Our Scotland - www.our-scotland.org

carol

The next General Meeting of Independence First is at the Methodist Church,
20 Marketgait (West), Dundee, Saturday 30th June

Registration 12.45, 1pm start. Refreshments will be available

New members are welcome

regards

Carol

Dave Coull · Independentista Joined: 07 Nov 2006 Posts: 998

Carol writes of a forthcoming IF general meeting "new members welcome". IF has lost quite a few members recently and badly needs some new ones, so Carol is apparently advertising this members' meeting as if it were a public meeting. However, one disadvantage of allowing people to turn up and join on the day is that it can sometimes lead to strange consequences. For instance, at a meeting in March 2007, Eric Canning, the Leader of the Communist Party in Scotland, who had joined IF just a few weeks earlier, was elected as convenor by a majority of one vote - and some of his supporters just joined that day. Since then, many changes have taken place in IF. Some of these changes were intended to strengthen the position of the convenor, but the most controversial change was the decision to close down the members' forum. It was THAT change which led to a collective resignation from IF, including by the actual founders of IF as well as by the Secretary and Membership Secretary. The new regime in IF, now firmly in charge, apparently think they are immune to any problems that might be caused by people turning up and joining on the day. We shall see. Those of us who resigned from IF and formed "Determination", the non-aligned campaign for self-determination for Scotland, are much keener on internal democracy and open-ness than IF, but (understandably, having experienced being "taken over" once) are being a bit more cautious about who we invite to join us at our general meeting in Perth on July 7th.