The Future of the SMBP 44 Association
The Executive Committee of the Association has decided to place before the membership at the next AGM on Thursday 16th May 2024 a proposal to wind-up the Association’s activities on 31st December 2025. This will be a remarkable 50 years since Shell-Mex and B.P. ceased operations at midnight on 31st December 1975. It will also mark some 48 years of the 44 Club’s existence.
The most compelling pressures are twofold: Shell’s Pensioner support function (unlike BP’s) has generously supported us financially over the years but has in the last decade been a rather more challenging sponsor as it faces its own internal cost pressures. We have anticipated much of this which has contributed to a trusting and solid relationship, but we have reached the inevitable position when our core Club activities are threatened by real and potential funding limitations. For example, we sought Company support for our Birthday Card programme (previously funded by Diary sales) which was not initially granted. As the Club has very little revenue of its own (and for practical reasons we would not want to move to a subscription basis now) it faces
having to stop or pare down the Birthday Cards - one of its most popular and valued offerings. The unanimous view of your Committee is that we do not want death by a thousand cuts!
The second pressure is an acknowledgement of Anno Domini. Whilst we still have a membership of some 2000 pensioners, their average age is in the mid-80s. Your Committee is a little younger but not in the first flush of youth – and it would be fanciful to believe we have a realistic succession plan. We have to accept that certain key roles are reliant on the incumbents remaining fit, healthy and willing ad infinitum…. It is probably better to be the authors of our own destiny rather than allow happenstance to determine our fate.
So we have looked at our finances and determined with Shell’s help that we can carry on the Club’s full activities for a further two years and then bring the curtain down with pride and satisfaction. To have reached 48 years is a notable achievement and tellingly rather longer than Shell-Mex and BP itself survived!
Formally winding up the Club (including general meetings, administrative services, birthday cards and the magazine) does not mean that Branch activity must cease – where there is sufficient interest and willingness in a branch an informal social organisation can, of course, remain but there would be no central coordination, funding or help available.
This proposal must be put to the Membership in a resolution that we plan to table at next year’s AGM in Shell Centre. To accommodate the widest participation, we will be hosting the AGM both physically and online. To carry the motion, we will need at least a 75% voting majority from all Association members attending both in person and virtually.
I hope this message does not come as too much of a shock and I also hope that having considered the rationale you will be supportive of what the Committee recommends. All good things come to an end and to be able to
do it with a degree of control and dignity seems to us a fitting end to what has been a splendid Association.
Thank you for your part in making it just that and my very best wishes for the future.
Rick Westley
Club Chairman
The Executive Committee of the Association has decided to place before the membership at the next AGM on Thursday 16th May 2024 a proposal to wind-up the Association’s activities on 31st December 2025. This will be a remarkable 50 years since Shell-Mex and B.P. ceased operations at midnight on 31st December 1975. It will also mark some 48 years of the 44 Club’s existence.
The most compelling pressures are twofold: Shell’s Pensioner support function (unlike BP’s) has generously supported us financially over the years but has in the last decade been a rather more challenging sponsor as it faces its own internal cost pressures. We have anticipated much of this which has contributed to a trusting and solid relationship, but we have reached the inevitable position when our core Club activities are threatened by real and potential funding limitations. For example, we sought Company support for our Birthday Card programme (previously funded by Diary sales) which was not initially granted. As the Club has very little revenue of its own (and for practical reasons we would not want to move to a subscription basis now) it faces
having to stop or pare down the Birthday Cards - one of its most popular and valued offerings. The unanimous view of your Committee is that we do not want death by a thousand cuts!
The second pressure is an acknowledgement of Anno Domini. Whilst we still have a membership of some 2000 pensioners, their average age is in the mid-80s. Your Committee is a little younger but not in the first flush of youth – and it would be fanciful to believe we have a realistic succession plan. We have to accept that certain key roles are reliant on the incumbents remaining fit, healthy and willing ad infinitum…. It is probably better to be the authors of our own destiny rather than allow happenstance to determine our fate.
So we have looked at our finances and determined with Shell’s help that we can carry on the Club’s full activities for a further two years and then bring the curtain down with pride and satisfaction. To have reached 48 years is a notable achievement and tellingly rather longer than Shell-Mex and BP itself survived!
Formally winding up the Club (including general meetings, administrative services, birthday cards and the magazine) does not mean that Branch activity must cease – where there is sufficient interest and willingness in a branch an informal social organisation can, of course, remain but there would be no central coordination, funding or help available.
This proposal must be put to the Membership in a resolution that we plan to table at next year’s AGM in Shell Centre. To accommodate the widest participation, we will be hosting the AGM both physically and online. To carry the motion, we will need at least a 75% voting majority from all Association members attending both in person and virtually.
I hope this message does not come as too much of a shock and I also hope that having considered the rationale you will be supportive of what the Committee recommends. All good things come to an end and to be able to
do it with a degree of control and dignity seems to us a fitting end to what has been a splendid Association.
Thank you for your part in making it just that and my very best wishes for the future.
Rick Westley
Club Chairman