It’s hard to think of an organisation that is held in higher regard than the RNLI.
Crewed by volunteers and funded by donations, the institution has long held ‘national treasure’ status, and its lifeboat stations take pride of place in seafaring communities around the UK coast.
And yet, it is also hard to imagine how the charity could have handled the process of installing a replacement vessel in Arbroath any more cack-handedly.
On Friday, we revealed there had been a mass resignation of the Arbroath Lifeboat Guild following an increasingly bitter dispute over the 220-year-old station’s new boat.
Twenty-one of the local fundraising group’s 25 committee members have stepped down in protest against the decision to remove the town’s ageing all-weather lifeboat and replace it with an open inflatable.
They include the guild’s president Mo Morrison, who, just weeks ago, received a British Empire Medal for 35 years of service to the RNLI in the King’s Birthday Honours list.
She told us the events of the last few months had left her too “sad, angry and tired” to continue.
Centuries of service lost in Arbroath lifeboat exodus
The fundraisers’ walkout is just the latest in a series of departures from longtime supporters of the charity in Arbroath.
Former lifeboat operations manager Alex Smith, a fisherman of 50 years, was sacked by the RNLI last month after he publicly criticised the decision to allocate Arbroath an Atlantic 85 inshore lifeboat, instead of the Shannon-class all-weather lifeboat it had been promised for almost a decade.
Another stalwart, Ian Swankie, a fisherman for 40 years, resigned in disgust at Mr Smith’s treatment.
In doing so, he broke a family tie to the RNLI that stretched through generations and endured a tragic human cost. His grandfather – a former coxswain – lost his son William when the town lifeboat, the Robert Lindsay, capsized within sight of the harbour in 1953, claiming the lives of six men.
Mr Swankie says he could not sleep at night if he had to send today’s crew on a rescue in the boat Arbroath has been allocated.
“The sea here can change so much within just a couple of hours,” he told my colleague Graham Brown. “And the boat they want to put here is not the one for Arbroath.”
He and Mr Smith are among nine men who have now been sacked, or have resigned in protest at the RNLI’s decision. Their combined North Sea experience amounts to around 220 years.
Arbroath lifeboat dispute is matter of life and death
For its part, the RNLI shows no sign of diverting from its course.
Bosses say the losses are “regrettable” but insist the replacement boat is safe and fit for purpose.
And they say they are finally looking forward to beginning trials of the new inflatable, which has sat berthed in Arbroath marina while crew members refused to board it.
The RNLI and its volunteers have been saving lives at sea since 1824. Weathering storms is what it does.
And perhaps there will turn out to have been some method in what looks – to observers like me at least – a lot like madness.
Maybe there’s a good reason for watching loyal volunteers walk away from a lifetime’s service instead of doing whatever it might take to bring them round to your way of thinking.
It wouldn’t be the first organisation to conclude that some sacrifice is necessary in the quest for modernisation. That you can’t make way for fresh faces unless you clear the decks of old hands.
But corporate blood-letting seldom has so much at stake. The ill-feeling in Arbroath is happening over matters of literal life and death. And the goodwill and expertise that has been lost here feels like an awfully precious thing to jettison.
