At the end of August I wrote a post about how our chance to get all anglers speaking with one voice was likely to fail with disastrous effects to the future of our sport. It made depressing reading and I apologise for that, but the one glimmer of hope in the whole post was a letter from a group that has now become known as the Magnificent Seven and I make no apologies for republishing it here.

The following letter was recently sent to the Trust and gives us a glimmer of hope:

OPEN LETTER DATED AUGUST 10th 2009
ADDRESSED TO BOARD OF THE ANGLING TRUST

Dear Sirs

It is with deepest concern that we contact you regarding the development of the Angling Trust.

For far too long, anglers have needed a professionally run, representative body, and the launch of the Angling Trust in January 2009 was a major step forward towards greater unity in angling.

We believe the Angling Trust has provided an initial framework to the path of true representation and the merging board has created a valuable structure, but news of overspending combined with a failing business plan is extremely worrying although not that surprising.

Our concerns at this stage arise primarily from the continuing lack of engagement with AT members, and the angling community as a whole, particularly on sensitive issues. There is a wealth of first hand angling, industry and media experience that appears to have been largely ignored by the current board. Therefore, it is with this in mind, that we all offer our support services, without charge, to the Angling Trust as a “collective” advisory board. The absence of individuals that anglers recognise, trust and respect is clearly apparent at all levels of the Angling Trust.

In addition, there is obviously and immediate need to review the failing business plan currently in place. Once again, where applicable, we would like to offer our experience in business development, marketing and finance at no cost, to help secure the immediate continuation and sustainable development of the Angling Trust in the future.

We trust that the current AT board will be addressing these concerns and await your earliest response.

Signed by:

John Wilson, Keith Arthur, Danny Fairbrass, Martin Bowler, Ruth Lockwood, John Everard, Tim Norman

This group - who I will in future refer to as the M7 - are all very busy people and it was decided that an advisory panel of fifteen anglers from all disciplines, under the chairmanship of John Wilson, was needed to spread the workload. I needed to be on that panel so I started to make representations to everyone I could think of. I made a list of ideas collected from many sources and I understand this was referred to on the first meeting of the M7.
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