I am in total agreement with Tim Cresswell. The line about
whether to stay or go has been pushed further and further since this
issue first arose. That's okay I guess. We academics are largely
cautious and rational in our approach to problems. I take my hat
off to Mike Woods, Dave Gilbert and Co for the manner in which they
guided this action, however I do not read the result of the vote, as
Chris Hammet suggests, as an opportunity to regroup and continue `the
struggle'.
I say this because I think that we did not really lose the vote,
rather an irrevocable difference of opinion, politics and culture has
been revealed and confirmed. After Glasgow, we gave the RGS a chance
to prove their acceptablty to us. We put up with all the antiquated
proceedural red tape for _one year_. We waited and they blew it. Now
there is no shame in saying thanks very much, thanks for the
tea and biscuits, thanks for the dream of loads of funding for
research, the glossy memberships cards and the kayek, but its time to
say bye-bye, so long. The vote has made it plain that if it is a
question of integrity and not spending the rest our careers trying to
convince ourselves that we are not two-faced, we have to get out of
this mess before it divides us any further. We have wasted enough
time and energy on this issue. It is time to move on.
However rather than just talking and doing S.F.A as someone said
earlier, in terms of constituting a new union, and easing a
transition to a new organisation, I have a proposal.
If the "ownership" of the journals and of the study groups are the
things keeping people in, I think we need to acknowlege that this
constiutes a form of blackmail. Many of us now have basically
become hostage to a ill-conceived idea about geographical unity and
fear the loss of the journals and the benefits of the study groups. I
fully acknowledge the difficulty in organising a new body as argued
by Tracy S and others, but just to take her group as an example, in
the case of the Womens Study Group I cannot believe that if its
membership resigned en masse and took their subsciptions with them
that they could not fuction just as well without the IBG/RGS. Like
other study groups, is it not made up of individuals who do not need
IBG/RGS notepaper to stay in contact and to organise? Surely the same
goes for the Social and Cultural and the Political Study group and so
on. If, as is felt by many, that the IBG is like a small country
taken over by a larger one, why cannot each study group revolt and
rejoin another union? Why does each study group not just simply
mandate its members about whether to stay in or to go ? If this
worked, the transition to a new organisation would be democratic,
_well organised_ and not as difficult as some commentators have
suggested.
Can someone please reveal what the economic and legal constraints to
doing this are ? How does one go about organising such a vote
within study groups ? Will the RGS/IBG call the police if the
study group treasurers clean out the respective bank accounts and
reconstitute elsewhere ? Do we have safe houses?
Denis Linehan
University of Wales at Swansea
Swansea
Wales
I left the RGS because it represented nothing about why I chose to
study. Call be stary-eyed an all but I still think that I can
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|