Packed 5 hour AGM for National Trust for Scotland

NTS President, the Duke of Buccleuch, must have felt he was underneath a series of collapsing scrums in chairing Saturday’s non-stop five hour National Trust for Scotland AGM at Murrayfield in Edinburgh.

The famous rugby venue was, however, host to scrummages of a different kind. There should have been a line out, with Charles Barrington throwing in his confidence motion in NTS Chair Shonaig MacPherson and the Trust’s Council. Barrington however, threw he ball away and withdrew his motion at short notice.

So the event – a rough but scoreless draw – saw anger, upheavals and an attempt by In Trust for Scotland to replace Barrington’s motion with another vote – which the Duke ruled out, stoically sitting out the consequent row.

Controversial Chair, Shonaig MacPherson, who is standing down and whose autocratic decision-taking and abrasive management style have been at the heart of staff departures, loss of morale and the members’ anger which fuelled this AGM, is said to have waxed tearful on the day. She was defending her tenure and complaining of ‘personal attacks and trial by media’.

This is distasteful. If you give it, you take it. Ms MacPherson has been unmoved by the distress of others in the organisation and of the general public when the planned closure of 11 NTS properties and the cutting of 90 jobs was abruptly announced back in March this year. (The properties slated for closure included Argyll’s famous Arduaine garden which, after a vigorous pubic campaign was granted a year’s stay of excecution in which to raise funds for its continuation.)

Kate Mavor, CEO of the NTS, whose performances on the broadcast media the day before the AGM caused the presenters concerned to question the validity of some of her statements, wears the same strip.

She admitted no fault in her actions on the proposed property closures and their swift retraction in the face of sustained members’ and public opposition. She straightfacedly put the blame for everything on In Trust for Scotland, formed to fight the closures she had initiated.

Her blithe denial of reality was still in place after the stormy AGM, saying that: ‘It was great to see so many people at the charity’s AGM and it was good that there was a robust debate’.

Ms Mavor had caused yet another row the day before the AGM by letting it be known that she would recommend the removal from the statute book of legislation preventing National Trust Properties from being sold. Challenged on this at the AGM, she denied it but did say that she could not prejudge what the forthcoming Strategic Review of the Trust’s Governance might consider.

This Review is to be chaired by George Reid, the respected first Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament who has been brought in as an independent to restore confidence in the review.

Ms Mavor, a newcomer to her post who announced the catalytic proposed property closures one week after her appointment, is indelibly associated with Ms MacPherson’s regime and is lucky still to be in post. She may need to temper her attitude to stay there.

In the end the AGM has brought no real closure to the recent upheavals at the Trust. Barrington’s confidence motion would have brought about that punctuation mark, whatever its result.

Those who persuaded him to drop it were misguided, as was Barrington himself in agreeing to do so. It would be naive to imagine that all is now well. A mutually suspicious and watchful truce is the best that can be anticipated.