Pension Crisis

While a lot of fuss is being made about the winter fuel payment being snatched away from pensioners, and the triple lock, there is something which is not being considered.

For those of us who are of the Real Generation Rent, the most important issue to consider is rent inflation.

That is why pension increases should be based upon yearly rent inflation.

Meanwhile the 25% reduction in council tax needs rethinking as it discriminates again single pensioners.

Long term it should be viewed in relationship to the ongoing housing crisis, and the curtailment of social care/ social housing options for older people.

Spycops Inquiry Update

The spycops public inquiry has this week reached Tranch Two Part Two.

There is now a lot of evidence emerging about just what damage they inflicted upon many individuals.

They were also responsible for many miscarriages of justice, and adversely effected our political campaigning.

Here is an example of just what Bob Lambert who I knew as Bob Robinson got up to

I will be giving evidence about him in early November..

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 have 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. Albert Beale has also issued a
personal response.

Both can be seen at https://PeaceNewsTrustees.my.canva.site/

Recipients are welcome to republish this statement from PNT, and to share links to
and extracts from the two personal texts, providing the wordings are not changed

A Personal Statement From Albert Beale About The Latest Issue Of Peace News

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

Andrew Rigby’s Personal Analysis of Background To Current Peace News Issues

The following is a personal analysis of the current Peace news situation by 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.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.2
    To the best of my knowledge Bob never received a satisfactory answer to his questions.
  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
    1 Some degree of tension is perhaps inevitable between journalists and management.
    2 Bob Overy to Milan Rai, 5 December 2009
    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.3
  5. ‘The elephant in the room’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?5
  6. Alternative ways for PNT to promote the pacifist vision
    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 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.
    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.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.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.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
    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.
    meaningful degree of accountability the trustees backed down. There seemed to be no
    clear path forward, with a number of trustees resigning.
    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 – 20189
    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.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.
  • Book reviews less comprehensive than they should be.
  • Design is clunky.
  • 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.
    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.
    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.
  1. 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.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.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!

Peace News Update

As some of you might of seen a version of Peace News has been published by 4 of editors of the paper a few days ago.

The headline of this edition is that PN is ceasing publication.

This is Not the case.

What has happened is that these 4 individuals have Resigned having been prevented from an attempt to hijack the paper.

In this scurrilous edition they have made a lot of unfounded accusations and attacked a number of highly respected long term activists.

There will be a statement by the Peace News board within the next few days.

In the meanwhile be assured that Peace News will continue to be published, just as it has been since 1936.

About Libraries

The greatest achievement of working in public libraries is to help people to further their self education, and provide all the references they need for self help.

They are also used to provide all the library resources which many schools can no longer afford to provide.

They also provide social centres within the centre of the community.

Most importantly of all they provide help for people with low literacy skills, and help with adult literacy courses.

So every library closure comes with a very high social and economic cost.

Barrow BAE Town.

A report by Philip Gilligan

The shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness has a central role in the production of Britain’s so-called ‘nuclear deterrent’, producing the submarines which carry the nuclear missiles and nuclear warheads.

The previous class of Vanguard nuclear submarines were produced here and the new Dreadnought submarines designed to carry the new Trident D-5 missiles will also be built here. Barrow is the major town and administrative centre of the Westmorland and Furness unitary authority where I live and is very much dominated by BAE Systems. The dockyard and associated buildings physically dominate the centre of town, and BAE is by far the largest local employer and the first port-of-call for anyone seeking reasonably paid employment outside the public sector. The company has at least 10,000 direct employees in the town and plans to recruit 1000 new apprentices at the shipyard in 2024. This, in an authority which has 20 areas ranked by the Office of National Statistics as being amongst the 10% most deprived areas in England. BAE Systems publicises its sponsorship of community activities with young people, charitable organisations and activities that make a positive social or economic contribution to local communities.

Local politicians (Conservative and Labour) and many trade unions compete to show their support for Trident and submarine building, uniting in 2022 in The Keep Our Future Afloat Campaign (KOFAC) focused on ‘influencing defence procurement policy’ to ‘enable Barrow shipyard and its supplier base to sustain a core workload’. The group is led by the Unite and GMB trade unions, and includes both local councils and BAE Systems and its suppliers. Campaigning for nuclear disarmament and cancellation of the Trident programme in such a context is inevitably challenging.

There are Barrovians who recognise the absurdity of the so-called ‘nuclear deterrent’ and reject the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, and they express support whenever we hold a vigils or protests in the town, but many see opposition to the Trident nuclear weapons programme as tantamount to campaigning for economic disaster for the town.

It is, therefore, essential that our campaigning emphasises the necessity and possibilities for new and different economic investment in the town, for diversification and the redeployment of skills and workers in more socially useful and sustainable industries, and this, in turn, requires effective campaigning for policies which would produce the investment needed. A Government committed to nuclear disarmament and an effective national defence diversification agency would provide the essential foundation for such policies to become a meaningful reality.

Philip Gilligan is a long time member of CND and an activist in Lancaster CND.