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Carnations and Beans by Graham R Davis

Having bought a DVD copy of the BNCS Yearbooks Vol. 1*, I began looking through these fascinating books. The first volume contains the years 1949 through to 1954 inclusive. They are easy to view on a PC as long as you have Adobe installed. Aware that there are members better qualified to write erudite articles on the Dianthus information given in the Yearbooks. But further knowing that the Editor of ‘The Dianthus Times’, Dr. James Dennison, was keen to receive articles for that publication, I looked around for something that I might use to form the basis for an article for him. As an accountant, newly installed as BNCS treasurer, I naturally looked at the accounts presented in those early years.

So here goes, a bean counters review of the British National Carnation Society’s first six Year Books.

The 1949 Yearbook was the first year of the newly formed society. For members who don’t know the early history of the British National Carnation Society, it was formed by the amalgamation of the British Carnation Society and the National Carnation and Picotee Society. On page 8 of this first issue, the editor extols one of the virtues of the amalgamation as being ‘greater privileges’ for their annual minimum membership of 10/- (being 50pence for those youngsters not around on 14 February 1971 when the UK went decimal). The actual Yearbook itself being sold for 5/-.

I got to thinking what those values were in today’s terms. After some searching Google came to the rescue, with the annual Retail Price Index (RPI) percentage annual increase, starting from ………1949, what luck. After putting the relevant data into Excel, I found that using the RPI, the current annual membership cost should be £12.56. Compared to the £12.50 single members now pay. I was flabbergasted. I fully expected the membership cost as adjusted by RPI to have resulted in a much higher figure. I’m perhaps too much influenced by the inflationary period of the middle 70’s when we had double digit inflation from 1974 through to 1981, as follows 16%, 24.2%, 16.5%, 15.8%, 8.3%, 13.4%, 18% and 11.9% respectively.

Interestingly only in one of those 57 years has there been an increase of less than one percent, 1959 0.6% (1960 1%), and never had the figure been negative.

I next looked at membership numbers. The 1949 Yearbook stated that the membership of the British Carnation Society in 1948 being 1328 paid up members, Overseas members 200 and 35 horticultural societies. Income from those numbers being £871-1-8. The National Carnation and Picotee Society showed 552 paid up members, 3 life/honorary members and 50 horticultural societies, bringing a subscription income of £335-16-8. Giving a total for the two societies of £1206-18-4, from 2168 members.

The first year for the newly formed British National Carnation Society showed a year end membership of 2491 and whose subscription amounted to £1256.Using the RPI from above, the equivalent income in today’s terms would be £31,542. A figure, sadly not available to our committee to expend. The actual figure for 2006 as produced by our recently retired Treasurer, Hylton Oberst, was £3474. This lack of income is a sad reflection of the decrease in membership of our Society. Whose membership at the year ended 31st December 2006 was 319, as reported by our Secretary Mrs Betty Linnell.

From the Year Books on this first DVD, years 1949 – 1954 it would appear that membership peaked on 31 December 1950 at 2715. How we would love to have a membership remotely approaching that number these days.

All is not doom and gloom however! The annual cost of producing the Year Books themselves has gone up from a high of £578 in the calendar year 1951, to £774 for 2006, in actual terms. If the 1951 value is adjusted for the rise in RPI this would be some £14,515 in today’s terms. Perhaps we should congratulate again the splendid work done by our editor, Mr Alex Ketchen, when last year he found a new printer for the Year Book saving the Society some £950 approximately per annum.

As an aside, the weekly gardening newspaper, out every Friday and advertising in the Year Books, ‘Popular Gardening’, was for sale at 3d (1.25P). This equates to approximately 32P using the RPI adjustment mentioned above, quite a saving on the actual cost (£1.70) of a similar publication available weekly these days. I was under the obviously mistaken impression that computer setting had reduced the cost of newspapers.

Taking all things into consideration, we haven’t got anything to congratulate ourselves on as far as membership is concerned, except perhaps that we are still here and financially viable. It has been because of the very tight scrutiny of expenditure and the non-reimbursement of many expenses borne by the committee members that the Society remains viable today.

Finally, if we could all attempt to enrol one new member each………. well just think about it.