Each year, the UK Unitarian and Free Christian movement debates various motions at the plenary sessions of the General Assembly, our annual meeting in April each year. Motions, for those not familiar with the term, are essentially proposals for action put before the Assembly, and they may be on any topic (for more information about the rules around motions, see here: Rules of the Unitarian General Assembly). Each comes accompanied by a background paper explaining the rationale behind the motion and elaborating further on the topic under consideration. This year, 2024, we have four, on the topics:

• Response to AI (Artificial Intelligence)
• Support for No More Deaths [in prisons] campaign
• Response to situation in Gaza
• Proposal to remove limitation on the number of motions that can be presented to the GA – it’s currently a maximum of four.

As is now customary, there was an online workshop held by the GA organisers to discuss the wording of the motions ahead of the GA at the start of April. It’s always a fine line to manage these discussions, as the purpose of the workshop is to review the wording of the motions, not the topic of them – that’s the purpose of the debates in the plenary sessions. Is the wording clear? Is it apparent to someone reading it for the first time what the motion is actually about – and, if it’s necessarily a complex topic, should the proposers of the motion look to do some preliminary work on raising awareness ahead of the meeting? Does the motion actually ask clearly for action to be taken – if so, by whom, and is it a realistic thiing to ask for?

We had an hour-long and very constructive discussion about the four motions, no mean feat given their complexity, and a tribute to the moderation of the organisers, and the commitment of all involved to produce the bext motions we can. Hopefully this will lead to a high quality of debate at the GA.

It was especially pleasing to see that most of the motions contained a clear ask for individual Unitarians and congregations; very often the ask seems to be of the Executive Committee / President / Chief Officer, whereas in my view, if the entire UK Unitarian and Free Christian movement is commiting to something, everyone should be being asked to do something. In my view, the next steps will be for those proposing motions to try to raise awareness of them prior to the GA – for example by posting about them on Unitarian Facebook Groups, getting articles in the Inquirer and Uni-News, and contacting congregations. We have so many more channels of communication readily available now!

urthermore, I would like to see more evaluation of motions. Ideally, there should be an expectation that the proposers of motions follow up on what’s been done, even if it’s just a quick question in the Uni-News asking people to email in with details of what action they took based on each motion the movement has adopted. Finally, it would be great if we could get the Unitarian Social Action Handbook updated – having a record of what we’ve already debated and committed to would be really useful, both for writing new motions, and for helping us know what it is we’re supposed to doing. Here’s to the GA!

Link to the motions: 2024 GA Motions

Link to the motion background papers: 2024 GA Motion Background Papers

Links to the review of the move to a 3-day GA: 2024 GA 3-Day Review