BBYO National Convention & Aftermath, 30 December 1979 to 3 January 1980

I have very few specific memories of the 1979/1980 BBYO National convention.

One reason for my dearth of memories from that particular convention is a complete absence of photographs. I have hundreds of photographs from the previous year’s convention – click here or below for the Ogblog article and links…

BBYO National Convention 29 December 1978 to 1 January 1979

…but I have not a single photograph from the 1979/1980 convention. If anyone reading this piece has photos…even one photo…from that convention, it would be great to see it and/or add it to this Ogblog piece.

Of course, I do have my diaries, but – as was my habit with large scale BBYO events such as conventions – I considered them, at the time, to be such memorable events that I needn’t write down any details about them.

Below is the sum total of my scribbling for the three days 30 December 1979 to 1 January 1980:

…got up very early in morn, set off for convention. Great time at convention, saw in new year… …GREAT DAY. GOT ELECTED AS NATIONAL RESOURCE.

Yet, despite the lack of memories and writing, the 1979/1980 Convention was a momentous event for me. I was elected onto the National Executive for 1980 (I had been co-opted onto the National Exec to edit the magazine for the second half of 1979, but that’s not the same thing as getting elected).

So let me try to delve the memory bank. The National Executive for 1980 had been scaled right back – the feeling being that most day-to-day responsibility should be devolved to the regions and thus a smaller National Executive could be a more strategic or policy-oriented body.

1980, I think, proved this scaled-down executive idea to be flawed for BBYO in Great Britain and Ireland, but the upshot for the 1979/1980 convention was that there were only three posts up for election that year, rather than the usual 6 to 8 posts.

Jay Marks was elected National President.

Ivor Heller, my fellow Streathamista, was elected National Vice-President:

The third and final election that year was for National Resources Officer, which was a combination of several former portfolios such as welfare, programmes, Soviet Jewry and perhaps a couple of others. I remember so little about how the elections worked. I think a candidate had to be proposed and seconded by an elector. Each group that was fully constituted (i.e. had a charter) had two electors. I think candidates simply made a short speech of self-advocacy and the electors then voted.

I don’t recall preparing myself for an election battle in any meaningful way. I think the influencers from the outgoing committee had decided that I had done enough in four or five months of magazine editing to justify supporting me for this expanded and complex portfolio. Anyway, I somehow succeeded in convincing enough electors that a bit of magazine writing and editing qualified me for the task…

…which would be a bit like assuming that a political sketch writer and former editor of a political magazine should be elected to a great political office of state…oh cripes!

We joined those already on the National Executive who would remain; Paul Dewinter (Southern Region President), Raymond Ingleby (Northern Region President) and Jeffrey Spector, who was to stay on as immediate past National President after saying goodbye to formal office.

Of course, conventions are also about goodbyes as well as hellos. This convention marked the end of Jeffrey Spector’s Presidency and indeed the end of two very successful years on the National Executive in his case.

Writing forty years after this convention (in January 2020) and nearly five years after Jeffrey’s premature death, his memory lives on powerfully in my mind and I’m sure in the minds of most who knew him.

Jeffrey will have been honoured with life membership of BBYO at this convention, as would several other stalwarts. I don’t remember all the names, but I’m pretty sure Richard Marks, Tania Silverman and Neil Hyman were amongst them.

Of course there will have been interesting events for us all to enjoy. There will have been singing, dancing, skit competitions and a heck of a lot of spirited stuff. We had the spirit all right.

But in truth, I do not remember any specific stuff of that kind from this convention. I’d love to hear from people who have some very specific memories from this one.

But I do have one very clear memory from the aftermath of convention. It is described in my diary a bit but I do also remember it clearly.

Wednesday 2 January – Really late night. GREAT DAY. Returned, went straight back out to Hillel top stay with…

Thursday 3 January – …Dubliners. Saw off in the morning. Got a lot of admin done.

Yes, something went awry with the travel plans for the Dublin contingent on 2 January – presumably they missed their train or were informed that they would not get to Holyhead in time for the last ferry or something.

Anyone who ever went to one of these conventions will know how tired I must have been when I got home, but I had barely put down my bags when I got the call to please come to Hillel House and stay the night. The authorities there were refusing to give the Dublin BBYO contingent (I think it was 10 to 15 people) sanctuary unless someone suitably senior stayed with them to ensure that there would be no trouble.

So I grabbed my sleeping bag and headed off to Euston for the night, where I joined some very grateful Dubliners in a large room that I think was normally used for functions…

…it will have been good training for Janie’s and my Crisis Christmas forty years later:

A Bit Of A Crisis Christmas, 25 To 26 December 2019

I’m amused also to read my comment about “getting a lot of admin done” while at Hillel on 3 January. However tired I must have been after seeing off the Dubliners, I was clearly awake and motivated enough to get started on my new portfolio that very day. The 57-year-old me is awarding the 17-year-old me top marks for effort there.

The Dubliners, being a warm and generous lot, sent me a lovely thank you and gift voucher when they returned to Dublin. I think David Lapedus was the ringleader of that kind gesture.

With the voucher, I treated myself to a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus, which has been my writing companion for the 40 years since…

…OK, in the last few years, on-line synonym finders tend to do the job, but for several decades the well-thumbed (but also lovingly preserved) book, depicted above, was my constant companion on my all-too-regular writing occasions. Certainly for all the books (so far) – click here to see all of those in a row.

The sight of my Roget’s Thesaurus would often make me think of that convention and in particular that additional night with the Dubliners at Hillel House.

A BBYO convention is great. There’s no other word for it.

Postscript: Jay Marks responded to my shout out for more memories and/or materials in tremendous style – thanks in the most part to his mum. I have annexed – link here and below – a wonderful magazine piece from the Jewish Chronicle at the time, preserved by Jay’s mum and sent through via Facebook by Jay;

BBYO National Convention & Aftermath, 30 December 1979 to 3 January 1980: Annex