The Hotly Contested Elections For The Perfect President

 Most meetings took place in the early days at the grand Harrow Arts Centre. This fine building was once a school. 

When the club started, in 1948, just after the war, (WW2) it was run with making money for members in mind, making money for members as writers. The President found magazines which paid contributors. Others found competitions with cash prizes. Members read out their submissions for competition entries and everybody helped polish the writing to perfection. The members got payment, a living, or pocket money to supplement their paid job.

As the years went on, members moved away.  One guiding light went to St Albans and started another club. Other retired. Members added were the retired who wanted to write their family history.

If I remember rightly, and my husbands claims I rarely do, this is how the history of Harrow Writers' Circle evolved

One impecunious person had no desire to find the cost of a postage stamp, to concentrate on composing a covering letter. The years of rejections had worn them down.

After meetings we met in the bar in the Arts Centre. I used to sit listening to a local dentist, Bernard Leton, a dentist. He lived in Aylmer Drive, Stanmore, a private road. (I had lived in Aylwards Drive, a turning off it. Bernard Leton often remonstrating with newcomers and mocked their lack of ambition. 

I remember a newcomer said, "I just want to write. I don't want to get published. And I don't expect to get paid."

The dentist took a swig of his whisky, tutted, shook his head, sighed, and retorted,  "Why waste your time! Writers must find a market. Writers must write for readers. I am a dentist. A successful dentist. I don't make a set of dentures to entertain myself. I don't have piles of unfinished dentures. 

"I don't leave teeth for children for years sitting in a drawer. Until the children are too big for the dentures. 

"The teeth don't talk to themselves. I look for a person who needs teeth. They are polished. They don't have to be perfect. I make good enough teeth to fit the person who pays. I get paid for my trouble. If I didn't, I'd be out of business!"

But a year later the dentist had retired. He was tired of rejections. He wrote to entertain us. He repeated to us what the newcomer had said a year earlier. The flabbergasted newcomer, now an old-timer, with new skills and hopes, repeated back what the dentist had said. "Wait a minute. A year ago you told us that it's no good leaving writing unseen, sitting in a drawer like unused dentures!"

Locked Out!

Meanwhile, the Arts Centre had moved on. It had its ups and downs. It expanded. A mini-theaters was added. 

Our meeting room moved around. We were moved out to another downstairs room. At first we were upset. Then we decided we preferred it.  Several of the retired writers could not climb the stairs to our second floor room. 

We moved out to a hut. Nobody could find us. Potential new members could not find us. Our existing members could not find us.

New management spent money on repainting and installing computers. The charges for room hire went up. So we had a supplementary meeting, for members only, in a members; house. We tried rotating homes, but members had events at home so the venues and and meeting nights changed. People could not keep track of where the meetings were. 

The treasurer went on holiday. The treasurer fell ill. The treasurer moved house and disappeared .

One awful night, we arrived to find the doors locked and barred with tape and signs on the door. It seemed that the owners or management had run out of money or owed money. The Arts Centre was not a viable business.

The bad news was that the Arts Centre management had gone out of business, with the year's rental money which had to be paid up front.

The good news was that the treasurer came back.The treasurer told us that they had procrastinated paying. So we still had our money. 

The treasurer was forgiven. The treasurers's lax inaction has saved us! 

Was it our club's fault that the Arts Centre went out of business! Oh, dear. Apparently not. They wanted to put up the prices. They wanted us to change rooms, and the treasurer had to consult us. She asked the management to come up with a suggestion of a cheaper room. They never got back to her. So, in effect, she was in negotiation with the management when they would not take our booking because they were too busy and they went out of business.

So we had our money for the rent. But no venue.

Petitions were raised asking for funding for a New Arts Centre from local government. Supposing the council sold off the building and used the money to build a new arts centre in the centre of Harrow for more people. 

But the people in Hatch End wanted their library and arts centre. I seem to remember that I stood in front of the supermarket alongside, Safeway, and had a chat with a friendly member of the council. The council would match money that local people pledged.

This went on for weeks. Meanwhile we were meeting in a home. But the public could not be allowed to join meetings. Because the house insurance would not cover strangers coming to meetings.

The meeting location was kept a secret. If a person phoned and gave their name and address they could attend a meeting. 

In the centre of the ground floor was a huge hall with a stage. Every year or two, a fair would be held in the hall showcasing all the clubs meeting in the building. 

Publicity and Marketing

This was our vital chance to meet potential new members and exchange vital phone numbers. In a profitable year when we could afford printing, we handed out a well-written leaflet, created with the benefit of twenty writers' buzzing brains. 

At a Christmas, Easter or summer event we might have the opportunity to perform on that stage some poems or even a playlet.

The AGM

In a good year, the minutes were read at home in advance, the secretary hunted for their glasses and signed approval in about half a minute, and the sole candidate for presidency was elected in bye a show of hands. The only excitement was when somebody demanded that we have a show of no and abstain. 

This wasted five minutes until the outgoing president, who, in a good year, was also the incoming president, agreed to do so, because it was protocol at meetings worldwide. Then nobody voted against. The only person who abstained was somebody who had not turned on their hearing aid. 

However, one year things did not go as unplanned.

The AGM, standing for Annual General Meeting, consisted not of Agreement, General votes of thanks and Moving on, but of Argument, Gibes and Machinations, and specific Accusation, Groans and Moans.

Once a year, like big businesses, small clubs such as a Harrow Writers' Circle hold their annual meeting to discuss issues of importance. At the annual meeting. we discussed whether we could continue to meet, how much we pay out in rent and insurance, and how much the members must pay. We occasionally had the idea of paying to produce an annual anthology to showcase our wonderful words, if no editor could be found to publish our great works, or we were too shy to show them to anybody except the other twenty members, and that after weeks of cajoling and chasing.

We were all paying about twenty pounds a year for membership.  Why did we have to pay anything? We had to pay to rent a room. We provided refreshments, coffee and biscuits or cake for ourselves and members and visitors, for the committee meetings.

The arts centre was growing dilapidated. Boring but essential improvement such as stopping the roof leaking had to be fixed. At huge cost. 

Worse still, of even less benefit to us writers, the club had been told by the council that we were legally required to take out insurance. In case a member of the public fell over the steps at the entrance, or fell off a wonky chair, and sued the collective members of the club. We needed, to have the funds instantly available for the burial of the visitor who died on the doorstep before reaching our room. And lifelong support of their six dependents and three generations of lawyers.

The Election

Each president presented something new.

Sometimes it was hard to find a new president. Mostly we persuaded the old one to stay on. Or the president picked a successor and helped them.

Then we had a contested election. Two good candidates.

I recall one person asking what the requirements were for being President. 

A member, maybe me, tried to reassure her, "You just have to give a vote of thanks to visiting speakers and say how much we enjoyed the speech."

The potential candidate protested, "What if I don't like the speech!"

Barbara, ever diplomatic, beamed, "There's always something to say, that we appreciate the speaker travelling such a distance ..."

"And if the speaker hasn't come at a distance?"

"That we had been looking forward to the speech for many months, because we had booked early thinking she must be busy and in demand ..."

"What if we only asked her the night before, and she wasn't doing anything else?"

"Then we appreciate her coming at short notice, helping us out, taking time to visit us when the family and job must keep her or him, busy. It was interesting because you had read the book .."

"What if I haven't read the book, to get to meet the author. That you had not read the book but now you had met her you and many of the members would be interested in doing so."

I remember wondering whether the candidate wanted the post, and was suitable for it.

I began to appreciate the good and unusual characteristics of Presidents who always found something good to say about a speaker's speech. Occasionally a diplomatic President enthused so much, about a speech I thought was dire, that I began to think I must have daydreamed and it was my fault that I had missed something vital.

Another potential president did not consider that she might have become president the following year. She seemed disappointed and angry. Maybe she assumed that anybody who did not vote for her disliked her She left and formed another writing group.

Posting The Club Members' Competition Entries

Gill Heller, the former head (or deputy head?) of the local primary school in Hatch End agreed to help us get more success and kudos by helping us to enter competitions. The rules would be read out at the meeting. We would all sit and write. The results would be read out to everybody, with suggestions for improvement. Jill would type up the entries and send them off in one big envelope. 

We had three club member winners in one contest. Great kudos for our club. An encouragement to all.