The Chamois Mountaineering Club

The History of Mel Owen's Club Membership

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The Positive Upbeat Side
  1. I was already a trained and experienced alpinist when the CMC was founded, so I organised and led Easter Meets annually for years in the Nevis/Glencoe area. I led my first Scottish winter climb with the CMC, Easter 1965, up Central Gulley on the north face of Bidean nam Bian, Glencoe, between Churchdoor and Diamond Buttresses; in my party on that climb was the 16 year old Mal Creasey, who went on to become one of Britain’s best known professional mountain guides. I also led annual Easter traverses of the Aonach Eagach, together with ascents of the north face of “the Ben”, either via Tower Ridge or one of the north face gullies, and several similar ventures.
  2. I served as Club Secretary from 1967 to 1970. In those early days the Secretary was also the de facto Membership Secretary, Meets Planning Secretary, Meets Booking Secretary, Newsletter Editor and Printer, (for which I used a club-owned hand-cranked press in my bedroom at home, with input via Gestetner skins) and Club Librarian (holding 6 guidebooks at home and posting them [on very rare occasions] to members requesting them).
  3. I served as Club Chairman for 3 years, during which time we purchased Marconi Hall in 1975 for £10K to become the Club Hut, (the Chamois Mountaineering Centre), and I was one of those who were created life-members for making significant loans to the club to fund the hut's purchase.
  4. I subsequently served as Club President for 3 years.
  5. Later on, I served as Club Treasurer for a lengthy 19 years.
  6. (The only posts I never filled were Hut Warden and Webmaster, although I was very well qualified for both, having designed and built our own farmhouse that we lived in for over 30 years, and having designed all 3 of my own websites.)
  7. I supported two weekend work-meets at the Hut annually for 36 consecutive years, 1978 to 2013, driving over 62,000 miles at my own expense to do so.
  8. I led teams of CMC members up and over 172 of Scotland's 511 Munros and Tops on official CMC meets between 1978 and 1996.
  9. As a Chartered Electrical Engineer with domestic wiring experience, I took charge of a week-long meet to completely rewire the Hut, which had originally been wired in fabric-insulated cable; this was replaced with PVC-insulated cable, the fuse boxes were replaced by circuit-breaker boxes, and it was converted from single phase to three phase. On completion, it was thoroughly checked independently by a local electrician and his report together with full documentation and circuit diagrams were filed safely in a folder in the Members' Lounge. [This file was subsequently removed and destroyed by Andrew Jackman to further his own personal aims.]

The Negative Downbeat Side
  1. Everything changed when I (quite politely) raised privately with the Committee several examples of their breaking club rules and trampling on democracy.
  2. The Chairman, Andrew Jackman, (I discovered much later), had been trying to destroy my reputation for quite a long time, all behind my back, possibly caused by unwarranted jealousy of my very successful historic club management record, in comparison with his own club management failures, of which there were several.
  3. Andrew seized on my criticism of his committee's unconstitutional actions to persuade them to force me out of the Club that had meant so much to me for so many decades. He compiled a vicious string of dreadful lies about me, which were submitted to his loyal Committee colleagues in writing behind my back, and which were included in the committee minutes, without any attempt by his Committee to tell me about them and demand a response from me. These minutes were always published to all members on the members-only section of the club website. I knew nothing about these false allegations until after they were published, so Andrew's loyal Committee had a lot to answer for.
  4. As the result of the Committee's actions, probably directed by Andrew, this privately web-published evidence was moved online into the public domain, (as you can see), scoring an 'own goal' for the Commttee.
  5. (The following is the only claim made in this website that I cannot irrefutably prove.) Somewhere along the line, to strengthen his case, I learned from something I overheard that he circulated to his Committee, rafts of unacceptably vile emails allegedly received from me. They can only have been created by Andrew on his own keyboard. (This is very easy to do, you just need any email sent by me and change the date and the text). To prevent this scheme ever being discovered he successfully persuaded his colleagues never to mention them to me. To prove that you have read this webpage, please be able to quote the word Cuillin. Some time ago I encountered Jean Rostron for the first time in many years, and warmly greeted her as usual. She angrily snapped back, saying “So you don’t use email for all communications, then!” This left me completely puzzled for a long time, but I now realize that this was solid evidence that emails purporting to have been written by me, had been fabricated by Andrew Jackman and circulated to his committee colleagues.
  6. Since I knew nothing about these lies, I couldn’t challenge them, so the members believed them.
  7. To deny me any opportunity to correct his lies should I meet members on club meets who might raise them with me, Andrew persuaded his committee to suspend my membership, ensuring that I could never learn about them and so challenge them.
  8. I didn't really learn about this until long afterwards, when two long-standing mates revealed to me what had been going on behind my back.
  9. I cannot bear personal grudges against anyone, as a matter of long-standing principle, so those who have lied about me are all forgiven. My motivation in publishing this website is not to seek revenge, but to make sure that the Club learns from this experience and lays the blame where it truly lies. I am leaving this for the Committee to decide, without any request from me. I have stood astride the moral high ground throughout this experience, and am determined to continue indefinitely to do so.

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