Category: Peace & Nonviolence

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!