The blogpower club is going through “growing pains” at the present, a schism of accusation, resignation and confusion after an unfortunate series of events. This type of happening is all too common in civil society, but the timeshift nature of a virtual global community makes it like a road accident happening in slow motion when you are at the sharp end. It will resolve itself to some form of conclusion (which could be at either end of the outcome continuum) given time and is of course a matter for the membership of what is a private club so there will be no washing of dirty linen here.
I am reminded of my years in Coventry Eighteen Plus Group, and whilst there are vague parallels with Blogpower these memories are not trying to draw any comparisons, other than a demonstration of the more colourful weaves in the rich tapestry of human behaviour.
I moved to Coventry in 1976 and didn’t like it very much, the place being much less cool than Newcastle. My social scene was constrained to my fellow course members somewhat and you don’t always want to spend all your time with the people you spend all day with in college.
In the Summer of 1977, I went to see the Coventry Carnival and noticed a bunch of diverse individuals on the back of a lorry looking like they were having a lot of fun. (I might be remembering it wrong, but I think they were having a disco or a party). A banner on the back of the cab said Coventry Eighteen Plus and I filed it away for future reference. In due course I found their programme of events in the Tourist Information,
tracked them down and paid them a visit. Suffice it to say that they lived up to my expectations and I went along a couple of times in December. I then had to knuckle down to my exams so took a study break but revisited them again just after Easter, joined and so began my 25 year involvement with the Eighteen Plus Movement.
Now I found out quite quickly that not all groups are alike and that Coventry was one of the better ones. (Had I visited a bog-standard one I would have been unlikely to have returned). Plus Groups have Committee elections every six months and in due course I became PRO on the small but well focussed committee. (Plus Groups organise everything themselves and part of the hook that keeps people involved is that you enjoy a wide range of events and eventually want to organise even better ones). However, Coventry was having growing pains, as there were three distinct types of members, namely lively, ordinary and dysfunctional. It was also becoming a victim of its success as once the membership went over about sixty or so, if they all showed up the room was too full and it wasn’t possible to put on a group night event or properly manage the admin of notices, who was going to what and so on. As it got bigger, it also got more impersonal and more dull where only the lively people were participating in the weekend events. (I was a lively, by the way, a bit of a party animal in the right company).
Eventually, it snapped and a schism happened, a new group being formed in record time from a core lively clique called Coventry West. I was invited to move across with them but I was torn somewhat as I knew that the old group would just expire through inertia and eventual atrition so the outcome would be one new small group and one closed one. This was great for the livelys, bad for Eighteen Plus in general.
So, I soldiered on, picking up the Chairmanship for a couple of terms, getting some good people involved along the way and then taking a back seat as an advisory role, moving on to a less demanding role as Area Magazine Editor. By then, I had finished my qualifications and was starting to work away a fair bit but both Coventry Groups were in good hands and I even found a member to pick up the editorship for me when I unexpectedly landed the Norway job. Coventry West continued for a while but eventually collapsed for reasons I don’t recall now, although I occasionally visited them and I felt that there was an air of contrived conviviality there. Members that join together tend to leave together. The clique was too closed to welcome too many new people (unless they fitted in straight away) and this type of grouping eventually fails through over-familiarity and boredom. Regular 18 Plus groups, however, often failed for something we called the wally event horizon, where too many misfits join and the good people leave.
These days, 18 Plus is still going, but only a shadow of what it was when I joined numerically which is a shame as I was lucky enough to join when it was at its peak with 10,000 members. My saddest moment was in helping clear out our national headquarters building as we had needed to sell it and move to rented accommodation. Why had Plus slumped so much? For the last twenty years, young people have more spending power and would rather join social organisations like Spice where the activities are arranged by professional co-ordinators- at a price, of course.
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