Scouts and Others
Sunday, June 1st, 2008
Scouts Criticised for Cavalier Attitude to Safety. (By the BMG!!)
“The Scouts committee of the Council believes that they are in grave risk from an outside body imposing regulatory restrictions upon them”.
And members of the Association of British Mountain Guides and the Association of Mountaineering Instructors (supported by the British Mountaineering Council) no doubt would get the lucrative job of instructing and guiding the Scouts Association.
“Since this judgement [(Hedley v Cuthbertson)] the BMC has been working to counter the ill conceived suggestion that any standard procedures exist for climbing. Judgement and experience, not a rule book, are used to make the choices that minimise the risks that climbers are exposed to”. (BMC News Archive: 25th July 1997).
So, in fact, there is no rulebook and therefore no ‘rigorous and robust rules’ of the type mentioned by Iain Peter of PyB in a previous section apply. I wish they would make up their minds………..
According to comments in The Guardian on Wednesday February 16th 2000:
“Scout leaders have an old-fashioned ‘cavalier attitude’ towards adventure and risk that is unacceptable in a modern society, according to an internal inquiry into three separate fatal mountain accidents last year”.
The inquiry team, which included Iain Peter, Chief Executive of PyB found a ‘cavalier attitude to rules’. Which rules you might ask. The ones that don’t exist perhaps………
Mr Peter Finlay, a Scout Leader, faced possible criminal action after a young Scout slipped on a Snowdonia footpath. Mr Finlay, no doubt, did not have a mountaineering professional in his corner to explain that in fact there are no hard and fast rules. On the 17th October 2001, Mr Finlay was found not guilty of manslaughter in the court case brought against him.
The internal inquiry I have already referred to was set-up because 3 members of the Scouts Association were killed in separate accidents (there were approximately 500,000 Scouts under training) in 1999.
On December 28th 1998, 6 Venture Scouts were lead into avalanche danger at a time when the posted avalanche warning was grade 3 out of a possible 5 levels of danger. In the ensuing avalanche, 4 of the Scouts were killed being entombed in consolidating snow and ice. There was no internal inquiry and [because there are no rules?] 3 years later, the BMG guide involved did not face criminal proceedings. On the contrary, he was found to be not at fault [because there are no rules?]. Even though that multiple, avoidable accident was just one of many fatal accidents to befall BMG clients, there was and is never any mention of a cavalier attitude on the part of the people in charge of the parties who suffer such disaster.
If the Scouts Association had lost pro rata as many members/clients as the BMG then maybe, just maybe, the comment about them having a cavalier attitude might be used. That the comments emanate from a member of the IFMGA/BMG, an organisation that has lost so many clients in recent years, beggars belief.
A similar cavalier attitude was levelled at the Royal Marines by the Editor of Climber magazine a number of years ago after a Marine slid of the summit of Ben Nevis one winter. The Editor made no mention of the numerous BMG clients that had slid off, fallen off or been pulled off mountains by their guides. That the military has hundreds of thousands of personnel under training at any one time with such a low fatality rate is astounding and yet the Editor felt he had to make such a derogatory comment. And yes, someone was blamed for the avoidable accident to the Royal Marine. It was not a case of the military saying that climbing and mountaineering accidents are inevitable, a comment that it appears to me is trotted out at external Fatal Accident Inquiries following fatal accidents to BMG clients.
I received an answer to an email that I sent to the Scouts Association in connection with these matters:
“…you appear to have an axe to grind about the BMC…”
Mr & Mrs Davies and other parents only wish that I had started to grind that axe sooner. Their son, along with a number of other sons and daughters, have been prematurely lost to them in what I view as avoidable climbing and mountaineering accidents. And guess what? Nobody seems to care…
Mr & Mrs Davies also live with the knowledge that the guide in charge who was responsible for their son’s rope as they were descending the West Flank of the Eiger in 1992 was not at the rear of the rope as he ought to have been, but was descending at the front. They live with the knowledge also that his actions (for which he has never been brought to account, unlike Peter Finlay) received barely a mention in the Swiss Accident Report.
Category : Misc
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