Members of a Trust holding assets for a radical progressive organisation are there to aid and serve — not to act from positions of assumed authority

In most ways that count, Freedom Press considers the community at Peace News and Housmans to be our political siblings. Over the decades we’ve shared platforms, campaigns, swapped books, hosted each other at events and had members move between us. Our longest-running cartoonist, Donald Rooum, was also theirs.

Waking up on Friday to a missive from the Peace News staff announcing their mass resignation in protest at how they’d been treated by the Peace News Trust was thus the most unpleasant of shocks.

As a Collective, we shall be blunt. At no point should the four Trust members who have brought on this debacle be under any illusions whose fault the mess is — theirs and theirs alone. 

No matter the views of individual trustees, a Trust holding assets for a radical progressive organisation is not there to act as jury or boss to the workforce from positions of assumed authority. The trustees are there to serve, to aid. If it has gotten to the point where everyone has resigned rather than work a moment longer under your shadow, you are not fit for purpose.

Peace News, and the house at Caledonian Road, have an extraordinary history and place within the progressive movement. Their destruction would be a matter of shame for those trustees who have stubbornly refused to rethink and instead resorted to, among other things, legal intimidation.

The many articles written in the August issue of Peace News by well respected and long-term activists paint devastating portraits of the most hostile trustees particularly — Andrew Rigby and Glyn Carter. 

In the former case, a resignation should have come directly after the sending of an email describing staff, collectively, as “a bunch of evil fucks” was accidentally released to the editor. This form of ingrained poison has no place in a progressive organisation and showcases a total lack of interest in constructive outcomes. 

As for Glyn Carter — is this what you want to be remembered for, your name indelibly inked on the hubristic annihilation of a project you supposedly wanted to support?

You have already lost the confidence of every single person who does the actual labour, leaving you the “captain” of a ghost ship. 

To all the trustees responsible for this, take the dignified course, and salvage what you can of your reputation. There is still a road to save these vitally important radical institutions, but it requires those at fault acknowledge their failures, apologise, and resign.

~ The Freedom Press Collective