[Newsletter] President Colin Williams’s resignation and EGM

[Jil Segerman]

Message from Toby Manning:

The Board is saddened to inform the membership that Colin Williams has
resigned as President. He held the role from 2024, and before that spent 4
years as BGA Secretary. During his time as President, Colin oversaw
important developments including the modernisation of internal processes,
progress on branding refresh, expanded social media engagement, and
increased national and international visibility, including preparations for
a UK bid for the European Go Congress. Colin's tireless work is greatly
appreciated.

Colin writes: “In mid-March I had chest pains, which were diagnosed in A&E
as a heart attack. There followed a several week stay in hospital. This
event, adding to a previous heart bypass in 2018, has caused considerable
worry for my family which I don’t want to repeat. Hence I have decided to
make several changes to my lifestyle and commitments.

As a result I notified the Board of my decision to resign as BGA President
with immediate effect. I appreciate the timing is awful with the AGM
looming, for which I apologise, but in reality I have little choice.

I have been an Officer of the BGA for six years now, which has always been
a privilege, and has usually been a pleasure. I will of course continue to
play Go, though I may attend fewer tournaments. I look forward to meeting
you in person at one of them in the future.

Toby Manning, who was Colin's predecessor as President, has been appointed
by the Board to replace Colin, and will serve at least until we hold an
Extraordinary General Meeting on Wednesday 17 June at 19:00 by Zoom for
members to determine who should be President going forward. Details are
given below. Members who wish to stand for President need to put themselves
forward by 20 May.

The EGM has been timed so that people can watch England play Croatia in the
World Cup at 21:00 (but we do not expect the EGM to last 2 hours).

The Board wishes Toby the greatest success in this transitional role and
thanks him for his support.

Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) – process and motions

As a Limited Company, we are bound by our Articles of Association
<https://www.britgo.org/files/articles/articles0525.pdf> which we are
obliged to follow: to deliberately break them is illegal. The timing of
Colin Williams' resignation, and its proximity to the AGM present
particular issues.

The Articles require us to replace Colin as President (Article 14) and the
Board has appointed Toby Manning, who will serve until the AGM .

It is now too late for anyone other than Toby to stand for President at the
AGM; the deadline for nominations other than the incumbent at the time (who
can self-nominate, Article 10) has already passed (Article 33). Legally, we
are in the same position as if Colin had resigned immediately after
the AGM. There
are no provisions within the Articles for an election other than at the AGM.

However, the Board wishes to give the members the opportunity to have a new
President without waiting for a year. Accordingly we will hold an
Extraordinary General Meeting on *17 June* at which the position of
President can be contested.

If there are any nominations for President, other than Toby Manning, the
membership will vote on who shall be the BGA President. There will be two
motions as follows (where '[X]' is the name of the person nominated by
two members):

   1.

   We note that the timing of the resignation of Colin Williams as
   President means that the Membership did not have the opportunity to approve
   the election of the President at the recent AGM. We believe that it is in
   the best interests of the BGA to have new energy in the role, and that [X]
   is best placed to move the BGA forward. We therefore instruct the Board to
   take the following actions:


   -

   To co-opt [X] onto the Board
   -

   To require Toby Manning to resign as President
   -

   To appoint [X] as President


   2.

   In the event Motion 1 is passed, to co-opt Toby Manning, if he and the
   incoming board are willing, back onto the Board as an ordinary member.

The Board will follow these instructions if the relevant motion(s) are
passed (Article 9). Toby has personally committed to resign in the event
that Motion 1 is passed.

If the motion fails to pass then Toby will continue as President for the
year.

This procedure therefore provides a pseudo-election for President.

The Board requires 2 members to propose/second the motion, and for [X] to
indicate their willingness to stand by 4 weeks before the meeting, i.e. by
20 May (Article 31). Applications should be sent to secretary at britgo.org.
In the event that this does not happen then the EGM will be cancelled and
Toby Manning will continue as President until the 2027 AGM.

This statement was approved by the Board on 19 April 2026.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.britgo.org/pipermail/newsletter/attachments/20260420/8be5b12b/attachment.htm>