STATEMENT FROM PEACE NEWS TRUSTEES

3 SEPTEMBER 2024

The staff of Peace News have printed an issue of PN which includes eight pages under the headline “Peace News To Close”.

The pages are biased and false in so many ways that we are unable to rebut every misrepresentation, correct every inaccuracy, or fill in every ​omission. Much of it is so extreme, personal and potentially libellous that it would be foolish to reply without legal advice. We are not going to ​sink to their level of personal attacks and abuse.

Suffice to say that there are two sides to every argument.

There are several points we do feel able to make.

Peace News is published by Peace News Ltd (PNL), itself wholly owned by Peace News Trustees Ltd (PNT). Both companies are not-for-profits, ​whose directors are all unpaid. The staff are paid employees of PNL. Peace News is financially dependent on PNT’s subsidy of £20,000 or ​more a year, without which the £2 cover price would have to quadruple.

The staff have frequently overstepped their role as employees. To announce the “closure” of PN is the latest example. Peace News is not ​theirs to close.

They resigned on 14 August. The resignations were accepted, and they were kept on in good faith for their two month notice period, to ​produce their last edition.

PNL’s directors said the issue should contain a joint statement agreed by PNT and staff; and staff could write a personal statement to readers, ​subject to directors’ approval. Instead, the staff published this issue secretly and unilaterally, having had no prior discussion with or ​agreement by their employers, let alone space to comment.

As directors of Peace News Trustees, and company members and directors of Peace News Ltd, we are successors of the people who founded ​the paper in 1936. It is our responsibility to work to their objectives, to build the paper’s effectiveness in promoting peace and nonviolence, ​and hand over to our successors in turn. The individuals named – and abused – by PN staff have long-time commitments to PN and the peace ​movement. They have integrity and good sense. They have not suddenly turned into monsters.

Peace News was in a long-term descent of ever-declining subscriptions, readership, and influence. It was locked-in to being a paper ​publication in the age of digital media. PNT tried to institute structures to review its purpose, strategy, content, and marketing, but at every ​turn these efforts were resisted by staff.

Staff refused to share and discuss editorial policy (if there was any). It turned out that they had been developing a plan for the future – but ​kept this secret for six months from the very people they expected to fund it! Another six months on, they never revealed what this plan might ​actually be.

This was just one example from of a year of acting in bad faith. They contradicted their own claims to openness and consensual decision-​making with secretiveness, lies, dissembling, procrastination, breaches of confidence, and manipulation. Given the history, the directors now ​feel naive to have trusted them to produce this latest edition.

Staff claimed autonomy. As owners, funders and stewards of Peace News, PNT naturally expected accountability. When PNT placed two Trustees onto ​PNL’s Board of seven (mirroring the two PNL people who were on the PNT Board), this was described as an “attack on PNL’s autonomy”. And here is ​their response to a request from PNT for quarterly editorial reports: “We see this as a breach of PN’s editorial independence”. The first quote is from ​2024. The second dates back ten years, to 2014. Their intransigence was permanent and absolute; and the gap could not be bridged.

It is fitting that their last act was to publish eight whole pages of inaccurate and self-evidently biased vitriol directed against Peace News ​Trustees (who pay them), and against named individuals (who aren’t paid at all). Staff did this clandestinely, and allowed no space for a ​different view. They published a leaked email without the author’s knowledge or consent, and a private email address without notice or ​permission. It was not just terrible journalistic ethics, but an outrageous abuse of power designed to do maximum damage to Peace News ​before their departure.

To repeat, Peace News does not belong to the staff who were employed to produce it. It cannot be staff who are ultimately responsible for PN. It is their ​employers Peace News Ltd, and through PNL, the owners and stewards – Peace News Trustees.

When these issues are resolved, we will be consulting widely on the future direction of Peace News.

Albert Beale, Glyn Carter, Marwan Darweish, Ian Dixon, Carol Rank, Andrew Rigby

(Peace News Trustees)

This statement is supported by board and company members of Peace News Ltd:

Albert Beale, Glyn Carter, Sally Dean, Ian Dixon, Martyn Lowe, Ruth Overy, Carol Rank, Andrew Rigby, Diana Shelley

Notes:

A fuller history has been compiled by Andrew Rigby in a personal capacity. It is available at, eg, https://PeaceNewsTrustees.my.canva.site/

Albert Beale has also issued a personal response. It can also be seen at, eg, https://PeaceNewsTrustees.my.canva.site/

Those receiving this are welcome to republish PNT's statement, and to share links to and extracts from the two personal texts, providing the wordings are not ​changed.

‘The elephant in the room’: Notes relating to the ‘closure’ of Peace News by PN staff

Andrew Rigby

1. Personal Preface

I have been involved with Peace News (PN) since I first started reading it as a 14 year old in Prescot, Merseyside around 1958. By that time I had begun to define myself as a pacifist, ​but it was through the pages of PN that I learned how to be a pacifist, what such an ethic implied for one’s lifestyle and activities.

As a research student at Essex University in 1968 I conducted a survey of Peace News readers which became the basis of my MA thesis.

In 1972 I participated in a meeting at the farm owned by Howard Cheney where it was decided on a new company structure, with Peace News Trustees as the parent company with ​the two subsidiary companies of Peace News Limited running the publication and Housmans responsible for the bookshop at 5 Caledonian Road.

Subsequently I was a board member of Peace News Trustees (PNT) and Peace News Limited (PNL) for many years. Sometime around 2009 I resigned from the board of PNL – I did ​not see the point of participating as a board member when the editor, Milan Rai, took absolutely no notice of inputs from board members regarding the quality of the paper. In 2018 ​I resigned from the board of PNT in disgust at the failure of the board to take substantive action on the basis of a consultant’s report on the challenges facing Peace News as a ​movement publication.

In 2022 I rejoined the board of PNT following a plea from one of the long-standing members who expressed the fear that the board had become so weak that it was in danger of ​emasculation through some form of organisational restructuring being orchestrated by Milan Rai. Since then more of my time than I anticipated has been taken up with dealing with ​an endless struggle to establish some kind of collegiate relationship between PNT and PNL/PN staff. During that time I have had to witness the unbalanced behaviour of Milan Rai as ​he struggled to protect his ‘kingdom’ from any attempts by PNT to establish some system where we, as trustees, might obtain some degree of insight into the intentions and the ​political vision of the editor of what was clearly a failing project.

Time after time Glyn Carter, as chair of PNT, made approaches to the board of PNL and the staff to sit in on some of their meetings, to gain a sense of how the company was ​operating and the nature of its strategy to meet the challenges that all print media face. Again and again such attempts were rebuffed – and for his troubles he was subjected to one ​of Milan Rai’s typical tactics: the personalisation of issues with Glyn pilloried as an authoritarian who lacked the ethical commitment to the core values of pacifism that informed the ​group of companies. It became a nasty business, and in the process any basis for trust between the parties engaged in the struggle was lost.

Reluctantly the decision was made by the PNT board to cease funding PNL, in the hope that this would bring PNL and staff to their senses and recognise the need to take their ​funders, PNT, into their confidence. Instead the staff announced their resignation, along with those board members of PNL that had been invited on to the board by the staff – then ​we learned that the staff had ‘gone public’.

In the issue of Peace News (August 2024) they published a scurrilous, distorted and possibly libellous portrayal of Peace News trustees who allegedly had brought about a situation in which ​PN staff, as poor victims, felt forced to resign and close down the paper (as if it was theirs to close down!). This is a fiction, driven by a desire to cause as much damage as possible to those ​who have had the temerity to insist on their right (and duty) as trustees of a company responsible for funding a (failing) publication to insist on some degree of accountability from those ​directly responsible for the project – the staff and the PNL board, their employers.

In the notes that follow I attempt to present an overview of the different phases of the troubled relationship between PN editorial staff since their appointment in 2007, and the board of PNT.

2. Organisation structure

At the core of the conflict surrounding the resignation of Peace News (PN) staff and subsequent actions by the staff is the persistent refusal by the staff to provide the board of the parent ​company PNT with appropriate information about their editorial policy and future plans for the paper. A refusal that is all the more astounding given that PNT has provided an annual subsidy ​to its subsidiary company PNL (Peace News Limited) that has enabled the staff to remain in post whilst producing the paper. Note 1

The formal relationship between the staff, PNL and PNT was made clear to the editorial staff on appointment in 2007. Here is an extract from their terms of employment:

Peace News staff are employed by and managed by the board of Peace News Ltd (PNL), which is legally responsible for the publication of Peace News.

The Peace News company are nominees of Peace News Trustees (PNT), and the Peace News company is answerable to PNT; however the parent company is not involved in the day-to-day ​management of Peace News.

3. The core issue

The core issue at the heart of the tension between PNT and the editorial staff of Peace News (Milan Rai in particular) has been over the question of the quality of the paper and editorial ​accountability. Within two years of their appointment as staff they were being asked by PNT members to acknowledge the principle that the PN staff owed a degree of accountability to the ​trustees, PNT was not just a cash-cow to provide an annual subsidy to enable the staff to continue publishing a paper without answering basic questions such as those first posed by Bob ​Overy to Milan Rai in December 2009:

What is PN for? Why is it worth supporting? What are PN editors trying to do? What are their political aims? What would be a good result? ….

The Trustees Board doesn’t necessarily need to agree with what you propose. It just needs to be satisfied that it has been presented with a coherent proposition, one which fits with our ​broad objectives as Trustees, makes sense as a political enterprise and can work in business terms with a fair wind. Note 2

To the best of my knowledge Bob never received a satisfactory answer to his questions.

1 Some degree of tension is perhaps inevitable between journalists and management.

2 Bob Overy to Milan Rai, 5 December 2009

4. The redesign farrago – 2010-11

In 2010 PN initiated a project to redesign the appearance of the paper. Then, in July 2011 the trustees received a letter from two professional media designers advising us that after months of ​involvement they had reluctantly decided to withdraw. Their experience was unpleasant – ‘our working relationship with the PN team has gone through one crisis after another, each without ​satisfactory resolution’. After 17 months involvement they came to the professional judgement that ‘during this time PN has not picked up even the rudiments of what editorial design is about’.

They had expected that they would work collaboratively as team members with the editorial staff. Unfortunately ‘this collaboration was largely withheld from us’. A key reason for this failure to ​establish appropriate working relationships was because they were ‘unable to engage in direct discussion with the one person in the team in whose hands the editing (and editorial decision-​making) predominantly lay.’

They continued: ‘For reasons we do not entirely understand – this person also appeared deeply reluctant to work with us and actively withheld their collaboration’ – a pattern of Milan Rai’s ​behaviour some of us were still witnessing over a decade later!

They concluded their letter by referring to an experience shared by many who have tried to work collaboratively with Milan Rai. They confessed:

In truth we are also wearied and disillusioned by the negativity, mistrust (and even hostility) we have from time to time faced in recent months. These seem the opposite conditions to those ​ideal for a good, fruitful, comradely working relationship. Note 3

5. ‘The elephant in the room’ Note 4

Throughout this period the trustees were privately asking themselves how to try and handle the problem of Milan Rai, as sales declined and the distance between the editorial staff and the ​trustees grew. Some of us started to refer to the issue as ‘the elephant in the room’. It was Howard Clark, a key member of the trustee body, who first applied the metaphor in a confidential ​document he shared with other trustees in September 2013 entitled ‘A relevant elephant?’ In this document Howard reflected on the manner in which PNT repeatedly tried to raise issues ​regarding PN’s strategy, focus & constituency, but failed to receive answers, whilst the circulation of the paper continued to decline. He identified two areas of concern:

a. The quality of the paper - and editorial accountability

There is vacuum in terms of editorial accountability, a vacuum which is a recipe for editorial deterioration. … PNL is a nominal body; PNL working groups consist only of staff & no evidence it ​reviews content of paper, and no other forum where paper is evaluated. We should insist such a forum come into existence.

b. Sustainability

What base is being laid for the future? When Mil & Emily leave is that the end of the paper? What does this mean for us strategically: Wait for the end or try to bring it nearer? Note 5

3 All quotations in this section are from a confidential letter to Peace News Trustees, 5 July 2011.

4 This expression is a metaphorical idiom in English for a situation where there is an important topic or controversial issue that everyone knows about but no one mentions or discusses because ​it would cause discomfort and unease.

5 Howard Clark, ‘A relevant elephant?’, private paper September 2013.

6. Alternative ways for PNT to promote the pacifist vision

Howard was one of the people who, on more than one occasion, raised the question of alternative uses for the annual PNT subsidy other than supporting a publication that lacked a clear

political vision alongside declining distribution figures. In October 2013 he advised Milan Rai:

There is nothing in the Articles of Association to stop PNT becoming a grant-giving body offering support to whoever is doing good work to promote nonviolence. …

PNT grant to PNL was instituted in 1990 … on the basis of PNL submitting an appropriate business plan. … A budget is not a business plan … perhaps there has been an implicit strategy ​including the various initiatives (beyond producing the paper), but without a strategic and political evaluation of that combination of activities, Trustees are left with bald figures (which seem ​to be of continuing decline) and personal reactions to the paper. Note 6

7. PN staff assert their editorial autonomy

In a discussion paper presented for consideration at a joint PNT-PNL meeting held 16 October 2013 PN staff and their working group (PNL Board was non-existent at this time) asserted their ​independence, rejecting any role for PNT beyond funding PN.

We are also working with the premise that editorial control of all PNL publications is entirely a matter for the editors of Peace News. …

We also understand that decision-making within PNL is entirely a matter for PNL (Board, staff, advisors) – as long as PNL is satisfying the legal requirements of its limited company form, and ​as long as it is financially viable. Note 7

8. Pattern established: PNT persists in seeking some degree of accountability, PN staff and board/working group reject such requests as infringement of editorial independence.

By early 2014 the pattern was established after PNT requested quarterly reports from PN. This was rejected with an affirmation that this constituted an infringement of their editorial ​independence:

Our considered view (@ 21 July 2014 working group meeting) is that this would be a breach of PN’s editorial independence, and we therefore cannot comply with this request. We believe that ​such quarterly editorial reports would establish the principle that the editors of PN are accountable to PNT for their day-to-day editorial decisions. Note 8

9. Weakness of PNTL board and failure to fulfil its role as trustees

In the years that followed, particularly after the untimely death of Howard Clark, a mainstay of PNTL, the trustees failed in their duty to insist on some degree of accountability from Milan Rai ​and his co-workers. The decline in circulation of the paper continued and the dissatisfaction of individual trustees with the editorial quality of the publication grew – but in the face of the ​strident refusal of Milan Rai to concede any meaningful degree of accountability the trustees backed down. There seemed to be no clear path forward, with a number of trustees resigning.

6 Email, Howard Clark to Milan Rai, 5 October 2013.

7 Paper dated 13 October 2013 for consideration at joint PN-PNT meeting, 16 October 2013.

8 PNL working group to PNTL, August 2014.

Looking back now it seems incredible that ‘the elephants in the room’ was not recognised and changes made. But it is relevant to understand that historically most editors of PN resigned after a ​few years in post, exhausted and ready for new pastures. PNT had never faced a situation where an editor insisted on clinging on to his position. Furthermore, as part of a wider peace movement, ​those volunteering and working in different capacities under the umbrella of PNT had viewed each other as comrades rather then employers-employees. There was no organisational history or ​record of staff being submitted to performance review exercises or anything like that. We were ill-equipped to deal with this challenge of an editor who was not afraid to insist on maintaining ​sovereignty over his domain.

10. A consultant’s overview - 2018 Note 9

In May 2016 PNT had a special meeting to discuss the situation with regard to PN. A number of critical points were raised:

-- The “messages” of the paper needed to be clarified and strengthened.

-- An editorial group was essential.

-- An editor was needed who listened as much as wrote.

-- There was a need for a wider range of writers, beyond the staff, who could bring new perspectives, thereby helping the paper to define its message.

The board recognised it had failed in not providing the kind of constructive involvement that was necessary for such changes to take place, and it was resolved that one of the board members ​should take a special interest in helping to generate an active and engaged set of board members for PNL. Unfortunately, despite declared intentions, there was very little evidence of change. ​Note 10

One way forward was to commission a report from a consultant familiar with ‘movement media’, and in February 2018 he shared his report with PNT. It made for interesting reading. Its main ​conclusion was that PN’s decline indicated failure to adapt to changed circumstances rather than a collapse in support for its core values. But the decline was also due to matters over which the ​staff had no control - the changes in reading habits, the technological changes in communications etc.

When he turned his attention to the actual paper being published under the title of ‘Peace News’ he was quite damning, identifying issues that many of us had talked about privately but ​refrained from ‘going public’ out of comradely loyalty. But seeing as that value is now out of fashion here are some of the observations made:

-- Too few recognisable contributors. -- The news is dull when it isn’t old. -- Features are predictable & boring. -- Lack of editorial imagination. -- Design is clunky.

-- Book reviews less comprehensive than they should be. -- Chomsky is a giant turn-off. -- Issues of PN are really hard work to read. -- The paper needs to work out who it is trying to sell to.

His conclusion was that there was no reason to keep it alive as a newspaper – given how few people read it, the financial cost of keeping it going that would never be recouped, and the outmoded ​agitational paper model upon which it was based.

9 Declaration of interest – I was the main mover behind the commissioning of the consultant’s report on the challenges facing PN.

10 After a few years the member of PNT absented herself from both PNT and PNL, and subsequently was deemed to have resigned.

11. Peace News Trustees take their responsibility seriously – at last!

The board of PNT were unable to agree on a way forward in the light of the consultant’s report – so nothing changed. Note 11 The board grew weaker as directors resigned and others grew older ​and were not replaced with fresh folk. But in 2022 new members did join the board and with Glyn Carter as chair the board decided it would launch a two year programme of review and ​restructuring embracing PNT as the parent company and the two subsidiaries – Peace News Limited and Housmans Limited.

Almost immediately the new board of PNL along with the staff, launched delaying, duplicitous and dishonest ways to maintain a veil of secrecy around its deliberations and to prevent any ​‘interference’ from the trustees. Note 12 What had changed this time around, however, was the determination of a majority of PNTL to actually address ‘the relevant elephant’ and not be ​intimidated into subservience.

Events are too recent and feelings too raw for me to pretend that I can present a dispassionate overview of the trajectory that ensued. All I will say is that if the staff and the board of PNL had ​acted with any recognisable degree of honesty and collegiality the current break could have been avoided.

My own view is that the resignation of the staff and their publication of what seems to me to be a dishonest and libellous piece of work intended to present themselves as innocent victims of a ​tyrannical bunch of trustees could not have been avoided, given the absolute refusal of PNL and PN staff to consider any proposal involving some degree of accountability to PNT.

Indeed, there are grounds for believing that what has been driving Mil Rai and the staff of PN over the last couple of years has been the desire to remove the present board of Peace News ​Trustees and replace them with their own nominees.

Andrew Rigby 31 August 2024

11 In the interests of transparency I should note that I resigned from PNT at this point, in disgust at the failure to take action following such a critique of the paper we spent so much money ​subsidising. But I couldn’t stay away and rejoined in 2022. It is relevant to note that various attempts to recruit new members for the PNT board failed because potential trustees, particularly ​women, had unpleasant past experiences of working with Milan Rai in different capacities.

12 It came as a shock to be informed in 2023 by one member of the board of PNL that their meetings did not involve any editorial discussion of the content of the paper. It is also relevant to note ​that around this time Milan Rai announced that he would no longer communicate directly with board members of PNT, all communication henceforth would be via intermediaries drawn from the ​PNL board – what a way to run a railroad!

A personal statement from Albert Beale about the latest issue of Peace News

The recently-resigned staff of Peace News [they resigned in the middle of August; their resignations were accepted] have, rather furtively, now brought out one more issue before departing - ​claiming that they are "closing" the paper. It is - of course - not theirs to close.

The issue consists solely of pages of attacks by the former staff on the trustee body which funds them, together with rather libellous and tortuously-written personal attacks on various of ​the individual trustees.

All those attacked are people who have worked for years to keep the publication alive; it is literally the case that the title would have disappeared many years ago if not for the efforts of ​some of those maligned and abused now.

As one of those personally attacked, I don't intend to reply in kind, despite being on the receiving end of accusations based on partial truths, distortions, and breach of confidence. I've been ​advised to react as I would in the face of a childish tantrum, and not descend to the same level. I will trust that people around the movement who know me, and who have some idea of the ​situation around Peace News in recent years, will draw the right conclusions.

However I will note that a common thread amongst messages of support I've received in recent days has been along these lines: An editor of a publication who, on their resignation, feels the ​need to purport to close down the publication behind them, in the style of "Le journal, c'est moi!", is clearly displaying massive amounts of arrogance and megalomania.

It's noteworthy that the ex-staff suggest problems have arisen specifically in the last couple of years - presumably this makes it easier to personalise their attacks. As many people around ​Peace News know, the underlying problem has actually been bubbling away for well over a decade, and has been experienced and talked about by virtually everyone who has been a ​member of Peace News Trustees during this period.

Peace News is published by Peace News Ltd, itself wholly owned by Peace News Trustees Ltd (PNT); the trustees are the successors of the people who founded the paper in 1936. An ​official response to the latest issue has been issued by PNT, supported by board and company members of Peace News Ltd.

Peace News has of course changed editors, changed format, and had pauses in publication on various occasions in the last 88 years. But its “ownership” has never been in the hands of any ​particular editor or staff.

The announcement of the “closure” of the paper has been made with no prior involvement of (let alone agreement by) PNT or the legal board of Peace News itself.

The PN staff, besides announcing their own resignations in the paper, also suggested that the Peace News Ltd (PNL) board resigned with them. To be clear, the people they are talking about ​are those the staff themselves chose as people they were prepared to talk to about (some aspects of) their work; for years there has been no semblance of communication with, let alone ​accountability to, anyone beyond those the staff had chosen (unlike might be expected with a normal company board, or indeed any democratic structure). The current Company Members of ​PNL (all of whom are nominees of Peace News Trustees, as has always been the case) met recently to elect a new interim PNL board. This board is currently working on plans for the future of ​Peace News and will welcome input in due course.

The Peace News name and copyright – not to mention its generations of goodwill within the pacifist and nonviolent movements, and wider peace and social change movements, around the ​world – belong ultimately (in some cases directly) to Peace News Trustees.

PNT’s role has always been to promote pacifist publishing and to "fly the flag" for radical nonviolence – largely carried out via Peace News of course. PNT’s safeguarding role includes insisting ​on some necessary political, financial and organisational accountability on the part of its subsidiaries, in return for PNT underwriting their financial viability (this is essential for their survival).

The ever-increasing unwillingness of Peace News staff to share any of their strategic thinking with PNT had reached the point of their going out of their way to hide the fact that there were any ​discussions, and then actively barring PNT members from such meetings. (We now know why.) Despite this, PNT continued to underwrite PN’s publication, as well as other activities of the PN ​staff (to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds a year).

At the time of writing, staff are refusing to share access to bank accounts and other information vital to the running of a company. This is in spite of having resigned, and their employment now ​being terminated with pay in lieu of notice.

To repeat: the ex-staff's implied control of the paper, to the extent that they consider it within their remit to close the title down, is a political, legal and financial fantasy. The Peace News Ltd ​board, with the support of Peace News Trustees, are making plans for the future of Peace News. When the present issues are resolved, they will be consulting widely on PN’s future direction.

Albert Beale

(Member of Peace News Trustees, member of the Peace News board, and former Peace News co-editor)

3 September 2024