Austin Lockwood Wednesday, November 21, 2018
On Sunday, the WCCF AGM will vote on the adoption of a new constitution; if accepted, this will represent a significant change in the way that the organisation is managed and our players represented, both nationally and internationally.
WCCF has its roots in the former British Postal Chess Federation (BPCF), later called the British Federation for Correspondence Chess (BFCC). When BPCF was formed in the 1960s, correspondence chess in the UK was rather splintered, with several different organisations competing for players. In order for Great Britain to be represented in ICCF, it was neccessary to form a "parent" organisation so that each of these separate clubs could be represented. Unlike many national CC organisations, the members of BPFC were organisations rather than individuals.
WCCF emerged from (what was by then) BFCC in 2012, and retained the same membership structure and many of the same member organisations; this structure worked well in the early days when there were few active players and we received a great deal of support from our member organisations. However, the democratic validity of this model has some significant deficiencies, and we should now seriously question whether or not it best represents our players.
- As we only have a small number of member organisations (currently five), and in the modern era of international online correspondence chess, it's very unlikely that new national correspondence clubs will emerge; under the current system there can never be more than five votes cast for any particular motion.
- Because there is only room for a small number of voting members, the pool of available officials is small, and engaging new volunteers is a thankless task. We wish to avoid the possibility of a small number of members voting each other into office in perpetuity by ensuring that the pool of voting members is significantly larger than the pool of prospective candidates.
- In order to have any form of representation in WCCF, currently it is necessary for a player to be a member of one of the member organisations, and even then, representation is not guaranteed and is dependent upon the democratic rights within that organisation.
This model is out of date, and undemocratic in the modern age; the proposed new constitution seeks to empower and enfranchise all Welsh players as individual members of WCCF.
Any Welsh player or representative of a current member organisation interested in this issue is cordially invited to attend the WCCF AGM on Sunday 25th November at the Premier Inn, Cardiff City Centre (Meeting Room One), 10 Churchill Way, Cardiff. The agenda and proposed new constitution are attached to the announcement below.
