Newsgroups: alt.society.revolution
Subject: New Left Review
Date: 5 Mar 93 14:53:10 GMT

Resignations from the Editorial Board of New Left Review


What follows is an account of the events which have led nineteen 
members (out of twenty-seven) of the Editorial Board of New Left 
Review to resign.

In the autumn of 1992, by means of what amounted to a 
boardroom coup, control of New Left Review was for the first time 
in its thirty-year existence taken from the Editorial 
Board/Committee and given into the hands of a shareholders' 
Trust.  The EC was peremptorily disbarred from overall 
responsibility for the Review and informed that any future role it 
might play would be at most advisory.

New Left Review, since its foundation in 1960, has been legally 
owned by New Left Review Ltd.  Shares in the company have 
been regularly allocated on the basis of membership of the 
journal's Editorial Committee.  Consequently, over time, formal 
ownership has come to be shared among a sizeable number of 
past and present editors (twenty-seven at the time of the coup).  
Ever since the Review was recapitalized under new editorial 
management in 1964, however, this legal ownership has played 
no part in the life of the  journal.  So too with the company's 
directors: appointed in compliance with the requirements of 
company law and formally responsible to the shareholders, they 
have in practice been elected by the EC, seen themselves as 
accountable to it, and played no independent role. The Review 
has actually been run by a self-governing body - its Editorial 
Board/Committee, with an elected Editor -according to democratic 
procedures which since 1982 have been embodied in a written 
constitution.  This states unambiguously: `The direction of NLR is 
the responsibility of the Board of Editors, which ... is the 
sovereign body of NLR.'

Now, however, the powers of the Editorial Board - including its 
right to determine what NLR publishes in its pages, to elect its 
Editor, and to exercise ultimate control over its business affairs - 
have in effect been abrogated in favour of the new Trust, on the 
basis of a narrow majority of shares.  Henceforward, the Trust - 
whose trustees comprise Perry Anderson, his brother Benedict 
Anderson and Ronald Fraser - will run the Review.  Directors will 
be responsible to it, and it will appoint the Editor.  (Robin 
Blackburn, the current Editor, has regrettably taken an active part 
himself in the disempowerment of the Editorial Board - the very 
body which elected him to his post.)  Of the three trustees, 
Benedict Anderson (of Cornell University), though a valued 
contributor, has never been an NLR editor; Ronald Fraser 
resigned from the Review in 1977 and now lives in Spain; Perry 
Anderson withdrew from active involvement on the EC in 1989, 
soon after taking up a teaching post in Los Angeles.

At the AGM of New Left Review Ltd on 20 November 1992, a 
majority of proxy votes was used to deny shares to new 
members of the Editorial Board/Committee, despite an assurance 
by the Editor as late as July 1992 that these would be issued in 
line with previous practice. There was some irony in the fact that 
the votes of former editors, who themselves held shares only on 
the basis of their past service on the EC, should have been used 
to disenfranchise a majority of the Review's current editors.  Two 
new directors were appointed who were prepared to support this 
takeover of control (Tariq Ali, an associate editor who withdrew 
from the EC some years ago due to pressure of other 
commitments, and Alexander Cockburn, who lives in northern 
California and has had no involvement in the Review's affairs for 
over twenty years); two others who did not support the takeover 
(long-serving EC members Quintin Hoare and Ellen Meiksins 
Wood) were removed, having first been misled -along with the 
rest of the EC - about the intended nature of the AGM at which 
these actions were to take place.  The new directors are now 
apparently entitled to exercise plenipotentiary powers on behalf 
of a majority of shareholders.  Their first official act was to 
dismiss the Production Editor, Robin Gable, declaring him 
redundant on the basis of a highly controversial assessment of 
the company's financial position.

Not only did the coup represent a rupture with the traditions of 
NLR and the principles on which it was founded, but the means 
by which the seizure of power was achieved were themselves 
indefensible and, we have been advised, vulnerable to legal 
challenge.  Even Perry Anderson has admitted that the changes 
were effected by `stealth'.   Shareholders, many of whom have 
had no involvement with the Review for years, even decades, 
and who knew little if anything about its current situation or 
internal life, were asked on the basis of extremely contentious 
accounts of these to make over their shares to the Trust.  The 
accounts seem to have been variously tailored to suit the 
dispositions of individual shareholders, but two reasons were 
given more or less consistently: that the Editor's position was 
being threatened by a cabal, and that the EC was refusing to face 
up to a financial crisis which required drastic action.  Since the 
Editor had just been re-elected for a three-year term, leaving his 
position secure, and since the EC has already, in accordance 
with advice given by the company's auditor, begun to deal 
decisively with what were manageable financial problems, 
neither of these reasons could withstand scrutiny.  At no point 
were arguments presented openly, in such a way that EC 
members could know about or reply to them at the time. There 
was no communication between the relevant shareholders and 
other parties to the dispute.  The effect was to deprive the EC of 
the very responsibilities which these shareholders had 
themselves long exercised as editors.

The change of control affects not just New Left Review Ltd, but 
also its associated publishing company Verso (New Left Books 
Ltd).  As the latter's company charter states: `the central role of 
the Review in the creation of the imprint was given institutional 
form by the allocation to it of one half of the shares in the 
company, as a controlling interest - the other half being divided 
among three private investors.'  This controlling interest was 
reflected in the right of the Review's Editorial Board to appoint a 
majority of directors to the Verso board.  However, ultimate 
control of the publishing company has now passed into the hands 
of the private investors, two of whom - Perry Anderson and 
Ronald Fraser - are also trustees of the new Trust.  This clearly 
could have implications for the continued independent existence 
of Verso.

It must be emphasized that the present conflict does not 
correspond to any intellectual or political differences on the EC, 
which contains a wider spectrum of views than ever before -
indeed only two years ago it underwent a major expansion, 
designed to enhance its political and cultural diversity and 
achieve a better gender and generational balance - and which 
has implemented editorial policies more open than at any other 
time in the Review's history. There have been plenty of vigorous 
disagreements among us, but no consistent polarizations. 
Although nothing could excuse the coup and the manner in which 
it was carried out, it might have been less intolerable if it had at 
least been explicitly motivated by some identifiable and 
irreconcilable political or intellectual division, the end result of 
open debate; if, in other words, it had been something other than 
a simple assertion of power, control and proprietorship.  As it 
was, however, those who initiated it, instead of engaging in 
reasoned and principled discussion, chose the terrain of the 
company boardroom.

In response to these events, the Editorial Board/Committee has 
tried in good faith to find a negotiated solution.  Its aim has been 
to find a basis on which those associated with NLR in the past - 
and who have made major contributions to it - could continue to 
cooperate for the Review's long-term benefit with the current EC.  
We regret to say that it has not been possible to obtain 
agreement on such a solution from the new directors 
representing the trustees. The only other recourse available to us 
would have been the instruments of company law (the very 
terrain chosen by those who organized the coup) and the courts.  
Obliged in the circumstances to consider that option, we did 
indeed establish that there were strong grounds for challenging 
the legality of the proceedings, and hoped that this fact would 
persuade the trustees and their representatives to draw back 
from their chosen course of action.  But this has not happened.

We do not know whether the coup portends a change of editorial 
direction for NLR.  All we can say with reasonable certainty is that 
the journal will no longer be organized on democratic lines, 
however many names may in future appear on its masthead.  For 
our part, we remain committed to the principles of democratic 
socialism.  We can only hope that NLR too will retain that 
commitment, if not in the way it conducts its own business then at 
least in its editorial policy.  Anything else would represent a 
serious loss to the left.  We, at any rate, shall now explore other 
avenues for advancing socialist ideas.

The events outlined above have already led to several 
resignations from the Editorial Board: those of Patrick Camiller, 
Paul Cammack, Diane Elson, Robin Gable, Norman Geras, Monty 
Johnstone and Elizabeth Wilson.

We, the undersigned members of the Editorial Board of New Left 
Review, find the proceedings which have brought NLR to this 
point intolerable and quite inappropriate for a socialist journal.  
With regret, therefore, we are resigning from the Board.

Christopher Bertram, Peter Dews, Ken Hirschkop, Quintin Hoare,  
Deniz Kandiyoti, Branka Magas, Doreen Massey, Robin Murray, 
Mike Rustin, Kate Soper, Hilary Wainwright, Ellen Meiksins 
Wood.

24 February 1993








 







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