Part 1 Majority
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My first experience with Majority decision making was in 1973 when I became a teacher at Tulse Hill School in London and began to participate in the lively union life both at the school group meetings, and at the monthly meetings of the Lambeth Teachers Association covering all the schools in that borough. Despite my naïveté, I found the local group meetings relatively easy to follow and participate in and after being at the school for a year I was elected to Chair the group meetings. The staff at this school were highly political and those were days of intense political conflict in Britain. When strike votes were carried by very small margins, it caused me considerable grief, and I experi- enced a steep learning curve. The monthly meetings at Lambeth Town Hall were something else. To be honest, even at the end of three years of attending those meetings it was still all that I could do to follow what was happening in the meeting and know when to put my hand up, far less have any real influence on the business of the meet- ings. The furious political battles between rival political factions in the union mobilized all the resources of formal meeting procedure. Later I went to work at North East London Polytechnic as a technician and was soon elected Secretary of the local astms group. Over a period of six and a half years there I gained a great deal of experience as a unionist, both in repre- senting the technical staff and in chairing the Joint Union Committee bringing the technicians together with administrative, maintenance and academic staff. But my one effort to represent the branch at the astms Annual Conference introduced me to union politics at an entirely different level again. Eventually, by the time I retired in 2002, with experience in three more unions in Austra- lia, I would say I had mastered union activity and the procedures required for participation at all levels. When I had occasion to participate in committees which were part of the university’s collegiate management structure, I found that the procedures were basically the same as what I was familiar with from my union activity. In each of these experiences, the procedures were a little different, but they were all part of a genre of procedures ably outlined by Sir Walter Citrine in his book “The abc of Chairmanship” (1939). In 2003, as part of my work with the Marxists Internet Archive (which oper- ates by Consensus, by the way), I had occasion, a few years ago, to transcribe the Minutes of the General Council of the International Workingmen’s Asso- ciation, meeting in London from 1864 to 1868. I was struck by the fact that this body evidently operated the same meeting procedures as I had personally experienced in London in and Melbourne over a century later. The name of the Chairman is recorded, then the minutes are read, and acceptance moved and seconded; reports from branches, correspondence, and resolutions are moved,