On the 9th of October 2005 the BCA held their AGM and answered the question I had posed for them in an e-mail sent to the whole profession “has the BCA lost its integrity? Because the would not implement Human Rights Law into their disciplinary Procedures.
According to the minutes of the AGM “ all full members present unanimously agreed that the minutes (AGM 2004) should be adopted by the membership as a true and correct record” No doubt if they repeat this often enough they will believe it to be a true and correct record, and if pigs can fly I will be sued for libeling all those people in my article.
In fact the BCA has made no comment about anything I have written and have taken what is possibly the only thing they can do, ignore the article and hope their members do not believe me. The official line is they “can not comment because they are seeking legal advice”.
At the 2005 AGM Barry Lewis “invited” the BCA’s legal adviser Mr Eastman to give his legal opinion regarding the statement in the AGM agenda “That the changes made to the BCA’s M&A’s in 2004 were in contravention of English law”
Mr Eastman told the AGM “That in exercising the powers given to it by the changes, the BCA council would in normal circumstances allow the person at risk of been voted off , a chance to answer complaints about his conduct. That being the case, the Common Law requirement to hear both sides of an argument before making a decision was satisfied”.
No doubt they forgot to inform Mr Eastman that Marc Christensen was not at the AGM last year so he would not have been at the council meeting to present his side of what ever he is supposed to have done. Unless they got him on the phone, the BCA Council voted to kick him off without hearing his side.
Mr Eastman then went on to say, “The Human Rights Act in such circumstances was irrelevant and as a matter of strict law, the BCA was not subject to the Human Rights act because it is a members club”
So its all right then for the BCA to breach the Human Rights Act? I don’t think so! but it will need someone who is prepared to go to the High Court to test this. What is important here is this is the advice BCA council will act on in the coming year. There were only 60 members at the AGM but they have voted for BCA council to keep this tool to maintain its autocratic control over its 1000 or so members.
