The BMA and trade union democracy: new style council elections

Abstract

Trade leaders must be answerable to their membership just as members of parliament are to their constituents. So the government decreed in the 1984 Trade Union Act that no member of a principal executive of a may vote in that body unless elected by members of the by secret ballot.1 This means that the BMA will have to make some constitutional changes if it is to continue to represent doctors and to do so within the law. Ironically it was an Act of parliament 150 years ago?the Poor Law Amendment Act?that launched the BMA on the road to unionism. In 1835 the three year old Provincial and Medical and Surgical Association?precursor of the BMA?set up the poor law committee with the aim of improving the intolerable working conditions of doctors employed under the amended poor law legislation. From that start through Lloyd George's national insurance legislation of 1911 and the introduction in 1948 of the National Health Service to the complexities of the 1984 Griffiths management reforms the BMA's trade union activities have steadily expanded. Today the BMA is a unique combination of professional organisation, union, and limited company. The association almost lost its functions in the early 1970s when a Conservative administration introduced legis? lation to control activities. The BMA did not fulfil the requirements for being included in the statutory register of unions that was to be set up. After unsuccessfully arguing that professional negotiating bodies such as the BMA and the Royal College of Nursing should not be excluded from the scope of the Act an initiative by the association persuaded the government to include such organisations in a special section of the proposed register.2 Thus the BMA was able to continue with its activities