1977: New Officers and posts - updated post

Updated October 2020

In 1977, there were big changes afoot at the GA with changes in membership and in the nomination of officers and branch representatives on the GA's council.
This introduced the current system (due to end in a couple of weeks) where a Senior and Junior Vice President of the GA was nominated and elected.
There were also a series of other posts created, and quickly filled.

The Honorary Librarian post was changed to become Library and Information Officer for example. There were also terms added for the length that someone could occupy these posts.

Reference
“The Geographical Association.” Geography, vol. 62, no. 1, 1977, pp. 49–54. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41415171. Accessed 16 Aug. 2020.




Daugherty, R., Lewis, G., & Mills, D. (1978). The Geographical Association. Geography, 63(2), 126-137. Retrieved August 25, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40568896

Updated 12th October 2020

As seen above, Richard Daugherty was involved in writing the Annual Report of 1977, when he was heavily involved with the GA.

He has very kindly been sending detailed updates to a number of posts on the blog as I got in touch with him earlier in the month.

Here is his update on these new posts, which contain useful additional constitutional detail on this phase of the GA's development.

There were two radical developments in the Association's activities in the mid 1970s both of which, in their very different ways, would have significant impacts on the GA's responsiveness to change in subsequent years. 

One of those developments, publication of 'Teaching Geography' from April 1975, has been well documented and is still central to the GA's work to this day. The other major change, a new constitution for the Association, was just as important but most members would have been unaware of it. 

As Bill Balchin's Centenary History of the GA has recorded (see page 60), the process of change had been initiated in 1973 with the formation of a committee to review the Association's aims and functions. After several years of detailed discussions the new constitution was eventually introduced in 1977. 

The 1977 Annual Report, quoted here, suggests that change would only be justified if it created a service that was both 'more responsive to members' and brought about 'more effective involvement nationally and internationally'. 

I was not a member of the committee drawing up the new constitution but I was, as a Joint Honorary Secretary whose term of office straddled the old and new constitutions, very much involved in implementing it. So in what ways did the Association become more responsive and more effective? 

The three new standing committees - Education, Publications & Communications, Finance & General Purposes - were each remitted to shape GA policy in their respective areas and to make recommendations to Council. From 1977 there would be much fuller discussions than hitherto about policy and strategy. 

To take just one example, the Association's more extensive range of publications from the 1980s on emerged from those discussions, led by the newly created role of Publications Officer (first Rex Beddis, followed by David Boardman). 

The change to an Education Standing Committee came just in time for the GA to become better able to respond, speedily and effectively, to the national debates in England over the decade that followed Prime Minister Callaghan's Ruskin College speech in 1976. Each time a new set of curriculum proposals emerged the Education Standing Committee, chaired initially by Rex Walford and with myself as its secretary, would frame a response. More broadly, the 1977 constitution also ensured that the holding of any of the Association's honorary offices should be time limited to a maximum of six years (except for trustees). 

As Balchin has reported, this brought to an end 'a tradition of individual lifelong service to the Association' and replaced it with 'a relatively rapid turnover of officers to ensure a continued flow of new ideas and prevent any incipient stagnation'. 

Constitutions can be mind numbingly boring documents but they do matter. I have so far not been able to find a record of the members of the 'Organisation and Development Committee' (chaired by Denys Brunsden?) who must have spent many hours shaping and framing that new constitution. But their contribution to the Association's vigorous health in the late 1970s and beyond should not be underestimated.

I shall perhaps try to find out from Denys who was on that committee.

And I have also noted the change to more frequent turnover, rather than the (almost literally life long) service of people such as H J Fleure and others...