Disinformation and Deceit at the British Wheel of Yoga


 

I am writing this blog to bring to the attention of British Wheel of Yoga members and others in the yoga community the extent to which the current leadership of the British Wheel of Yoga is prepared to spread disinformation and engage in deceit.

I hoped that the campaign to reinstate me as a BWY member following my expulsion in September 2022 would conclude with an olive branch offered by me and my supporters. We put forward a motion at the BWY Annual General Meeting on 9th May 2024 calling for an independent mediator to be appointed to review the decision to expel me after what we say was an unfair process and with insufficient evidence. We were expecting BWY to announce that it would agree to mediation, giving an opportunity for an independent person to scrutinize the decision reached by the NEC in my case and judge whether or not my expulsion was justified. It was a fair proposition to resolve the deadlock and prevent further reputational harm to BWY from the ongoing saga, now exceeding five years.

Two longstanding BWY members proposed an ordinary resolution to appoint an independent mediator to review the decision to expel me. There was never any mention by us or to us by BWY that the resolution should be, or would be, treated as a special resolution under Company Law. Neither did BWY describe it as a special resolution in the information sent out to its members ahead of the AGM:

Member-proposed resolution: Appoint an independent mediator to review the decision to expel Paul Fox from BWY. NB This resolution is not binding to the Board of Trustees for the reasons stated in the supporting documentation, which can be found on the member section of the Company website (AGMs, EGMs and Members Meetings folder on https://portal.bwy.org.uk/user/resources/index). However, the membership is being asked to vote in order to gauge the level of support among the membership for the course of action proposed.

Members voted by 58% in favour of the resolution. As most votes at the AGM were cast in advance through proxy, the leadership was aware when the results were announced that I had won a majority vote. Instead of announcing that the BWY Trustees on the NEC would review the resolution and consider the matter (as we expected), the Chief Executive Officer of BWY immediately stood up and declared that the organisation would ignore the vote. His comments at the meeting sounded like procedural gobbledegook – if the resolution had been a special resolution (which it wasn’t) then it would have required a 75% majority to pass. As it didn’t have a 75% majority, BWY was entitled to ignore the democratically expressed wishes of members.

What happened to gauging the level of support among the membership in a non-binding resolution? On the 4th June in a link provided to members in the BWY’s newsletter On the Pulse, the CEO says of the vote:

BWY also acknowledges the motion regarding the expulsion of Paul Fox and calls for an independent mediator to review the situation. After a democratic vote, the motion fell short of the required 75% majority (section 283 of the Companies Act 2006 and Article 23.1 of the BWY’s Articles), achieving 58.5% of the 347 votes cast.

Commenting on this outcome, Peter Tyldesley, CEO of BWY said, “We recognise that this result may be disappointing for some members of our community. However, the votes cast for the motion represented less than 4% of our total membership and we must represent our members’ interests.

It is true that only 347 votes were cast in the vote on mediation, but a virtually identical number of votes were cast in the elections to the NEC. So, an election for the NEC in which Diana O’Reilly received the votes of 7% of BWY members is legitimate, but when a motion is passed based on the votes of 7% of the membership it is not a valid vote. How hypocritical is that? 

There was also poor transparency from BWY here, because the votes cast figures were not in the newsletter, but hidden from plain sight beneath two click-throughs. No doubt to hide the fact that 93% of BWY members chose not to vote in the NEC elections. 

BWY has less than 10% of its members actively engaged in the democratic processes of the organisation, which is a cause for concern. But low turnouts at charity AGMs are not unusual. What is unusual is the decision by the NEC to dismiss a democratic vote of its members on the spurious grounds that not enough members voted, while claiming legitimacy to run the organisation on the basis of the very same low number of votes.

These shenanigans and the fact that neither the proposer nor the seconder of the resolution were invited to speak at the meeting, was an attempt to smother and shut-down debate. I do not feel it is an over-reaction to describe this as the death of democracy in BWY.

Paul Fox

June 2024



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