Peace News September 2024 issue - response by Glyn Carter

by Glyn Carter, Nov 2024

Let us be clear about the core issue behind PN’s ex-staffs' resignations. They demanded autonomy.  Peace News Trustees insisted on greater accountability on editorial matters and marketing. Staff chose to resign rather than accept this.

Their last, clandestinely produced, issue (no. 2674) carried 8 pages and 10,000 words of invective against Peace News Trustees in general and myself in particular. I totted up over a hundred lies, distortions, omissions and hypocrisies, then stopped counting. Don’t worry, I don’t intend to rebut them all. Thirty will do. This is the summary. The longer version is more detailed and nuanced.

But first: I have always followed the democratic will of the Peace News Trustees board. PNT was always at pains not to personalise issues. For ex-staff to personalise their complaints is egregious scapegoating, and unworthy of a pacifist paper. To fire out accusations without asking for comment… even The Sun doesn’t sink so low.

Ex-staff are now raising money for themselves. People who might wish to contribute have a right to know the untruths they are being told.

[For ease of reference I have used shorthand: eg 2.4 means the 4^th column of page 2, all in the September 2024 issue.]

LIES AND DISTORTIONS

Pacifism: (4.1) Of course I’m a pacifist. Why on earth would I devote so much time and energy, and put up with so much, if I didn’t believe in the cause?

“Protect from retaliation”: (4.1) We know exactly who wrote that defamatory email about me. There has been no retaliation. To imply there might be is egregious in the extreme.

Keeping secret the identity of the person who leaked it, has the effect of putting several people under suspicion. Isn’t PN staff’s mantra about openness? Whoever leaked it – own what you did!

Bullying: (1.2) Bullying is defined as “persistent offensive, intimidating, humiliating behaviour.” No-one has raised a single specific complaint of bullying against me. Not getting your own way is not an example of bullying.

On the other hand, in June I submitted a bullying grievance to PNL citing over thirty examples of discrimination, victimisation, undermining, exclusion, being lied about, being lied to, and having information withheld from me.

Now, Mil, Emily, Gabrial and Emma have collectively chosen to demonise me personally. They published my non-public email address without warning or permission (3.5), inviting people to use it to complain to me (breaching journalistic ethics).

This is the real bullying behaviour that has been going on in the group.

“We tried to create a more healthy relationship”: (1.2, 3.1) Then why did only one of member of staff attend the facilitated 'relationship meeting' that they themselves called for?

The meeting was not a genuine attempt to heal anything. It was a device to yet again postpone issues staff didn’t want discussed, replaying the modus operandi of years.

Management/union analogy: (2.5) Parent companies, investors, funding bodies and the like, routinely have their representatives on the boards of subsidiaries. To liken this to management being at union meetings is brainless, but revealing, as it implies that the Board exists to work in the staff’s interest, not to progress and improve Peace News.

Staff were free to have private union or support-group meetings. But these cannot be the decision-making meetings of the board of directors.

Redundancy pay: (3.4) Staff forfeited their redundancy entitlement when they resigned, not because they publicised our disputes a fortnight later. Another twisting of the truth.

How things fell apart: Muzammal’s long piece (pages 6-7) is obviously deeply felt, but there is one huge assumption at its heart: that PN belongs to the staff, and to the four people they brought in to serve as Directors. Sorry, but it doesn’t. It belongs to the company Peace News Ltd, which in turn belongs to Peace News Trustees. Staff were hired to produce PN, not to set up a co-op, or to take over PNL. That was the deal.

Led by the Trustees, PN’s company members did actually vote to properly appoint the four as Directors. We invited one of them onto PNT’s Board. We trusted their good faith. A misplaced trust: they tried to block PNT appointing new shareholders in PNL (which PNT as the owners of the shares has every right to do). They then conspired with staff to appoint themselves as shareholders (which staff and directors have no right to do).

In other words, they were mounting a coup (and possibly committing fraud to do so).

Threat of legal action: (1.5) One of the staff submitted a statement to Companies House saying that the eight were now shareholders. They weren’t, because the meeting that appointed them had no authority to do so. Submitting incorrect information to C.H. is an illegal act, and possibly fraudulent. C.H. would hold all the Directors jointly and separately responsible.

I am a named director. So is Andrew Rigby. We felt that we had to contact C.H. to dissociate ourselves as individuals from this illegal act. But dissociation is not a threat of legal action.

Request for pause: (1.5-2.1) The “peace offer” was used as a lever to try to stop PNT revoking staff’s illicit claim to Companies House that they formed a majority of shareholders. If the offer was sincere, should it not have been made before submitting this false claim? If there was a genuine and workable proposal, could they not have put it forward anyway?

It was not “threats” of complying with the law that scuppered peace talks.  It was the staff’s own manipulations.

Tripling Housmans rent: (3.3) PNT is also the parent company Housmans Bookshop, and hence is protective of its sustainability. Housmans pays rent to PNT which owns 5 Caledonian Road. The rent on the shop is one-fifth that paid by other tenants – that is, an 80% subsidy. In fact, PNT has been subsidising Housmans more than Peace News, even though PN is the Group’s prime raison d’etre. We were consulting on ways of addressing this imbalance.

What Mil describes as a tripling of rent is actually a halving of the subsidy to 40%. This was not even a proposal, but a scenario for Housmans to look at the financial implications of, to discuss with PNT. This exaggerated and misleading rhetoric undermines trust in PN itself.

Timescale: (1.3) The conflict has not been developing over two years. The point of principle has been an issue for at least ten years (see Andrew's overview The Elephant in the Room). It has nothing to do with the loss of the capital and the income it generated.

Having a decisive say: (2.3, 3.1-3.2) Mil paints PNT as wanting to both micro-manage him as editor, and demanding a “decisive say” over content. This is nonsense. PNT wants to be part of wider discussions that inform content. We never got to talk about what editorial accountability means in practice, because Mil never talks. He cannot abide scrutiny.

Deckchairs: (3.2) Mil writes that an editorial sub-group was rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. No. PN used to have such a group. To revive it was redesigning the Titanic, reinforcing the hull, welding tight the bulkheads, and fitting long-range radar.

Of course it suits Mil to trivialise what is the absolute central issue.

To put an editorial group in place now will ensure that the future PN has accountability built-in from the start. Mil’s actions, words and attitude indicate that whatever the “new” PN might be, he wanted absolute command of it.

It is not me who has an obsession for control (3.3).

“What PNT think of staff”: The article reveals that one Trustee thinks that staff are “evil fucks” (this was a response to the coup attempt). Other Trustees’ thoughts are more nuanced. PNT has never passed a collective judgement. The piece uses a sly, incorrect generalisation to support a bid for sympathy.

Pages 4-5: The views expressed here are so subjective that it is impossible to respond with any brevity at all. I’m not saying that subjectivity is to be dismissed. But to print about 2,500 words of it without allowing space for a reply, pretty much speaks for itself.

I am a feminist, if feminism means equality. Less so if it means that women are innately superior; or that anyone should be discriminated against on the grounds of age, colour or sex (5.1).

OMISSIONS

Circulation: one director said “PN is doing well”. It isn’t. If PN was serving a useful purpose, its subscription base and readership would be rising from its lowest-ever level of marginally over 500. At a time of huge peace and nonviolent action, PN is mired in insignificance.

Demands related to withdrawal of funding: These demands weren’t even about accountability, but about running the company properly.

Previous respect for editorial independence: (2.3, 3.1) It is outrageous that PN quotes Howard Clark as the champion of editorial independence. Howard himself said in 2013 that there was “a vacuum in terms of editorial accountability, a vacuum which is a recipe for editorial deterioration.”

Project Theta: (2.1) This was the somewhat pretentious code for… well, Trustees don’t know, because for a year staff have refused to tell us about it. Some future project; some big idea - but they refused to share any details with their own Directors! Yet they demanded commitment from PNT to fund this secret concept. That’s stupidly naïve, not to say insulting and controlling.

The “zero funding budget”: My predecessor as chair came from the charitable sector where it is a common exercise to look at financial viability in the worst case that funding dries up. All agree that it was not a relevant exercise for PN – but there was no question of reducing funding to zero at that time.

What PN doesn’t say is that shortly afterwards, Trustees committed to maintaining funding at £21k a year, and I personally ensured that staff had enough for a pay rise at the time of the cost of living crisis.

Another PNT failure: A whole page about Mil’s grievance against Albert. Three things you would not know, or would have to read the 1,500 words very carefully to deduce:

• Mil’s complaint was upheld. His appeal was against the sanction imposed on Albert. Mil provided no justification beyond “I’m not satisfied”. This indicates a punitive mindset.
• Mil complains that PNT, led by me, would not meet him half-way. I literally offered to meet him! – an invitation he declined.
• Mil accepted Albert’s letter of apology. Albert voluntary agreed to extend his period of stepping aside. Thus, Mil actually got everything he asked for.

The process was tortuous for all, but still, I’d say this constitutes a success, not a failure. It prompted PNT to adopt grievance, disciplinary and code of conduct processes. The failure was that PNL didn’t do any of those things, despite requests.

HYPOCRISIES

Tip into legal battle (1.5) This probably refers to a list which cried wolf about how legal actions could destroy the whole PN group of companies. It was spurious scaremongering. What they don’t say is that all bar one of the possible pathways to legal and financial ruin would be initiated by staff themselves. Then they have the temerity to accuse PNT of endangering the group!

Mil doing what he complains that others do: “So far as we know he [that is, me] had the support of others” (1.3). This language implies the possibility that I acted alone (I didn't). This implication exactly mirrors Mil’s complaint about Albert’s conditional apology.

“Boardroom politics” At PN’s AGM, a majority of PNL’s members voted to appoint the chair for the meeting. Then we voted two Trustees onto PNL's Board, as well as five staff nominations. Two of seven. A minority! Shock horror!

It was properly and democratically done. Hardly bullying.

The response was to sideline us through a new subcommittee from which Trustees were excluded, where in Mil’s own words “real discussions took place” (2.5). Not only discussions, but decisions, to be passed up for the Board to nod through using staff's built-in majority, with – as Mil admits – no discussion. The editor and promos worker kept well clear.

The first Board meeting allowed 30 minutes to deal with 13 items. At the AGM we gave 40 minutes to discuss just the chairing issue, and allowed people who weren’t shareholders equal speaking rights.

Who was bullying whom?

When the official Board had the temerity to make a decision staff didn’t like, staff refused to act on it. They then got the subcommittee to overrule its own Board. Sub-committee?

More recently staff have interpreted the Articles to try to seize control of Peace News Limited (they may still try this). The interpretation was wrong, and this isn’t their prerogative anyway – this is the company members’ right.

They published eight pages of biased invective, ignoring PNT’s proposal of a joint statement in PN. This was after they resigned, but while they still controlled PN’s finances. It was an abuse of power.

My point is, when it comes to “old school boardroom politics”, PN’s staff have knocked PNT into a cocked hat. They have been ruthless, manipulative, rule-bending, and haven’t messed around with who chairs what meeting. They have gone straight for the coup option. The hypocrisy is staggering.

Openness and consensus:  PN staff’s claim to be open and consensual crops up several times (eg 5.2). The PNL Board meeting in November 2023 resolved that “PNL board embraces powerful traditions and practices of consent-based and horizontal organising and decision making.” Ironically, this was one of the meetings I was excluded from. Two meetings later they voted against a motion for the Board to use consensus decision-making. It seems that the tradition is only powerful in PN when the nomenklatura are around the table.

Information was withheld. The Editor refused to be present. They denied being secretive while keeping “Project Theta” completely under wraps. Emily came to a meeting of PNL’s members/ shareholders the very day that the invective-ridden August PN was going to press. She said nothing about it, or its content, to her fellow Company Members.

How can you have consent-based decision-making when you keep secrets? When you act with such extraordinary bad faith?

Having it both ways: Strangely, when it suited his grievance, Mil was happy to view PNT as “tantamount” to being his employer. When it didn’t suit – such as when asked to do something – he ignored it. When it suited staff to accept that their tame directors were properly appointed, the Members’ meeting that appointed them was deemed valid. When the same Members lost confidence in those directors, the meeting that dismissed them was deemed invalid, although the number attending was exactly the same.

Seizing money: Unconstrained for so long, staff came to think they had the right to take over the joint. They tried to take over PNL through the 'eight directors' coup attempt. The also wanted Housmans’ and PN staff to take over PNT, and made this clear in a letter.

Since PNT is the only company in the group that makes a profit, what they were doing was trying to get control of the money which pays for PN, and covers their wages. It was as crude as that.

Why should the staff not control the money, as in co-ops? It’s a valid question. The answer merits an essay of its own, but briefly: there is a structural conflict between staff’s interests as employees, and the objects of the group. This is why charities, whose objects are to help their clients, are not allowed to be co-ops, whose objects are for the benefit of employees. This is why organisations set up to serve the public and funded with public money have governing bodies, and should not be run by trade unions.

For a newspaper, if staff can mark their own homework, so to speak, the paper will be rudderless, and will decline. Has declined. Howard was right.

One more, by way of a conclusion:

Objectivity: (3.3) Mil’s three-page view of events is written by the person central to the issues for over ten years. It cannot be anything other than biased. If he thinks he can be objective, he is unfit to edit the parish newsletter.

PN will be revived, and will survive. Perhaps in a different form, or several forms. Once, it would have been better to have had a managed transition, and to have retained the undoubted talents and commitment of the ex-staff. But not now, not with their lies, deceit, bad faith, personal vilification, and hypocrisy. And never with their insistence on autonomy.

Glyn Carter
Chair, Peace News Trustees
Director, Peace News Ltd
Sept 2024