Muzammal Hussain, a facilitator, agreed to become part of the Peace News Ltd board before this conflict blew up. As a PN director, Muzammal took the lead in trying to mend the damaged relationship between Peace News and its parent company, Peace News Trustees (PNT). He explains what happened in this interview, given less than a week after he resigned in protest from the Peace News Ltd board. We asked Muzammal to tell the whole story of his involvement in PN.
Ihad been inspired by the way I’d engaged with Mil [PN editor Milan Rai] and the way he works, and the spirit of Peace News itself. I had also had some engagement with Emily [PN production worker Emily Johns] a few years ago. I found the general experience of both of them, of being very attentive to where I was coming from, very refreshing.
They weren’t just focused on what they needed or wanted from me, their approach was very much about representation, in a way that was authentic to me and what I was involved with.
So I took the invitation, and went through the process, to become a member of the Peace News Ltd board, meeting Emma as well, on a call. [At that time, PN web worker Emma Sangster was a key member of the board of Peace News Ltd.]
I felt very welcome, it was a small group on the board, with friendly people.
My involvement was going to be quite light touch, because not a lot was expected to be needed.
But then, soon, quite a few things kicked in. One of which was a big financial hole, as I understand, the result of some neglect by PNT.
At the same time, a role I was happy being asked to step forward into was about processes within the Peace News Ltd board, including our meeting process.
We came together in London and began to reflect on how things were going in our internal decision-making on Zoom calls, roles that were there or not there, and we started to map this out.
That day was the foundation that we could have built on, but we didn’t have the energy or the time to do that, because we got swayed into a lot of what was needed in terms of what was coming from PNT, which initially was the whole financial situation.
And then a new chair of PNT stepped in.
Initially, I met the new chair on a Zoom call that I facilitated... and I couldn’t quite make up my mind.
There was an insistence from him of wanting to attend one of our board meetings, even though there might be a conflict of interest, and he was in no way receptive to the possibility that we might have some concerns.
It was as though he was unable to see any possible concerns, and therefore there should not be any.
So, there was a real lack of empathy. It wasn’t just that one instance. It seemed to be a pattern that continued through many instances and threaded through many examples.
It was almost as if, whatever we might say was real for us, that experience was not a valid experience.
Consent not valued
For me, what I believe is crucial, what I would hope would be crucial in an organisation that is progressive, that is involved in cultivating healthy relationships in a wider world and a more peaceful world, is that consent would be at the heart of how we do things – even if we have power over someone.
Even if, technically, we have the legal right to do something to someone, their consent would be valued at the heart of our relationships.
I could see that the idea of consent was in no way valued by the new chair of PNT.
That was particularly evident when he went through a formal process in Peace News’s parent company, PNT, where they decided to place him on the Peace News Ltd board.
Nobody on our board had given their consent to the PNT chair coming onto the board.
“The idea of consent was in no way valued by the new chair”
None of us had been formally asked, apart from one Peace News Ltd board member who was also on PNT and who was, in a sense, asked about this when PNT voted on this question (I understand they abstained in that vote.)
Aside from that, nobody was asked in the Peace News Ltd board and it was as though that didn’t matter, that the new PNT chair had the right now to be a member of our board.
I found that quite shocking because... was he not interested in what we thought?
He was going to join a group of people and work fairly intimately together. I would expect that anyone who values relationships would be interested in how that group might feel about them joining it, particularly when that person is also within a hierarchical system, where the chair of PNT has power over the Peace News Ltd board.
The PNT chair was quite upset because, as he wasn’t formally on the board yet, he wasn’t invited to a Peace News Away Day in Hastings. He expressed annoyance. We still had our Away Day without the PNT chair but a couple of us, myself and one other board member, met him in Hastings before the Away Day conversations started. The PNT chair had someone there to support him. It was a good meeting in the sense that I began to understand him better.
That then led to a process that I was the main lead for, which was a Relationship process that culminated in a day-long gathering that included the PNT chair, a few members of the PNL board, and a few other members of PNT and of Housmans Bookshop, and an external facilitator who had had a number of Zoom calls, prior to the face-to-face meeting, with people who were going to participate.
Prior to that, there had been another meeting to set up the daylong Relationship meeting.
What emerged from that earlier meeting was that the PNT chair’s reason for joining the board was that we weren’t doing our job properly... and therefore he had a right to come in.
I asked him if he had spoken to anyone on the PNL board about his understanding that we weren’t doing our job properly.
He admitted he hadn’t.
I found that shocking as well, that he’s concluded that we’re not doing our job properly, he’s not given any feedback to us that that’s what he feels, it’s essentially a judgement without any kind of substance, and he’s taken an action that doesn’t create warmth to himself and he’s expecting that we will just receive him and carry on as normal because he has a right to do that.
If it’s a healthy organisation, you talk about things if you’re feeling something, and you have a conversation, particularly if you’re going to take drastic action, such as joining a group without their consent.
The PNT chair didn’t seem to understand, as he hadn’t spoken with us about what bothered him, he didn’t understand that was a big deal, that it was his responsibility and duty to talk to us.
He wasn’t giving a lot away at that point about what exactly was bothering him.
At the Relationship meeting itself, it was good in that we managed to share things. The format was that one person spoke and another person, to whom we were speaking, might paraphrase what they heard us say.
However, my interpretation, by the end of it, was that the PNT chair really saw the day as an attempt to make us happy with him being part of the Peace News Ltd board. It wasn’t going to be that he might consider stepping out.
It seemed very much that he wanted the conclusion to be that we would accept him.
There were some limitations to the meeting and the facilitator did mention at a later date that there could be another component that could be useful in the future, which could be giving more feedback to the person who was expressing themselves.
Legal rights
During the day, I pressed the PNT chair repeatedly, asking why he was not interested in gaining the consent of members of the Peace News Ltd board. There were points where the PNT chair answered: ‘because I have the authority’ or ‘because I have the right’.
In response, I gave the example of the discriminatory salt laws during British rule of India, and the Salt March led by Gandhi to break those unjust laws: in the peace movement, people are aware that some things that are legal are terrible. Things are outdated, laws are outdated. It can be legal to do terrible things, but that doesn’t mean you go ahead with it.
This is the whole thing, the peace movement isn’t just about ‘legal rights’, it’s also about morals, it’s about consent, it’s about humanising, and so on.
So it was quite incredible that that wasn’t on his radar.
I could see why he didn’t want to go there, because insisting just on legal rights and having no concern for consent could put you in the same camp as those who have ‘legally’ oppressed or killed innocent people because they had the ‘right’ to.
I did press him on consent and, also, I told him that, based on his behaviour, I didn’t trust him, and that I had a right not to. And he had a duty to accept that I don’t trust him. And then that’s a starting point, at least: how can we build the trust? But there wasn’t really any of that conversation.
Following that day, the facilitator reached out because she felt that it would be good to have some ‘asks’ from both parties, to make requests of the other party.
We spent quite a bit of time, quite a few hours, developing something that felt very constructive. One of our requests was that, given that the PNT chair had wanted to join the board ‘because he believed we weren’t doing our job properly’: (a) he step out of the board and (b) we create a space, with an external facilitator, where he can talk about the issues where he felt that we weren’t doing well.
There were a number of other requests; I felt that was the fundamental one.
The PNT chair didn’t reply to that question within the timeframe given, 10 days.
He essentially came out with a response later that gaslit us; it was in no way taking seriously what seemed to me a very appropriate proposal given the argument he was giving for coming onto the board. It seemed very reasonable. The PNT chair just was not taking that seriously at all.
Over the next couple of weeks, the PNT chair went down the route of wanting to organise a meeting about certain very specific decisions we were making, like Project Theta, the strategy review. He started getting into specific little things, rather than the bigger issue, which was: why are you coming onto the board, when there could be another way?
The facilitator’s response was something along the lines of she didn’t think what the PNT chair was suggesting was going to be a very productive way forward. It was getting too specific and it needed to focus more on the relational.
That’s where she explicitly mentioned the point I referred to earlier, that what could be useful to us was some kind of meeting where there is feedback given by the facilitator, so we got feedback about how our behaviour was being perceived. Being a ‘conflict coach’ wasn’t her specialty, so we would need to reach out to someone else for that – and we never got to that stage.
There had also been the official meeting, that had happened the month before, which I won’t go into, the AGM, whereby the PNT chair was officially put on the board of Peace News Ltd, he ended up controlling the AGM, with a couple of other PNT members who were there and had another vote of a person who wasn’t there. One of the other people who aligns with him was put on the board as well.
Colonialism
I’m not hugely into identity politics, certainly not dictated by it, but it is relevant. What a person’s identity is, or what they self-identify as, or what they are perceived as, has a role. There’s a history to that, as well.
The PNT chair placing himself on the Peace News Ltd board, along with another supporter from PNT, it almost feels like some element of colonialism, I would say, of coming in and taking control and having no real sensitivity to the space you’re coming into and the people in it.
Essentially, the board, prior to the PNT chair being on it, was either women or a person of colour, myself.
And then two older white men were going to come onto the board.
Not a problem, if there’s consent and so on.
But it’s just interesting that there was no consent.
There was, to me, very much a feeling of ‘we’re lesser than’ and a degree of being seen as ‘not as valid’.
“It almost feels like some element of colonialism, of coming in and taking control and having no real sensitivity to the space you’re coming into and the people in it”
We might be open, particularly if it’s the peace movement, to being receptive to hearing from others when they feel they’re not being heard. Maybe we have done a bit of inner work on these aspects, where we become aware of these forces that can come into play and be activated, whereby we sideline other groups of people because we think we have something – greater knowledge or more experience, or just some kind of superiority or entitlement.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before quite as straightforwardly as that, but that was very much coming up for me. And I know some of the women were reporting instances of what they experienced as sexism.
What I found the PNT chair was very good at, maybe in a slightly clumsy way, was going through the motions, a certain language that doesn’t really connect but it goes through the motions. He seemed to be very good at sidelining, but going through the wording that seemed to be quite mechanical but which, to him, then gave him the authority to just carry on. That was quite repetitive, just charging through and continuing as though nothing’s happened, nothing’s really been said of relevance or significance, that might get him to consider a different option.
I was very disappointed by the fact that the Relationship process petered out. And I felt a bit lost in terms of my input into constructively mending things. I was also reaching a limit to my capacity to keep up with things, because there was a lot that happened.
When it came to the point where we were deciding to resign, I remember part of me feeling disassociated. There was, on the one hand, a relief. On the other, a kind of resistance to that happening. I felt very sad for the staff, because of the huge amount of work and dedication that they’d been putting in. And partly I felt: ‘Well, we’re giving in to someone who has certain characteristics of a dictator.’
I’m still processing the resignation. I feel there’s something collective that is needed for me. Most of our communication has been text-based recently, so it’s been hard to really focus in on what it means. I’m sad for the readers as well. I know there’s been a loyal following.
Just from my experience, I’ve made maybe six or so contributions to Peace News, so there’s been some interactions, and the real care of where the editor might have a different approach to how they’d like something to be worded, based on the values of Peace News, there’s a real respect for where I might sit with that and a way of finding some consensus on that. That’s very rare and a really good example of working in a collaborative way.
I made some positive connections. A book review I did got me in touch with the author and he’s a wonderful guy who a group of us have liaised with and it’s opened up certain things as well that are beautiful and also he’s been treated not so well because of his alliance with the Palestinian cause, and we’ve been able to give a bit of support.
That’s just one of many examples of connections that had been catalysed because of Peace News, and there’s something about the sincerity and genuineness that I describe that flows into all this and I feel sad at the form this might take and the characteristics of the current leadership of PNT. I just hope they are able to actually receive feedback at some point whereby they take seriously what has been said.
