the problems
with conflicts of interest will persist and may worsen.
The current impression given by the ECF is of an
organisation run largely in the interest of a small number of officials,
who have benefited from a restricted representative system where ordinary
members do not get a direct vote and whose views are not sufficiently
consulted, if at all.
Until the ECF changes to a “one direct member, one
vote” system, very little change will happen, and grassroots organisations that
try to fairly represent ordinary members will continue to be sidelined and
ignored.
17 October 2023
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