Received from Nick Corcos:

I have just read Mick Aston's proposed strategy for the future of SANHS, and would like to endorse, in the strongest possible terms every element the argument for change which he puts forward. It has become quite clear, I think, over the last few years, that the Society which we all know and love has been sleepwalking inexorably into crisis, and it seems equally clear that things simply cannot remain as they re – or rather, they could remain as they are, in which case it will, in my opinion, not be am matter of if, but when, that the Society slips into a terminal decline that it is impossible to reverse. Professor Aston's agenda forces us to confront a whole range of frankly rather painful home truths, but confront them squarely we must, if we are to build a vibrant, active and robust organisation that is fully fit for the 21st century – for it is clear to me that that is emphatically not the Society which we have at the moment. At the risk of offending some, I'm afraid that I must speak as I find and venture that the Society, for all the excellent and laudable work which it does across a range of activities, and for all the incredibly hard work which individuals invest in its wellbeing, much of it unsung, is nonetheless stuck in rather a deep rut of its own making; a rut in which it will surely, ultimately, sink without trace unless we have the foresight, vision and commitment actually to adopt, as a matter of the utmost urgency, a scheme of the kind suggested by Prof Aston, or one like it.

It is of course inevitable that there will be a body of entrenched opinion, most likely to be found in the upper echelons the Society, which will view the prospect of such radical rethinking as tantamount to heresy, and that, far from a willingness to embrace the idea of calling a spade a spade, will consider itself highly fortunate that, like Gwendolyn Fairfax (The Importance of Being Earnest), it has never actually seen a spade. But such wilful unwillingness to face up to harsh realities is corrosive, and will ultimately drag the Society down. Our options are simple, for there is in fact only one, and it can be stated very simply: change, along the lines put forward by Prof. Aston, or die. Yes, of course, major upheavals, reassessing fundamentally the way we do things, are always difficult, and the withdrawal symptoms may be painful, for a time. The journey will be hard, and feathers will be ruffled - but then that would to some extent be the whole point of the exercise, and were that not so, we would know that we were getting it wrong. A damned good kick up the backside is of course always painful, but it is my view that this really would be a case of 'no pain, no gain', and that the Society would emerge from such an exercise infinitely stronger, more inclusive, more relevant, more respected, and more meaningful in the wider cultural life of God's Own County.

There will be considerable institutional inertia to overcome, and the good ship SANHS, like some lumbering oil tanker, will not be easily turned from her present, potentially disastrous course. But the time is long overdue when we need seriously to ask ourselves the question of what we believe and what we want the Society to become; Mick Aston has had the guts to call a spade a spade, and has pointed the way to the vibrant, living, flourishing organisation that we could have; he has, in effect, presented us with a vision of what might be. It's now up to every one of us who believes passionately in the Society, its work, and the principles for which it stands, to help visit some very tough love on the poor old thing; with a carefully reasoned blueprint before us, doing nothing is now palpably not an option, and the alternative simply does not bear thinking about.