National Federation of Women’s Institutes Annual Meeting
Bournemouth Wednesday 05 June 2019
Report from Southport Scarlets, Link delegate for
Formby, Woolton, Woolton Wanderers and Knotty Ash WI’s.
After a rousing rendition of Jerusalem NFWI Chair Lynne Stubbings drew attention to some continuing activities planned for the year. These include walking netball which is a collaboration between England Netball and the NFWI that will see Walking Netball sessions provided to WIs across the country, the National Gallery study day which has the female nude as its theme, and the Performing Arts day on Friday 13th September 2019. Important campaigns to note are ‘Make Time for Mental Health’ post card action and the ‘Times Up’ mass lobby on climate change on the 26th of June. There is also a Team Federation project to encourage more volunteers to work for the WI. The WI has had a good financial year and attention was drawn to the new gift aid guidance and declaration forms.
Guest Speakers
The guest speakers were Lord Bradley from the Care not Custody Coalition and Maggie Philbin from Teentech.
Lord Bradley referred to his report on vulnerable offenders with poor mental health and learning disability and their experiences of the Criminal Justice system. He reminded conference that a WI resolution in 2008 based on the principle of care not custody voted to support the introduction of a diversion service based on the use of liaison officers in custody suites as part of a National Liaison and Diversion Service focusing on diverting vulnerable people away from the Criminal Justice system. Lord Bradley was confident that this service was operating effectively and was hopeful that it would continue to expand. He thanked the WI for our support.
Maggie Philbin gave an interesting speech about Teentech, a company of which she is CEO that goes into schools to encourage pupils to find technological solutions to social problems. Maggie gave some interesting examples of outcomes from this initiative which can be found on the Teentech website.
The Resolutions
The speakers for the resolutions were excellent and made the issues very clear.
First was the resolution against the decline in bus services. This resolution is extremely significant to the many WI’s in villages where privatisation of bus services has seriously affected bus timetables and village life. LCC funding has been cut to one third and the result is that services are sporadic, slow and impractical when people need to get to appointment. The result is that there is an increasing cost to the NHS transport system. Solutions offered are the promotion of a national bus investment strategy as well as a call that bus deregulation should include more use of technology in order to be more efficient. Against these points the argument was made that instead of expecting a bus service it would be better to create systems of shared taxis and self-driving vehicles. The vote for the resolution was 5,729 and against 262 meaning that the resolution was carried by 96%.
The second resolution was Don’t Fear the Smear which has been tabled against a background of an inexplicable 21 year low in uptake of smear tests. Several delegates spoke passionately and movingly for this resolution and there was no real opposition to it. The main points were that appointments are hard to arrange, especially where women could not take time from work; there were calls to expand the HPV vaccine programme to include 12 to 18 year olds and to increase screening beyond the current cut off age of 65 as older women are still prone to develop cancer; most of all it was agreed that all women should talk to each other, their daughters, their relatives, their work mates and fellow WI members to remind women to go for the smear. The vote for the resolutionwas 5,788 and against was 194, meaning that the resolution was passed by 97%.
This very successful and enjoyable conference drew to a close with Jerusalem sung in English and then Land of our Fathers in Welsh and with God Save the Queen.
