Should Peace News be run by older white men? With the ejection of all women and people of colour and consolidation of control in the hands of a small group, this is the likely situation now.
In its 88 years, Peace News has seen a fair amount of internal conflict and division, and has changed its identity and focus as a result. Some disagreement is normal of course, and the peace movement has its fair share of it, but weaponising conflict to take more control from others is anti-democratic and against the values of Peace News that we signed up for.
As a group of staff and ex-directors, we can’t argue for nonviolence and better ways of organising in our publishing when our own house is in such disorder.
The group of people who will now control the paper were active in PN in decades gone by. Some may think this makes them the best guardians of the paper. Yet it also brings difficulties when reference to old ways of doing things, old divisions and enmities, and old modes of behaviour take precedence over the realities of present day operating challenges, changing political landscapes and evolving codes of conduct around acceptable behaviour.
Put simply, involvement with an organisation in the past does not qualify anyone for running it some decades later. And past styles of ‘boardroom politics’ that privilege winning the argument over making consensus should no longer be acceptable in a progressive movement.
This conflict amounts to a takeover of the paper by a small group of people who have deemed that only they are fit to run it, yet who have no up-to-date qualifications for that role. The current trustees have demanded an end to our editorial independence and insist that they should have hands-on involvement in editorial decisions. They tasked us with reinventing PN to run on a reduced subsidy after they lost out on a bad investment, when it wasn’t the editorial policy of the paper that was the problem.
As women staff, we have experienced sexism from the top yet, when we wrote to the chair of trustees with complaints along these lines, all but one of our concerns was brushed aside. The chair himself then tried to take out a grievance against us. We’ve been accused of the same toxic behaviours that have been meted out to us, while our concern to maintain some autonomy, and our requests for the two organisations to genuinely work to repair their relationship, have been discredited or ignored.
Toxic
In fact, it feels just like a toxic relationship, with its accusations and demands and lack of listening, and it does not feel circumstantial that one side of the division consists entirely of men.
This shouldn’t be happening in any organisation, let alone one dedicated to peace and justice.
Peace News was founded in pacifism and later developed a remit of promoting revolutionary nonviolence. It evolved to embrace feminism, anti-racism and anarchism, with their understanding of power relations and structures of oppression and privilege, and attention to organising with inclusive and consensus-based decision making. Yet the hierarchical structure of the PN group of companies reflects none of this and has been incapable of equitably and democratically containing the conflict that has now developed.
Two years ago, the situation looked more hopeful when all staff and directors of Peace News and Housmans Bookshop got together to re-examine and affirm the peace and justice principles at the heart of our work.
We spent time talking about creating a new organisational structure which would reflect them.
“Weaponising conflict to take more control from others is anti-democratic and against the values of PN that we signed up for”
We wanted horizontalism, co-operation, and diversity and inclusion politics to be core principles. Unfortunately, this positive process was not supported by the parent company, afraid perhaps of losing control to the array of other proposed stakeholders in the paper and bookshop.
We also discussed the challenges of talking about, and campaigning for, peace and justice today. The paper’s editor and contributors work hard to argue that nonviolence can provide realistic and relevant alternatives to business as usual. We look beyond the peace movement to those for social and climate justice, providing rigorous analysis of key conflicts and radical thinkers, as well as reflecting what activists around the UK are doing, and letting them speak for themselves.
Making change seem possible and exploring the complexity of how nonviolence can work in the messy reality of the world – going beyond theory and rhetoric – is key to engaging new audiences. While our readership may not be huge, we know that it is an appreciative one and we can feel proud of the paper and all the expertise it reflects. In one form or another, the staff and ex-directors were all activists elsewhere during their time at PN and that, for us, feels important when talking to other activists.
In response to the demand that we re-vision Peace News to operate on a yet smaller budget, we recently set about exploring a whole range of options. Such a project brings potential and excitement despite the likely impact it would have on the paper in its current form. How could a new Peace News be an opportunity to involve a greater diversity of people, and garner new energy and ways of working to equip us well for the future?
We also put forward the idea, given our concerns about patriarchal structure, conflict cycles and sexist behaviour, that the women of Peace News, Housmans and Peace News Trustees, who have only affection and respect for each other, should take over the boards of directors.
We know from experience how this can positively change dynamics, and it would certainly shake things up. But, alas, that idea just created anger at the very top.
In the current situation, we don’t know what Peace News will evolve to be. We hope that what readers value will continue to play a large part in what is offered and that it continues to extend the remit of peace and justice to champion the widest understanding of nonviolence.
As we print on page two of every issue, ‘PN is not just about the values that we campaign for, it is also about the way that we campaign, how we treat each other, and the way that we live.’