WI AGM - Delegate Report

NFWI CENTENARY AGM – ROYAL ALBERT HALL 4^TH JUNE 2015

Due to the early start at the Albert hall, Somerset delegates were taken by coach and stayed in a local hotel on the Wednesday night before. I teamed up with the other ladies from our Group and Sparks Beattie (our former President and now a Devon Federation member), also joined us for a meal in the evening.

In the morning there was much excitement outside the Albert Hall as we all arrived and found our relevant “Door Number” to queue at. There were sporadic security checks – only experienced by our youngest member!

We were seated in the main floor in front of the stage in the 17^th row, so had a fairly good view of the speakers as well as viewing on large screens either side. All the ladies on the stage wore hats or fascinators and were very smartly dressed for the occasion – we did note the hats came off after lunch!

The meeting opened with the singing of Jerusalem.

Chairs Address

After some official items, Janice Langley gave her address and the Centenary Baton cushion was paraded through the hall to the front. It has spent 18 months travelling 18,000 miles and visited every Federation; a badge for each was attached to the cushion. A few photos of the activities at each handover were shown (not ours). She spoke of the huge changes which have been seen by women in the last century, but how we are still women working together, making things better for themselves and their communities. She also noted it is 100 years since the first women in the Police force – although they were only allowed to carry umbrellas at that time!

The royal connection was mentioned back to Queen Mary opening Sandringham WI in 1917 and the Queen Mother opened the Education Centre at Denman in 1970.

Treasurers Statement

Amongst the official figures, the Treasurer told us that the subs in 1915 were 2 shillings – roughly 0.2% of the average income, which is a similar proportion today. Once there were 137 Institutes in 1917, a framework of Federations and National were needed. As a brief summary last year’s Income of £6.5M was exceeded by £6.8M outgoings, but this was due to part of the recent large tax refund being used over several years. Denman is currently breaking even, WI Enterprises has increased income. So for now things are secure, with funds available for new activities. It is aimed to increase the Federation part of the subs whilst remaining affordable to all.

Arrival of the Royal Party.

We all anxiously awaited the three royals to arrive (the Queen, Princess Royal and the Countess of Wessex).
We sang the National Anthem right in front of the Queen which was a really special moment for me.

The Queen was presented with the Baton cushion. She then stood up to make a speech, officially opening the meeting and noting that the last century has seen women winning the vote, climbing Everest and the election of the first female Prime Minister, Throughout these times and changes, the WI has been a constant throughout, with opportunities for women to give to society greater than ever, yet has stayed relevant and forward-thinking. The three Royals were then presented with posies by granddaughters of members – all with very differing styles! Certainly a moment for them to remember.  After singing Jerusalem with us, the royal party then left us and were taken out of the main hall to be presented with the Centenary cake made from the winning competition entry. Several of the Trustees joined them (the main item reported in the press), but Janice and 2 others remained with us to continue the meeting.

First Guest Speaker: Lucy Worsley, historian and Curator of the Royal Palaces (Tower of London, Hampton Court) and TV presenter. Lucy was a fantastic speaker, whose delivery and storytelling held your concentration. She has been researching the history of the WI for a Programme soon to be shown on BBC2 called “Cake Bakers and Troublemakers”.  She described us as a “seriously influential and surprisingly progressive campaigning institution”.

Resolution: This part of the meeting was drawn out, made the timetable run over considerably and somewhat disappointing. Firstly we were asked to accept a change on wording to the resolution by changing the words “nursing care and personal care” to read “health care and social care”, which was a much more enveloping term with a broader remit. After a rather random hands up this was approved by a large majority.

We then heard speakers for and against the Resolution which did not make it any clearer over the issues of continuing care and how could this all possibly be funded. Some questions from the floor were well presented, others just repeated the same issues. After some time, it was proposed that we “move to the next business” – ie agree not to vote at all on the existing resolution. It was proposed that this resolution was not worthy of what we could achieve, some of it was out of date due to a new Care Act and that we supported the aims, but not the detail.  A show of hands again brought a huge majority in favour of not taking this any further in its current form and wording. It was suggested that we will not give up on it, but no more details given at this stage. This was all rather awkward for the Chair and felt to be a waste of time getting it so far through the process.  We then finally broke for a shorter than planned lunch.

After lunch we heard two songs performed by the winning competition choir who were from Avon Federation.

Guest Speaker: Baroness Grey-Thomson DBE, former wheelchair racer, parliamentarian and television presenter. Tanni was again a fantastic speaker, moving about the stage in her wheelchair and telling us tales of her story along with highlights working on the Olympic bid and joining to the House of Lords as a crossbench peer in 2005. She was certainly inspirational and has achieved much for herself and helped others over her career.

Live link ups – throughout the day we linked up with 3 different areas – Anglesey, North Devon and Cheshire who joined in singing and talked to us about how they were celebrating the day. I was proud to know that we too were joining in back in Leigh on Mendip and hopefully enjoying it as much as they were.

Guest Speaker: Helena Morrissey, CEO of an investment company and founder of the “30% Club” which aims to get 30% of females onto FTSE 100 boards. This has grown from 12% in 2010 to 24% now, so things are looking up. As a business women who also has 9 children, she has achieved much, but did not have the same inspirational effect on me as the other speakers.

Kingston Project Fashion Show. We were told of a project where 21 WI members mentored fashion students at Kingston University. The results were shown as a fashion show of 11 woolen garments worn by student models. This was a welcome change at the end of the day and fun to watch.

The AGM closed with singing of the Jerusalem and Land of My Fathers (in Welsh).

The whole day was a fantastic experience – to be one of 5100 women in the Albert hall is fabulous, but with such a great atmosphere, common purpose, fantastic speakers and the presence of Royalty – this was certainly the “must have” ticket of 2015. Thanks to both LOM and Strawberry Line WIs for allowing me to represent you.

This report was taken from my notes taken on the day and is not a full record – I note that WI life has a great write up this month which may differ slightly!   There is also the full recording (7hours) available on YouTube – just scroll along and pick the snippets you’d most like to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVuoLzrydks available til June 2016.

Mary Mears

Leigh on Mendip WI

June 2015

Ella from Frome & Sue from Buckland Dinham waiting to go into the Albert Hall

Mary, Sue, Marion (SBB), Ella and Sparks the night before the AGM