Each year the committees that have sprung from the full Council of the HA have to report to the Annual General Meeting. It is good, if not always easy, to have to give account of what we do. The Branches and Members Committee tries to represent to head office what Branches are up to, (and what a glorious miscellany of activity this is). It seeks to remind everyone of the general members of the HA, those who are not first and foremost teachers of primary or secondary phase children. Curiously, a good number of us are former teachers, but there are also lecturers in the fields of higher education. Many of us are also at the greyer-haired end of the spectrum, though we constantly pursue one of the ideals of the HA that we try to recruit younger members to a shared love of history. As our meetings are serviced by officers of 59a Kennington Park Road, (currently and most ably by Anne-Marie Stephenson and Suzanah Stern), we bring back to head office our views on how things are out in the sticks in February, June and October of each year. It's good to talk and to listen, even if all of what we say doesn't and shouldn't find its way into the minutes!

I suspect that the urge to emulate the best practice in other branches is powerful among us. We delight to hear how Shropshire Branch made a big fuss, (as well as £1,000 profit), out of its Battle of Shrewsbury Event. We envy North London Branch in its ability to hold an annual dinner and annual VI Form Conference. We applaud the initiative shown by the Essex Branch Committee that had reversed a decline in membership and attendance. And we appreciated the honesty of those branch officers who were invited to speak to us over a sandwich lunch about the challenges that branches face: agonies over the best afternoons or evenings to plump for; difficulties in finding someone to take over the posts of secretary and treasurer; wondering how best to "infiltrate" and support local schools and finding and holding onto meeting places that are welcoming and affordable.

There are some constants that encourage us. Year on year what animates many of us and our branch members is the ability to gather with fellow enthusiasts for history to hear quality speakers talk on a range of fascinating subjects from ‘policing petty criminals in Victorian Kendal' to ‘Earthrise and the Apollo 8 Programme'. Increasingly, largely thanks to the intervention of the Joan Lewin Fund, these talks are illustrated with digital images from computer presentations. Our eyes and ears can feast on histories of ‘Bells and Bell Ringing' or ‘British Sealions versus the Hun - U-boat Countermeasures in 1916-17'. Often it is the sheer force of an academic mind ranging over a chosen specialism and delivering a lucid, measured and scholarly lecture that impresses, as talks on ‘The Real Oliver Cromwell' or ‘Joan of Arc'.

All power to the HA whose longstanding tradition is for those who have profited from a career in learning and teaching history to put something back into the pot, by way of talks in exchange only for reasonable expenses and a little hospitality. Long may the Speakers' List survive!

Moving forward, we contemplate ways of facilitating communication between branches and their officers and between general members. Pinching a slogan from head office, we'd like to try harder to 'make the most of your membership'. We have a splendid website nationally and ought to use and support it more. There is space already for a forum for branches and members. We are trying to add to the branch histories to be found there.

As we watch our other HA Committees develop their annual surveys, (Primary has now joined Secondary in offering this measurement of what exactly is taking place), we speculate how we can inform the HA and the wider world about the nature of HA branches. The branch finances ‘Excel' spreadsheet may provide most of what we could distribute about the branches?

Perhaps it is high time also that we stopped apologising for the age of many of our members? As the post-second-world-war baby-boomers become the bus-pass and senior-rail-card generation, we need to point out the range of activities that HA provides for the retired and pensioned members of our community. We ought to try harder to interest the increasingly healthy and relatively wealthy grey-haired brigade? The branches of today provide a natural home for the history teachers of yesterday and the history enthusiasts of tomorrow.

 

                                                                                                Ian C.Mason 4 May 2011

Ian C.Mason FHA, Chairman of the Branches and Members Committee & Honorary Secretary of Cumbria Branch of the Historical Association