The Growth Of The B.E.C.
The third part of a series in
which the membership figures for the B.E.C. over the years are examined to see
if any conclusions can be drawn from them, and if it will be possible to see
why the club has had periods of prosperity and periods - like the one in this
article of relative decline.
PART THREE BAD PATCH
(1951 to 1957)
Our last article left the club with its membership way up
above the predicted value. The impetus,
it is true, was beginning to slow up, but there appeared to be nothing to worry
about.
This month's graph is, however, a sorry-looking object. In contrast with the expansion shown in last
month's article, the club actually - and steadily - DECREASED in size from 1951
to 1957. At the start of this bad patch,
the club had 131 members, which put it at 12 above the predicted level, while
at the end of the bad patch, it had sunk to 117 - or 27 members short of those
predicted.
Now, it is important to realise that the figures can show
why this happened in terms of how many people joined the club, and how quickly
or slowly they dropped away again. What
the figures cannot do is to tell us WHY. That is something we have to make our own intelligent guesses
about. During the expansions of 1946 and
of 1948/9, it was not difficult to see the cause. The decline of the club from 1951 to 1957 is
much more difficult to pinpoint to any cause.
The figures show that we cannot blame the decline on the
effect of the 1948 batch (which was disappearing rapidly) because this effect was
near enough balanced by the 1946 group (which was hanging on despite
everything) and these two effects cancel each other out. Equally, the decline cannot be blamed on the
lack of new members (who were arriving in average quantity throughout the
period of decline). The decrease in
membership was simply due to the fact that greater than average losses occurred
in nearly every batch. In other words,
members suddenly began to leave the club earlier than one might expect, and
this did not depend on how long they had been members. For some reason, the club had stopped keeping
its members happy - old and young alike.
In 1953, the club discovered a major Mendip cave right on
its own doorstep AND negotiated an access agreement which, in those days,
virtually meant that any caver 'who wanted to explore Cuthberts regularly had
to be a member of B.E.C. One might
reasonably expect that this would have given membership a boost, but IT HAD NOT
THE SLIGHTEST EFFECT. Indeed, the year
following the discovery of Cuthberts was the worst of the whole period.
What happened in 1951, which suddenly caused members to be
dissatisfied with the club? Why did this
even more dramatically stop happening in 1957? External events nave been looked at, but nothing appears to fit these
dates. At the end of this series, a
theory will be advanced to explain all this, but in the mean time, readers may
like to speculate - in the B.B. if they wish - on what factor or factors could
have caused the bad patch, which ended so suddenly in 1957.