‘Stand to!’

So, after an absence of many months, The Roostery is back.

That first task of The Roostery was achieved with weekly releases and I then took what I intended to be a short break before setting out the sham disciplinary process used to justify excluding me from the West Somerset Railway, where I was the most senior operating volunteer.

2023 was a very difficult year for me.  A congenital heart condition had caught up with me and in February of that year, I was given a three-month prognosis.  Fortunately, a change of treatment regime and a referral to Papworth Hospital in Cambridge altered that trajectory and the legal and railway heritage world will have to put up with me for some years to come, it seems, although two great loves of mine – flying and railway operating – are barred to me for the future.

Given that I had begun to have a more positive outlook on life, in the summer of 2023 I wondered, having created ‘interest’ with The Roostery and an understanding that I would put the dreadful behaviour to which I had been subjected to into the public domain, whether there was a way to use my Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (‘ED&I’), legal / mediation, railway heritage background and personal experience of vile treatment by the WSR plc’s officers and Directors to use for the heritage movement as a whole.

I also knew that I was far from alone in being poorly treated in heritage.  Joanne Crompton’s discriminatory treatment by the East Lancs Railway is well known, for example.

So, in the summer of 2023 I reached out to John Bailey of the HRA and suggested the creation of a ‘review’ scheme available to aggrieved heritage railway volunteers, allowing them (once internal processes were exhausted) to have their treatment ‘looked into’ by a suitably qualified person and a report written.  That avoided any risk of the HRA becoming a ‘regulator’ but would have considerable moral force.

John received the suggestion with enthusiasm.  He proposed to the WSR plc that it form the basis of an agreement for cessation of hostilities between myself and the WSR plc and Jonathan Jones-Pratt in particular - but that was rejected out of hand.

It seemed to offer such a useful way forward that John and I agreed to pursue it, including my taking ‘The Roostery’ down when the scheme was put in place, notwithstanding any agreement with the WSR plc.

The scheme got as far as an article for the HRA Newsletter (I will share this) and an invitation for myself and John to speak at the Llandudno HRA Spring Conference to introduce the scheme – I had my hotel booked.

And then, mysteriously, without prior notification to John or I, the article was pulled from the HRA newsletter at the last moment.  What had happened?  It transpired that the WSR plc had issued an ultimatum that were the scheme to go ahead with any participation on my part, the WSR plc would withdraw from the HRA.

The HRA bowed to this threat and the scheme was pulled.  My hotel room at Llandudno went unused.  I will leave you to decide what commitment that shows the HRA has to proper treatment of volunteers or the standards it purports to espouse.

Throughout the above process I have, in public, kept mousey quiet.  Before going public again, I took this matter to the highest level in the HRA, as will become apparent.

Plainly now, I have no route to show what volunteers generally; those organisations with proper standards; diverse volunteers or, frankly, anyone with proper personal standards can expect from one particular Railway and its Chairman, and the HRA, other than putting the factual material in the public domain with the least amount of comment from me and letting others make up their own minds about what it shows.

I look forward to hearing your views.

Robin Moira White

31 May 2024