Ian Thompson wrote:
I've been playing for Pimlico this season in the Central London Chess League. I haven't played for them in the Civil Service League because I didn't think I was eligible, not having been a club member for the required 2 years. From what you're saying, it seems that I could have played by dint of having had two summer vacation jobs in the Civil Service while a student, many years ago.
The relevant Civil Service League rules are as follows:
1. The League shall be open to all bona fide Civil Service Clubs and to those Municipal and other Clubs who were affiliated to the Civil Service Chess Association as at 31 December 1993.
2. Only past or present bona fide members of their Clubs shall be eligible to play in League matches, and no player shall be eligible to represent more than one Club in the League during the same season. The words 'bona fide' in this rule are intended to convey that the members shall be serving or have served in the Department or Departments represented by their Clubs, and includes those former officers transferred direct to an organization providing services within any Civil Service Department; it also includes those who have been members of an affiliated club continuously for a period of at least two calendar years from the date of notification to the Senior Recorder.
The League is open to all civil servants past and present, so once you're in you stay in, even if your service took place many years ago. The issue, of course, is what the League means by a "bona fide" member. This isn't defined anywhere. I would expect it to exclude short casual jobs in the Civil Service, but I don't think the League's executive committee has discussed this recently.
The other way in is via two years' membership of a club that plays in the Civil Service League. This was introduced in (I think) 2007 at the request of the Greater London Chess Club (GLCC), whose members were drawn from the former Greater London Council. The GLC was abolished in 1986, but the chess club continued in existence. (At that time it was very strong – the club won six league titles in seven years in the 1980s.) Although at least some of its functions continue to be carried out by other bodies (first the London Residuary Body, now the Mayor of London), it was very difficult for GLCC to recruit new members. So for the first time the League agreed that non-civil servants could take part. The membership test was initially three years but was later reduced to two.
Following the rule change, GLCC opened its doors to external players and, through having a regular club night (Tuesdays),
and an open venue (i.e. a church hall rather than a secure government building, so that anyone could drop in and play chess),
and an outlet for its members to play competitive chess in another league with no restrictions on eligibility (the London League), its membership increased and I understand is now around 50. The club's future seems secure. The turnover of players seems quite rapid as they attract many students who are only passing through London, but the inflow does at least seem to be matching the outflow.
One other Civil Service League followed the same path as GLCC. The Home Office Chess Club, which from 2007 was the Home Office and Justice Chess Club (HOJCC), went public in 2011 as Pimlico Chess Club. Unlike the GLC, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice are very much part of the governmental structure, and new civil service members have come through from time to time, so that wasn't the main driver. HOJCC decided to become an open, community-based chess club for the following reasons: (1) The consolidation of the HOJ estate in recent years (fitting more civil servants into fewer buildings in order to save money) left the club with no storage space for its equipment, and most of the club's equipment disappeared when contractors moved in to reconstruct part of the office; (2) Most of the club's members are now ex-civil servants and very few people had access to the secure government building in which home matches were played; (3) The club wanted to start a new venture (the Central London League) where all games of chess would be finished on the night, in frustration at the continued use of adjudication as the default method of finishing games of chess in the Civil Service League – a proposal at the 2011 Civil Service League AGM produced a majority for making finishing on the night the default option, but this did not gain the two-thirds majority required for a rule change. The issue is back on the agenda for the forthcoming 2013 AGM; (4) the club wanted to take advantage of a recent change in charity law that opened the way for chess clubs and similar organisations to attain charitable status, and this required an open membership policy. The club was the first and as far as I know remains the only chess club in the UK to have attained charitable status.
In the past two years, the Central London League has been in operation and seems to be establishing itself. Pimlico's membership has more than doubled, with many of the new members living locally and wanting to join a local club. The club also has a team in the London League Minor Division A, and is organising an open summer tournament for the third year running, and is starting a series of open blitz tournaments, so it's certainly a happening place.
The seven other clubs in the Civil Service League do not have an open venue with a club night, or, as far as I know, an open membership policy, so have not been able to attract new members in the same way as GLCC or Pimlico. Overall, numbers in the League are in steady decline – 170 in 2012/13, down from 176 in 2011/12, 187 in 2010/11, and 200 in 2009/10. It is possible that some clubs will continue to lose members and become uncompetitive or even cease to exist in a few years.
This poses an existential problem for the Civil Service League. It needs to attract new members, but finds it increasingly hard to do so from within the Civil Service itself, given the continued fragmentation of the civil service centre and the steady transfer of many of its functions to the private sector. Removing all eligibility restrictions would be an option, but would mean losing the separate identity of the League as an employment-based chess organisation. It would be just another chess league competing for attention in an overcrowded London market, and would have to base its appeal to outsiders on its own attractiveness as a chess-playing environment. Clinging to adjudication as the default option for finishing games doesn't seem the best way to start given that almost everywhere else in the UK uses a finish on the night as the default option.
The League's executive committee are aware of the problem and will need to address it very soon. In the meantime, we have the difficult situation whereby a significant proportion of the members in two of the clubs in the League are not yet eligible to play in the League. You have to ask how long this uneasy compromise can hold.
