Athletics in the UK: The Rise and Fall of the BAF

35 Courting the women; will they? won‟t they? championship, as did most of the sport, and, under such pressure, the WAAA agreed that the first such championships would be held in 1988. The issues to be resolved by the steering committee boiled down to finance, the management structure and the drafting of an acceptable constitution, but a thorny issue raised its head at the very first meeting; the anomalous position of the Welsh AAA. It will be remembered that the Welsh AAA (men) was part of the AAA whereas the Welsh Women’s AAA had departed from a similar position within the Women’s AAA some years before. It was immediately evident that the women would not agree to a merger with the AAA unless and until the Welsh AAA left. Under the skilful chairmanship of John De’Ath, the committee worked well and progress was surprisingly swift and entirely amicable. The reluctance of the women simply to merge all their funds with the AAA was solved by my suggestion to keep 50% in a separate trust fund administered by the ladies for three years; the drafting of a constitution was not seen as a problem; some more work was needed on the organisational structure; and the Welsh situation had to be resolved. The organisational structure was duly settled and a name for the new entity was agreed. The new body would be created by amending the AAA’s constitution to embrace women, but exclude Welsh clubs, and its new name would be English Athletic Association. Everything was now in place for the ground breaking merger of the AAA and the Women’s AAA and all that needed to be settled was the position of the Welsh. However, it rapidly became clear that there was an impasse; the Welsh AAA would not secede from the AAA until there was a single governing body and the women would not merge with the AAA so long as the Welsh AAA remained. It was now the turn of the Women’s AAA to express some irritation that the AAA could not, somehow, force the Welsh men out so that the amalgamation could go ahead (how things can change!) but resignedly accepted that this was a step too far. By mid 1988 the steering committee had finished its work, issued its report and the scene was set for the merger. Assuming that the McAllister proposals for a BAF would be approved at the EGM of the AAA on 3 July, there was an air of quiet optimism that all the pieces were in place for the simultaneous merger of the AAA and Women’s AAA and the launch of the long awaited one governing body on 1 st January 1989 at the latest. How wrong could they be?