tabler • spring 2009
David Glen pays tribute to Saffron Walden RT582
don’t stop the
CARNIVAL
Essex ‘King of Clubs’ starts the music
and stops the rot
RT582 Chairman
Nick Head joined
For eight days in June 2008, the normally
Nick witnessed the nadir: After years of complacency the
Saffron Walden Table
as an Honorary in the
gentile and distinctively Old World market town
once flourishing Table tilted into terminal decline, winding down,
dark days, and has
of Saffron Walden exploded in a riot of colour
like an old, broken clock. When Neil Gaffan took the chair in
helped to bring the
and frenetic energy. From all points, folks
2004, the choice was stark: do or die. “So Neil shook the tree,
Essex club back from
flocked to the mother of all carnivals, crowding
and the ‘over-ripe’ fruit dropped out,” recalled Nick. “He led the
the brink of oblivion.
change: change of management, change of ethos, a radical
the medieval town’s tree-fringed common in a
clearout. If we ruffled feathers, so be it, but we got rid of the
heaving mass of high-spirited humanity. The
dead wood.” It was a painful yet necessary adjustment, and it
event turned over in excess of £270,000 and,
all happened so quickly that there was little luxury of objection.
when the bills were paid, potted £65,000 for
With a core of just six committed people left (Chairman Neil
good causes, a triumph that broke all previous
Gaffan; Treasurer John Hedges, Eamon McCourt, Sean
records by a huge margin. McCormick, Andrew Riley and Steve Croft), the club was poised
For more than 30 of its 50-year reign, Saffron Walden RT582 on the brink of extinction; it was grow or die! But the survivors
has been organising a carnival, yet only recently have the destinies were made of stout stuff: they still had the carnival and they
of the two become inexorably linked. For the carnival is the had a plan that would confound the doubters. They would run
instrument by which the Essex club narrowly escaped oblivion carnival, and the Table if it came to it, on business lines, where
to re-invent itself as a glittering model for others to emulate. everyone had an objective and clearly defined role. If they could
The success of RT582 is measured not only in a burgeoning save carnival they had an event that would catalyse their club’s
membership that has quadrupled to 24 in just four years, but rebirth… they had a lifeline!
equally in the esteem the Table enjoys in its local community. “Everyone had accepted that the alternative to inaction was
Stop anyone in the town, and they’ll be strangers if they tell extinction,” Nick continued. Once we’d crossed that particular
you they’ve not heard of Saffron Walden Round Table. Yet Rubicon, the only obstacle left in our way was our belief in
spectacular as it is, the renaissance was not achieved ourselves. We had to become masters of our own destiny,
painlessly or without some tough decisions. and that demanded change.
This year’s outgoing chairman, Nick Head, is fortunate – “Yes, we bent the rules to appeal to a young audience, sacrificed
or not, depending on your take: Carnival happens every three a few sacred cows,” admits the 2008/09 Chairman, “but I for
years, and in 2008 it fell on his watch. Managing a public event one have never been hot on parading about in gongs and regalia,
that’s tantamount to a small business while keeping the lid on or parroting Aims and Objects at every opportunity!”
a career with electronics giant, Sony, might be a recipe for So the Table stopped doing things for the sake of it, or because
worry and loss of sleep, but it reveals something of the mindset it’s always been that way, and started a radical reinvention of itself
that snatched RT582 back from the brink: A successful Table that ranged from recruitment and retention, to pepping up
demands nothing short total and unshakable commitment! mundane meetings. For a while it almost became RT582 plc! Yet
against the odds and after months of hard work, the ‘Magnificent
We are not a club for the sake of it; Six’ pulled of a rip-roaring carnival in 2005. Tickets sold like hot
we exist for our community
cakes and, as predicted, it proved the turning point. Crammed
,
with crowd pulling acts like Aswad, Spandau Ballet, ABC and Bad
and we ar
e sustained by our community
,
Manners, the carnival even acquired its own brand, the Eight Day
Weekend. It brought the mountain to Mohamed. By the summer
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