From: "rssharp" <rssharp-AT-btinternet.com>
Subject: BHA: re IACR Council Statement. 
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 14:51:30 -0000


Hi there.

Mervyn may not wish to comment further publically on IACR  Council's
bland
statement but as a member of IACR  I find it both uninformative and in
many respects highly misleading. The  statement, identical to that
issued to IACR members who might have expected more,  also continues the
tradition of 'behind the scenes only '
discussion which was one of the reasons Mervyn was effectively forced,
not chose, to resign.



I will comment on a number of issues.

1:  It omits to comment on main way the issue was handled- out of the
public arena-  and through behind the scenes phone calls and private
emails. on a one to one basis. Whilst this might have been appropriate
in a mediation process,
to continue to act in this way was not appropriate once  it became
clear that Mediation could not begin.

2. It does not explain  why the
central issues surounding the two Options were not discussed through the
public forum so that all members of Council were fully aware of them,
prior to their vote, nor explain the General Secretary's public
instructions to
the two parties not to comment on his own formulation of the two
options. ( He himself had commented as did subsequently the President. )

3 It does not comment on why mediation could not begin. It could not
begin because the deputy editor would not accept Mervyn's status as sole
elected editor, or Mervyn's willingness to enlarge his team as a
compromise, effectively vetoing Mervyn's continued participation in the
NTU agreement. 'Heat' and 'polarization' had causes.

4 There were 'methods of production difficulties at NTU, along with
many other difficulties, all doubtless resolvable in time,  through
effort and  goodwill if the
unelected editor had been prepared to accept Mervyn's status as elected
editor and thought he had any responsibility to the members of IACR who
had elected Mervyn to work with him and to continue to make the IACR /
NTU agreement work. He was not. This , the significant absence, explains
the 'wholely unwelcome choice' faced by Council and why the
institutional option excluded the elected editor Mervyn. The 7 who voted
for the so called
institutional option supported the Deputy Editor in this stance and in
doing so
bypassed the members.

5. In Council's denying that political theoretical differences had
anything to do
with their vote, we can only conclude that the vote of the 7 is premised
on the Mervyn as 'impossible to work with' thesis.

Such a thesis fails to explain how two issues of the journal were in
fact produced under the elected editor's leadership via the IACR/ NTU
Agreement and that the launch issue,
prepared during this so called 'sharp deterioration of the relations
between Mervyn and the deputy editor and the Editor' was continuing to
be produced under the Agreement. ( Where is it, by the way? Could its
failure to appear be something to do with the 'methods of production'
difficultiers at NTU?' IACR members have not been told about when we are
likely to receive it and why it has been delayed.  )

6. It also does not explain why  political issues
figured so prominently in the Deputy editor's public statement on
Council which is still on the public record at the beginning of the
dispute, figured prominently in private emails to Mervyn beforehand  and
now seem to have been
miraculously been repressed.

7. The statement asserts that the deterioration in the relationship
between Justin and Mervyn was due merely to disagreements about methods
of production at NTU. This is clearly false and must stretch the
imagination a little too far.

There are many different levels at which causal mechanisms were
operating,  some 'behind the backs of the direct producers'.

What was and was not  in the public arena of IACR Council can all be
documented. It is the private archives and private recollections of the
key actors that need to be exposed to make full sense of what really
lies at the heart of this issue. The final analysis would need to be
placed within the broader institutional/social structural context ,
including a prevailing idelogical framework which represses a commitment
to the ethical.

Rachel

Rachel Sharp
13 Spenser Rd
Herne Hill, London

Phone:0044(0)207 7372892
fax:as above
email: rssharp-AT-btinternet.com





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