This version of Peace News has suddenly come to the end of its life

By Milan Rai, editor of Peace News until 7 September 2024

On 14 August, all four current Peace News staff (Emily Johns, Emma Sangster, Gabriel Carlyle and myself) resigned from our jobs at PN, in protest at how we and our board members have been treated by our parent company, Peace News Trustees, over the last year or so. Five members of the Peace News board also resigned as directors on 14 August: Emily Johns, Eve Wedderburn, Henrietta Cullinan, Leslie Barson and Muzammal Hussain.

A resignation letter was sent to Peace News Trustees (PNT), the company that owns Peace News Ltd, signed by Emily and sent on behalf of all eight resigning staffers and directors. It said: ‘The tidal wave of intimidation, harassment and threats that we have experienced over the last year has been extremely stressful and exhausting. We tried to create a more healthy relationship between PNT and PNL, based on consent and mutual respect, protecting a space for private conversation and discussion without PNT surveillance or micro-management. Unfortunately, that attempt has been unsuccessful.

‘The relentless bullying campaign we have experienced has been led by Glyn Carter and aided and abetted by Albert Beale, Ian Dixon and Andrew Rigby.’

While the conflict between Peace News Ltd and its owner, PNT, has been developing over nearly two years, partly because of a financial crisis (explained below), things escalated on 24 July, when PNT chair Glyn Carter sent an extremely threatening letter to the PN staff.

So far as we know, he had the support of three others on PNT (Andrew Rigby, Ian Dixon and Albert Beale), making up a majority of PNT directors.

In his 24 July letter, Glyn Carter wrote that:

• PNT, which is the main source of financial support for Peace News, would cut off all money transfers to PN – from 1 August
  
• PNT would no longer allow PN to draw from a large legacy held by PNT (access to this legacy had previously been agreed in order to pay staff wages and other expenses) – also from 1 August
  
• it was an ‘error’ to see this large legacy as owed by PNT to Peace News Ltd (despite the fact that the PNT accounts have for years clearly stated that this legacy belongs to Peace News), raising the prospect that PNT would seize this money
  
• PNT now demanded ‘repayment’ of over £100,000 in loans it had made to PN (contrary to previous agreements; these loans were part of how PNT has financially supported Peace News) – by 31 August
  
• Because PNT was recalling this sum from Peace News, it now regarded PN as ‘insolvent’ (broke) and it would be the ‘responsibility’ of unspecified ‘directors’ to ‘liquidate’ Peace News Ltd as an insolvent company – unless all of PNT’s demands were met, in which case PNT would lift its demand for repayment

Glyn Carter also threatened to start legal action against members of the Peace News Ltd board who supported the staff.

The PN staff and Peace News board members realised that we were all about to tip into legal battles that would drain the bank accounts of both Peace News Ltd and its parent company, and which might end up requiring the sale of 5 Caledonian Road, destroying Housmans Bookshop, our sister project, in the process.

That was not an acceptable risk to us, however reckless the other side might be.

On 9 August, the staff and Peace News board members asked PNT for a brief pause in hostilities until 25 August, so that our side could agree a compromise proposal to put to them that would gradually hand control of Peace News to PNT over the following 11 months

On 12 August, PNT chair Glyn Carter responded to this request for a pause with a new round of threats, the first of which was sent in the name of PNT.

After another member of PNT emailed us, cc-ing the rest of PNT, to say that the threats were not in the name of PNT and had not had the backing of even a single PNT member, Glyn Carter then sent threats of legal action in his own name, and that of Andrew Rigby.

It became clear to us that there was no point in reaching a compromise agreement with PNT because Glyn Carter would always reserve the right to ignore democratic decision-making within PNT, and would always feel free to break agreements and launch legal actions of one kind or another, destabilising any peaceful transition of power.

The PN staff and staff-supporting Peace News Ltd board members then saw no way to deal with the bullying we had endured – and which we faced more of – other than by resigning in protest.

Silenced

I regret the fact that these resignations, and the intense conflict that has brought them about, must now be hitting readers and subscribers like a bolt from the blue.

We have not been able to alert you to the growing crisis partly because Glyn Carter has threatened instant dismissal, with the support of the other three on PNT, if any of the staff were to publicly air our disagreements and, in his words, ‘bring the group into disrepute’.

We are rushing out this special issue (and a mini ‘normal’ issue) in order to let you know what has happened, despite Glyn Carter’s threats of instant dismissal.

Glyn Carter is the current chair of Peace News Trustees, appointed to PNT less than two years ago. He was previously a PN staffer in the 1980s and PN board member in the 1990s.

The other three are all long-time PNT directors.

Albert Beale was also a PN staffer in the 1980s, was a PN board member until 2007, and is the manager of the Housmans Peace Resource Project, a PNT project.

Ian Dixon was previously PNT chair for many years (he also worked as a volunteer to make 5 Caledonian Road habitable in 1959).

Andrew Rigby is emeritus professor of Peace Studies at Coventry University and was on the PN board from 1992 – 2002.

As for us, the decision to resign has not been taken lightly by anyone involved.

The staff have all been at the paper for over a decade. Emily Johns and I started working at PN in February 2007 (clocking up 17 years’ service). Gabriel Carlyle has worked for the paper since March 2009 (15 years). Emma Sangster became the web worker in September 2011 (13 years’ service).

For three of us, this is almost the only steady job we’ve ever had in our lives.

All four of us are now serving our contractually-required two months’ notice, which will end on 14 October, when we will leave our PN-related keys on the office table – unless we are dismissed before then.

Before going into the detail, I should tell you that, earlier this year, the women working at PN wrote to PNT pointing out the level of sexism that they had experienced from men on PNT.

They suggested that the women of PNT, Peace News and Housmans, who all got along well and who respected each other, should take control of PNT, with all the male PNT directors leaving their positions.

This suggestion was ignored by PNT and, so far as we can tell, not even discussed by email, let alone in a formal meeting.

Why the threats?

What had Peace News board members and staff members done to deserve the kind of treatment inflicted and threatened in Glyn Carter’s 24 July ‘liquidate PN’ letter?

Here are three of the main reasons, as far as I can understand things.

(1) PNT could not tolerate the existence of a ‘management subcommittee’ on the Peace News board – something which had been set up as a defensive move in the face of PNT’s intrusive and controlling behaviour.

(2) Breaking with its previous respect for editorial independence, PNT could no longer bear the fact that PN was being produced without PNT itself having a decisive say in the content and production of the paper (also, it appears, in PN promotional work), through an ‘editorial advisory group’ or ‘accountability structure’.

(3) PNT could not bear the fact that the PN staff had: complained about Glyn Carter’s behaviour as PNT chair; asked him to resign from both PNT and the Peace News Ltd board; and refused to take orders from him if he continued with his behaviour.

The first of these issues is connected to the financial crisis that PNT – and therefore Peace News – have been experiencing.

To understand that crisis, we need to understand the basic financial structure of the PN group of companies.

Peace News Trustees (which is not a charity or even a ‘trust’ in the legal sense) owns Peace News, Housmans Bookshop and their home base, 5 Caledonian Road in Central London (see PN 2516 – 2517 for the story of how the building was bought).

PNT also used to own a building in Finsbury Park, in North-East London. PNT used to get rental income from both buildings. Some of the surplus from those rents was used to financially support Peace News.

When the building in Finsbury Park was sold off, PNT invested £100,000 of the sale money into a high-risk, high-reward (10 percent a year interest) property development scheme. This went bust after 10 years in 2022.

The £100,000 investment was lost.

£10,000 of annual income was also lost.

When PNT informed Peace News of these losses in 2022, the PNT treasurer of the time indicated that PNT’s financial support to PN would need to drop by more than the £10,000 of lost interest, because of other demands.

Then, in January 2023, the then chair of PNT suddenly asked the Peace News Ltd board for ‘a realistic business plan for operating a peace news/education service at break-even or better, without central subsidies’ (emphasis added). The business plan should be delivered by 31 March 2023.

The PN board and staff heard this as a statement from PNT that it intended to cut its financial support to PNL from £35,000 a year (and a free office), to £0 a year (and a free office) – after some ‘transitional months’.

Since staff wages amounted to around £40,000 a year, this sounded like PNT was saying ‘you need to sack almost everyone.’

We did not produce the budget that had been demanded, and we asked why financial support was dropping to zero, when we could see that rents at 5 Caledonian Road were not dropping to zero, and there would still be significant surpluses which could be used to support PN.

We never got an answer to that question.

From that point onwards, Peace News felt that its interests and those of PNT were in conflict, and that PN was being threatened and punished for a financial crisis that was not of our making.

We did realise that PN was going to have to be reinvented, and that financial support from PNT was going to be a lot lower – and that probably most of the staff were going to be made redundant in the transition to a New PN – but we were determined to be as creative as possible about what that New PN might be.

We were also determined to fight as hard as we could for the best possible support from PNT for that new project, whatever it turned out to be, and whether or not any of the current staff were employed in it.

In 2023, PNT did not build trust or create a sense of co-operation, mutual respect and shared sacrifice. Instead, January 2023 was just the start of a series of ultimatums and high-handed orders from above.

Intrusion

In this context, when PNT decided it wanted to put its own chair onto the PN board, the existing board saw this as intrusive and controlling.

In earlier years, when Peace News Ltd did not even have a single board member, PNT had not put any of its directors onto the PN board; it had just asked for more detailed reports.

One of the main questions for the PN board in 2023 was how to deal with PNT’s demands.

How could this be talked about properly with the chair of PNT sitting in on those discussions?

As one PN board member told PNT, it was like bosses at a company insisting on sending a senior manager to sit in on union branch meetings discussing strategies for dealing with management.

When PNT used legal manoeuvres to put two PNT directors onto the Peace News board, the existing non-imposed PN directors had to respond.

They set up a ‘management subcommittee’ which excluded the imposed PNT directors (Glyn Carter and Andrew Rigby) and where real discussions took place. Recommendations from the subcommittee were sent to the (very brief) full board meetings, where the subcommittee’s suggestions were voted through.

This was one of the main problems PNT had with PN: the existence of the management subcommittee to create a private discussion space for the non-imposed PN directors – and to shield the staff from bullying by PNT members.

Scrapping the subcommittee, in order to have access to all PN board conversations, was one of the main demands in Glyn Carter’s threatening 24 July letter.

I should point out that, when Glyn Carter began insisting on a seat on the Peace News Ltd board, PN board members did suggest mediation to try to create a more healthy relationship.

PN board members Emily Johns, Henrietta Cullinan and Muzammal Hussain put a great deal of time and effort into this ‘Relationships’ process but it failed, unfortunately, to mend things between PNT and PN.

Muzammal, who played a leading role in the Relationships process, explains how this process broke down later in this issue (pp6 – 7).

Distraction

Another major PNT demand, that seemed to lie behind their drastic 24 July financial cut-off and threats to ‘liquidate’ PN, was for Peace News to set up an editorial advisory group. The clear impression was that Glyn Carter would sit on this body and have a dominant influence on both the editorial content and the promotional work of PN.

This would have broken with the principle of editorial independence which had been championed in the past by PNT directors such as Howard Clark.

At a meeting with Emily Johns this year, Glyn Carter indicated he wanted to be deeply involved in all aspects of production, not just in suggesting articles.

He specifically proposed, for example, that each issue should be passed around the editorial advisory group just before being sent to the printers, for last-minute advice/instruction on layout and wording.

This was a level of interference that no one on PNT had even hinted at, before Glyn Carter.

When the demand for an editorial advisory group was put forward recently, the PN board and staff saw it as rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

Because of PNT’s actions, PN was in a massive financial crisis, and would have to thoroughly reinvent itself. We were not at all sure that what would come out at the other end of our transition would be a media project, either on paper or online.

Setting up an editorial advisory group seemed like a diversion of the time and energy that was needed to come up with the best possible options for the future, and to support the most challenging and creative debate about what PN could and should become.

Even if we did set up an editorial advisory group, Glyn Carter had already thoroughly poisoned his relations with PN staff with his bullying behaviour (including over the editor’s grievance procedure – see p8). Staff were unwilling to take advice or instructions from him.

Complaint

In fact, the staff had recently put in a letter of complaint calling on Glyn Carter to step down from both PNT and the Peace News Ltd board.

Another demand of PNT’s, in Glyn Carter’s 24 July letter, was that the PN staff withdraw in full their complaint against Glyn.

That staff letter said: ‘we have now had over a year of dictats, wild accusations, repeated and sustained attacks on PNL’s autonomy, and the casual floating of “options” that could put Housmans’ finances at serious risk – for example, by tripling their rent.

‘That threat to Housmans, and this latest move to get rid of PNL Board members, are Glyn’s ideas. Unfortunately, they are just the latest in a long line of authoritarian and destructive decisions and initiatives thought up and driven by Glyn.

‘As the staff members of Peace News Limited, we believe that Glyn’s continued involvement as a Peace News Trustee constitutes an existential threat to Peace News and probably to Housmans Bookshop, two long-lived and much-loved movement institutions.

‘Glyn’s leadership of PNT has been marked by chaos, confrontation and an obsession with control.’

After giving some examples of his behaviour, the staff asked Glyn Carter to stand down, and said they would not take directions from him if he carried on trying to eject the non-imposed members of the Peace News board (he did try to do this).

Positively, the staff did also offer to join PNT temporarily and to help bring in new PNT directors.

This is the most objective short version of this story that I can tell, of how PNT ended up threatening to destroy PN and how the PN staff and most of the PN board resigned in protest.

This article first appeared in Peace News 2674 (September 2024)