The Blythe Sappers

Dear Blythe Sapper

I am very honoured to be the Chairman of the Blythe Sappers for 2008 and at the start of my year I would like to talk about some of the items in progress, together with some tentative suggestions which we may or may not pursue, depending on your view which I seek in reply to this letter.

I believe that one of our best exercises was the establishment in the early 1990’s of “The Blythe Sapper Fund for Adventurous and Challenging Pursuits.”  As you are aware there has been limited use of this facility in the last few years due to conflicts overseas, but it’s time will come again.

Until the establishment of the Adventure Fund, our donations to the Corps benevolence has been somewhat spasmodic, and I believe, together with the Adventure initiative that this aspect should now be a more permanent part of our giving to the wider Corps family.

I suggest that the Blythe Sappers should support one or two specific projects suggested to us by the REA.  As our Secretary, John McLennan is the Controller of the REA, then we should easily be privy to their needs.

As a Vice President, and a former Chairman of the Museum Foundation, you might think that my thoughts would go naturally to support the Museum which is flourishing.  However, I think the above priority of Corps Benevolence must prevail, and, if a Blythe Sapper wished to make a personal contribution to the Museum Funds then I would encourage him to do so.  Perhaps all Blythe Sappers would like to receive the Annual Report of the Museum (Foundation) so as to form their own judgement.

My next point is our ludicrously low subscription of £10 per annum, for which I have signally failed to force an increase to a realistic figure over the last 20 years, and I have no intention of imposing an increase if our members do not agree.  However, I do intend to raise this matter at the next Management Committee.

I am well aware that to attend four lunches a year, dining at Chatham and being accommodated there, and the cost of travel, starts to amount to a significant annual sum, and I am most appreciative that so many members continue to participate fully, but we need to continue to generate surplus funds to support our stated objectives as I have tried to outline above.

Lastly, I would like to investigate if there is any common ground between the relatively new organisation, “Sappers in the City,” which started after I retired from the City in 1989.  It is headed by Tom Isaac who is a Blythe Sapper and a Trustee of the Museum Foundation.  He is a Vice President of CITIBANK, and American bank.  Working at Canary Wharf he finds it almost impossible to attend our lunches, but both his firm and he personally are good supporters of the Museum Foundation.

There are 30 members who meet informally and lunch and dine from time to time.  I expect that many of them would find it extremely difficult to attend our leisurely lunches from an increasingly frenetic City or Canary Wharf but it seems to me that there might be value in encouraging the connection between us, with an eye to recruitment to the Blythe Sappers in the future.

I am sorry about the length of this letter, but I feel strongly that organisations such as ourselves, although loyal to their founding principles, must either go forward or back; they cannot stand still.  I intend that we should go forward.

I much look forward to the coming year and to our speakers whose details are on a separate sheet attached to this letter.

I look forward to meeting at our lunch at the RAG on Tuesday 4^th March.

Yours sincerely,

John Fitzmaurice

Chairman