Staff at Peace News resign
Peace News ran for 88 years before the staff resigned earlier this month
The entire staff team of the eighty-eight-year-old newspaper Peace News (PN) resigned last month. According to a special edition of the magazine at the end of August, the staff resigned in protest over what they described as a ‘tidal wave of intimidation, harassment and threats’ from the paper’s parent company, Peace News Trustees’.
In an edition at the end of August – likely to be the last created by the current staff team – the editor Milan Rai wrote: ‘On 14 August, all four current Peace News staff… 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.’
Rai added: ‘We tried to create a more healthy relationship between PNT and PNL… unfortunately, that attempt has been unsuccessful’ due to a ‘relentless bullying campaign’ from trustees, at least one of whom is a Quaker.
‘Aspects of that campaign are documented in the issue,’ the editorial said.
The issue noted that ‘the PN staff expect to be fired immediately, without notice and without any form of redundancy, as a result of publishing this issue’. It also mentioned a ‘gratitude fund’ where people can donate.
The trustees have strongly denied the claims, assembling a website comprising their responses. A statement from the trustees said: ‘The pages [of claims against them] 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.’
According to the statement: ‘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.’
The staff held two open forums on Zoom on 5 September and 17 September for readers with ‘questions and thoughts’ about the row. More meetings might be planned soon, said the staff.
Comments
I am one of the board members of Peace News Trustees (PNT) that have had to deal with the devious and manipulative behaviour of the former staff of ‘Peace News’ for more years than I care to remember. The tension between PNT and PN staff has been ongoing for over a decade - it is not ‘a tideal wave’ that suddenly manifested itself. At its core the dispute has been about the refusal of PN staff and their board to share any insight with PNT regarding their plans for the future of the publication.
As trustees we came to the reluctant conclusion that we could not continue to fund a subsidiary company whose members refused to share even the most basic information about their future plans. We placed teh choice before the staff and their board: agree to an appropriate level of accountability or we will cut the funding. They made their choice. They resigned their posts.
It should be made clear that by resigning the staff forfeited their redundancy rights. Whilst working their agreed priod of notice they proceededd to break a shared understanding that the dispute should be kept ‘in-house’ - and published what I consider to be a scurrilous and dishonest narrative full of unfounded personal attacks on the integrity and motivation of trustees who have all spent a lifetime as committed pacifist pursuers of peace.
I would implore anyone who has been reading about this dispute to have a look at the other side of the story via https://peacenewstrustees.my.canva.site/
Andrew Rigby (Coventry Meeting)
By andrewrig on 19th September 2024 - 14:42
Oh dear!
By doreen.osborne@outlook.com on 22nd September 2024 - 23:21
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