CHAIRMAN’S REPORT
Twenty-seventh Annual General Meeting, 19 June 2020
The Committee
The main event was the tragic death of our Chairman Dr Noel Guckian after only six months in the role. Noel had taken the Chair at the last AGM and made his mark in the way the Society is to face the future, but was taken ill quite unexpectedly and suffered cardiac arrest in Ipswich Hospital on 7 December 2019.
As Vice Chairman, Julian Lush then acted as interim Chairman. However, a new Chairman, James Firebrace, the only candidate, was nominated by the Committee and has taken on the role from 4 May; James is seeking election by the Membership at this AGM. He has had longstanding interests in Yemen and will bring his experience and vision to the benefit of the Society. Taher Qassim MBE has accepted nomination as Vice Chairman of the Society.
We are grateful to our meticulous Treasurer, John Huggins, who had resigned for family reasons, has fortunately decided he can continue in the role. Robert Wilson continues to cast his meticulous eye on Membership issues. Awssan Kamal has also done much to facilitate BYS communication but has decided that commitments with his principal employers do not leave him free to continue with our Committee. We are most grateful for the contribution he has made. Ibrahim Zanta has acted as Secretary for contacts with the Society’s membership, but he too was facing other commitments. We are most fortunate that Louise Hosking, known to many members from her time at the London Middle East Institute, has agreed to take on the role of Secretary from July. We welcome Louise to this role.
We are most grateful to all members of the Committee, especially the newcomers from last year, for their input into the running and future of the Society.
Membership
We have spent some time over the past months tidying up our membership records largely at the instigation of our late chairman who hoped to launch a drive for new members. We thought that our membership was in the order of 280, but it has become clear that a number of these had allowed their membership – or at least their subscription payments – to lapse, and in early June this year we had 225 fully paid up members with about 15 payments still expected. Thanks to some energetic recruitment efforts by two of our new committee members, we have welcomed 10 new members in the past year.
B-YS activities
Events organised by the Society included:
20 June 2019 the B-YS organised an evening at the Arab British Chamber of Commerce building to celebrate Yemeni music and culture and to raise funds for charities. It was a wonderful evening, well attended and successful in both entertaining the guests and raising money. Several of our members played key roles in organizing and running the event among them Muhammad bin Dohry, who developed the original idea, Ibrahim Zanta for his organising skills and, above all, Safa Mubgar for arranging the music, the auction and much else. There are many more who should be thanked for helping and for donating gifts for the auction that were auctioned. The committee had hoped that it would become a regular annual event – and that this ambition can be achieved once the lock down is over.
21 November 2019 Walking the Longest Wadi in Arabia. Chris Bradley, who is a member of the British Yemeni Society, described his journey through the Wadi Hadhramaut, the longest wadi (valley) of the Arabian Peninsula, which he crossed in the 1990s. His talk was illustrated by many of the beautiful photographs taken during his expedition. Chris started by introducing the Hadhrami people, their culture, their legendary origins and the reason that prompted him to write a guidebook about the Wadi Hadhramaut: the absence of such a book and the difficulty of finding any information on where and how to travel through the area.
16 December 2019 Samuel Ramani, who was just completing his D Phil at Oxford, discussed Russia’s relationship with Yemen over the past few decades including its deep involvement in support of the PDRY and its role since 2011 as one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council.
11 February 2020 Tim Mackintosh-Smith discussed his book “Arabs: A 3000 year history of Peoples, Tribes and Empires” in a conversation between Tim and one of the reviewers, Ian Black, who worked for The Guardian for many years as its Middle East editor and is now a Visiting Fellow at LSE. His book had been many years in the making but it was in part inspired by the “history outside my window” in Sanaa, being written mostly in 2017 as Sanaa was being hit by the war that started in 2015 and is continuing. Arabs is a formidable piece of scholarship but told using anecdote, quotation, striking and original analogy and parallels between the past and the present to make it a joy to read. It is comprehensive and the subject matter complex, but he makes it utterly comprehensible. The event attracted a large audience some of whom had travelled from outside the UK to attend.
B-YS Journal
The journal remains our jewel in the crown and we are enormously indebted to Helen Lackner who gives so much to editing the journal and making it such a high quality, informative and readable publication that members look forward to receiving each year, I am happy to report that the 2020 journal will be produced on schedule so that members will be able read it in the autumn.
Website and Facebook
The Society’s Facebook group is our most active media channel, and now has 1615 members, with further applications being reviewed. The web site is ready for a re-vamp – a number of our new and younger members of the committee bring valuable ideas and experience and we hope to work on this in the coming months. Thanos Petouris who managed both virtually single handed for several years asked to step down from this in the course of the year but continues to provide invaluable support and advice.
B-YS Academic Award
The Committee has received one application for a grant to research south Yemeni music at the British Library which is under consideration, partly as carrying out such research is doubtful in current circumstances. The application is from Gabriel Lavin, University of California, Los Angeles for a grant towards research of south Yemeni music, specifically Aden’s Early Recording Industry, at the British Library.