The Stage

Stale and complacent

Published Friday 28 April 2006 at 17:30

I note with interest The Stage article (News, April 13, page 2), regarding the Representative Group’s decision to field Graham Hamilton, rather than Harry Landis as president in the coming election. As a councillor and member of the group, I often met with them on the Monday night before council meetings. It was an opportunity to go through the agenda and discuss various topics of interest. The group has favoured a series of pre-elections, to decide who is to be their sole candidate, rather than field several candidates who would cancel each other out. Nothing in the rules forbids these Monday meetings. However, it can also be a forum for destructive tactics against those the group think of as dissenting voices on the council, as I and Heather French (also a Representative Group member) discovered last year.

Heather and I began asking questions about the Guild House refurbishment project (more than a year ago) when the council agreed to pay out a vast sum of money without so much as a contract in place, or seeing the tenders involved. The senior management team (SMT), and the officers (all Representative Group members) seemed continually bent on thwarting our efforts to see the documentation and I am saddened that we did not receive the support we might have expected from a group supposedly keen on democracy. The Rule Book allows any Equity member to look at the books.

In July last, the council voted for an investigation, to keep us from resigning, (see The Stage, August 17, 2005), but this investigation turned out to be organised by the SMT, and was hardly impartial. The opinion of the barrister we consulted was that it should be conducted by a professional referee with the appropriate expertise and above all, independent of those whose conduct we were querying. However, last November, with the aid of the officers and the SMT, this advice was ignored by the council.

With a new general secretary in place, whose vision included transparency, we arranged a meeting with her and Harry on March 23, to see if we could sort things out once and for all and get a proper investigation going. For the April 4 council meeting, we tabled a motion confirming the agreement that we had reached with them, on the sound advice and in the presence of our barrister. Christine Payne, general secretary of Equity) said that more work had to be done on Guild House and things might be learnt from previous mistakes.

However, at the council meeting, she and the president, ignoring the impartial advice of another barrister, forced through an unnecessary motion that effectively kiboshed the agreement they had hitherto agreed to. Council was even told not to read the barrister’s advice. The vote not to hear our motion was won by about five votes, so I thank those who wanted to hear what we had to say.

Our previous general secretary’s argument was that certain documents were: “Commercially confidential”, which was not legally viable. Now we have “council confidentiality” on this and other matters, thereby successfully gagging councillors who want this matter cleared up. I wonder why senior staff, who are, after all, our employees, are still burying this building issue, as it does lead one to wonder what there is to hide.

My opinion is that the Representative Group, with its big majority on the council, has become somewhat stale and complacent, too apt to be lead by the SMT and rubber stamp their decisions, even against legal advice. This split in the ranks over the presidency may be a good thing in the long run. It may force them to look again at their reasons for standing for council and free speech and transparency may again be the order of the day. I had been a committed member of the group but our members, facing another hike in their subs, must be their primary concern.

Frances Cuka

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