Ballot papers go out today for the election of CILIP councillors for 2014. Last night I and the other five candidates took part in a hustings event at CILIP headquarters in London. It was a curious experience — we knew that the sound and moving pictures were being transmitted to thousands in their homes, but the Charter Suite held only the six candidates, the President Phil Bradley who chaired the discussion, three real CILIP members, and the audio-visual team and CILP staff, without whom none of our maunderings would have reached the outside world.
Inevitably I think of things I could have said better, and I wish I had more control over my hands. The one moment of l’esprit de l’escalier I’ll permit myself is to say that I think what is wrong with the relationship between Council and CILIP members is summed up in remarks by Andy Dawson and John Dolan, both members of Council standing for re-election. Andy says that he was against the motion of no confidence in Ed Vaizey passed at last month’s AGM . No one would have known this at the meeting, as he, along with the rest of council kept quiet. Later, John Dolan says this was because Council had taken a collective decision not to intervene in the debate. This seems to me at best discourteous to the meeting, at worst dishonest. if I go to a meeting, I do so believing that I owe it to the meeting to speak out if I have something to say and that’s the way I’ll behave on Council if elected. Council seemed think that the meeting and the motion didn’t matter enough for any of them to be bothered to say anything. After the meeting, they feel able to say, ‘of course, I didn't agree with the resolution’. They have no right to do so, if they didn’t have the courage to put their view in the meeting. In truth, I think the reason Council didn’t speak out is that they were split and could not agree.
Here’s the video of the event, all two hours of it. See also the CILIP page on how to vote in the elections, which gives the timetable
I’ve created an archive of the tweets in a Google spreadsheet
Update: I've now replaced the video with an edited one from CILIP's YouTube channel.