Category Archives: spck

The boil on the backside of British bookselling

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I haven’t said much about the SPCK saga in the last six months, not because I haven’t been interested, but because there are some excellent people doing all the heavy lifting and pursuing the cause much more effectively than I can. Phil Groom has posted a summary here though – as we’re some six months on from when it all started – and he communicates effectively why Christians should stand up and fight about it:

“…the closure of the SPCK bookshops has very little to do with the recession: they’ve been run into the ground by their unscrupulous new owners, who accepted them as a gift from SPCK on trust that they would invest in them and their staff and maintain them as Christian bookshops.

Instead, however, they attempted to foist illegal contracts upon the staff and drove them to despair with their reprehensible behaviour (most walked out in disgust; one had a nervous breakdown; another committed suicide), then proceeded to close shops down, clearing out the stock without paying the suppliers; they attempted a spurious bankruptcy filing in the USA, changed their trading identities here in the UK and continued trading in the stock they’d acquired from the shops they’d closed — all supposedly in the name of “Orthodox mission”. In September they sold the Exeter branch for £507,000 and — in direct breach of a legally undertaken covenant — have allowed it to become a jewellery store.

In the meantime, the staff they drove out have not received their wages and the suppliers whose stock they took have not been paid. So for me, the online campaign to expose these evil men and, yes, to bring them down, remains a truly worthwhile use of my time and energy.”

SPCK statement

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SPCK have released a statement, text here which contains much sense.

I don’t propose to comment about the general SPCK case any more on this site, unless and until that legal process is concluded. However, I reserve the right to talk about the more general free-speech (“Free Dave Walker!”) issues, as occasion permits.

Unbelievable allegations about J Mark Brewer of BPLaw (Brewer and Pritchard)

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“Looking through the paperwork from the so called Bankruptcy case involving St Stephen the Great, and more particularly SSG Ltd we have the following conundrum. J Mark Brewer is chair of the trustees of St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust – a body that has the same charity and business number as SSG Ltd that he is trying to make bankrupt through the US Courts. J Mark Brewer is also a director of ENC Shop Management, Chichester Shop Management Company and Durham Cathedral Shop Management Company. J Mark Brewer is a partner in Brewer and Pritchard P.C. Brewer and Pritchard’s address is 3 Riverway, Suite 1800, Houston. So is a strange charity called Orthodox Christian Mission Fund… So Mark Brewer is also behind the Orthodox Christian Mission Fund…

According to the documents given to the courts in Houston Texas, SSG Ltd owes Brewer and Pritchard $56,694.98 and owes Orthodox Christian Mission Fund $494,097.55. If we add the $75,000 retainer Mark Brewer has agreed to, Mark Brewer, as trustee of SSG Ltd, owes himself, or his own companies, $625,792.53.”

This is the context for USDAW taking him to court. Ho hum. They’re also trying to take various Sheffield people to court, including someone I was at Westcott with…

Found here.

Unbelievable allegations about J Mark Brewer of BPLaw (Brewer and Pritchard)

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“Looking through the paperwork from the so called Bankruptcy case involving St Stephen the Great, and more particularly SSG Ltd we have the following conundrum. J Mark Brewer is chair of the trustees of St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust – a body that has the same charity and business number as SSG Ltd that he is trying to make bankrupt through the US Courts. J Mark Brewer is also a director of ENC Shop Management, Chichester Shop Management Company and Durham Cathedral Shop Management Company. J Mark Brewer is a partner in Brewer and Pritchard P.C. Brewer and Pritchard’s address is 3 Riverway, Suite 1800, Houston. So is a strange charity called Orthodox Christian Mission Fund… So Mark Brewer is also behind the Orthodox Christian Mission Fund…

According to the documents given to the courts in Houston Texas, SSG Ltd owes Brewer and Pritchard $56,694.98 and owes Orthodox Christian Mission Fund $494,097.55. If we add the $75,000 retainer Mark Brewer has agreed to, Mark Brewer, as trustee of SSG Ltd, owes himself, or his own companies, $625,792.53.”

This is the context for USDAW taking him to court. Ho hum. They’re also trying to take various Sheffield people to court, including someone I was at Westcott with…

Found here.

Does anyone else think this qualifies as "incompetence and injustice"?

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A letter from Pauline Edwards to Mark Brewer:

“Mr Brewer,
Could you tell me please, why you told a fellow worker, that their job was safe, and it was o.k. to take their first mortgage out to buy a house. The fellow worker trusted you, after asking you a few times. That fellow worker has took the biggest debt ever, on your assurance, and was only in there new home 2 days, when they were sacked by email, and left this person with no wages to pay their first mortgage payment.
Does this ring a bell Mr Brewer?”

Lots of writing being done on this subject around the blogosphere at the moment. For a list, try here.

SPCK/SSG – for beginners

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For those unaware of what has been going on with SPCK bookshops, this is a collection of links which should bring you up to speed.

SPCK bookshops were last year sold to St Stephen the Great charity – based in Texas, supposedly Orthodox.

For various reasons the SPCK shops have been allowed to run down, many of them closed.

The union USDAW is taking SSG to court over various alleged malpractices.

The manager of the SPCK shop in Worcester committed suicide because of all the stresses.

SSG – as a UK charity! – have sought bankruptcy protection in the US; I understand our Charity Commission are investigating them.

An Essex cartoonist/blogger named Dave Walker – who is currently ‘cartoonist in residence’ at the Lambeth conference – reported consistently on the above for a period of 18 months. Last week he was threatened with a ‘cease and desist’ order by SSG (a man named J Mark Brewer) and he took down some 75 posts on his blog about the SPCK.

And this is where I came in – I thought this was unjust – so I recopied some of Dave’s posts on to my blog, was also served a ‘cease and desist’ order by Mr Brewer, but I’ve published it all here:

This is a list of all the bloggers who’ve been supporting Dave:

My correspondence with J Mark Brewer (updated)

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I am publishing this because I believe it is in the public interest for this information to be widely known.

On 25th July I received the following e-mail:

CONFIDENTIAL:

NOT TO BE REDISTRIBUTED TO ANY PERSON

OR PUBLICLY POSTED

Reverend Norton:

I have visited your web page[1] which you brazenly have set up to carry on for the “cartoon church” blog site. As such, you appear to be dedicated to the destruction of my personal reputation and that of Saint Stephen the Great/Saint Stephen the Great Charitable Trust. I am absolutely appalled and devastated that a member of the clergy of the Church of England would engage in such inappropriate and defamatory behavior, by what you have written as well as by what you have posted and by encouraging others to do the same.

I am dumfounded that any Christian, especially a clergyman, honestly believes that this is consistent with his faith. You would know better than I, a layman, how many places defamation is spoken against in the Holy Bible.[2]

Re-publishing the material from “cartoon church” has nothing to do with what you call “free speech.” Instead, you are invading my privacy by putting my name on your webpage, and you are defaming me. You are also interfering with the Charitable Trust’s efforts to salvage what remains of the charitable business of the Christian bookshops with scorn.

Your libel of me and your invasion of my privacy have deeply hurt me. Because of your position as a clergyman, the pain of the words on your web page is greater.

This is not right and you have gone too far.

Your statements are false and I categorically deny them – both for me and SSG/SSGCT. Many of them are defamatory per se (e.g., “. . . incompetence and injustice of the people who have taken over the SPCK chain.”)

I reiterate: am a private individual and I value my privacy. I am not a public figure and you have no right to drag my name through the mire. I do not consent and object to you invading my personal privacy by maintaining web pages about me, SSG, SSGCT, ENC Management, my brother, my wife, or my family. I do not consent to you posting blogs or enabling and encouraging others to blog us on the internet. I do not consent to you defaming me to any other party or person by “sharing” your false allegations. At this point, even were you to remove my name from your web page, my personal identity would still be clear to a majority of readers.

Legal Demands

1. I hereby demand that you cease and desist from doing any of these things any more. I specifically demand that you deactivate your webpages, websites and/or blogsites which mention me, my brother, my family, SSG and/or SSGCT IMMEDIATELY. I also demand that you not post this email, paraphrase it or refer to it in any way.

2. I hereby demand that you issue to me a retraction and apology on your webpage stating substantially the following:

I have removed from my website all of the material about Mr. Mark Brewer and the Saint Stephen the Great Charitable Trust as I have determined that it unfairly violated the personal privacy of Mr. Brewer and because it was defamatory. I acknowledge that I did not have any factual basis for any of these defamatory statements and that this is the reason for this retraction and apology.

I sincerely apologize to Mr. Brewer for the hurt I have caused to him, his family and to Saint Stephen the Great. I urge my readers to refrain from any public postings on the internet about Mr. Brewer in respect of his privacy.

I also request and urge my readers to refrain from writing or saying anything about him, his family or Saint Stephen the Great which is or reasonably could be interpreted as false or defamatory.

3. I hereby demand that you contact all persons with whom you have communicated about me or the charity, sending them the above apology with a blind-copy to myself so that I know you have complied.

If you do meet the terms and conditions set forth above and if you fail to remove the defamatory material from your website by noon GMT July 25, 2008, I will seek an injunction against you and those with whom you have collaborated in your activities. I also will take legal action against you for damages for libel. In that event, I will also subpoena all records relating to the persons whom you have allowed to post defamatory material on your website in order to add them as defendants.

Please acknowledge your receipt of this correspondence and your intent to comply with this demand by reply email.

J. Mark Brewer

[2] Exodus 20:16 – the Ninth Commandment; Psalm 101:5 – “Whoso privily slandereth his neighbour, him will I cut off: him that hath an high look and a proud heart will not I suffer.” Jesus also preached against slander; e.g., Saint Mark 7:22.

I replied firstly in this manner:

Dear J Mark Brewer,


I acknowledge receipt of this e-mail. I shall take legal advice and make a substantive response within seven days.
Sam Norton

To which I received the response:

Sir
Thank you for your acknowledgment.
Seven days is too long for me to continue to be the victim of this outrage. You could at least have the Christian decency to take down the offending material pending your ‘legal advice.’ Will you do that or do you require that legal action force you to?
J. Mark Brewer

Houston, Texas 77056

I have this evening replied further:

Dear J Mark Brewer,
Following our earlier correspondence this is now my substantive reply to your original e-mail of 25th July 2008.
I believe that my blog contains only material which is either true or “fair comment” upon truthful matters.
If there are particular aspects of the material published on my blog which you believe to be neither true nor fair comment I am prepared to look again at specific items.
Please be aware that I consider the making public of this correspondence to be in the public interest, and that I shall share, via my blog and other media, both your original “cease and desist” request, and any subsequent correspondence.
I would assure you that I have no personal malice towards you in this regard. My concern is that an innocent man (Mr David Walker) has been victimised by your actions. Should you be willing at any point in the future to make a public apology to him, leading to him reinstating his blogposts concerning SPCK, then I shall certainly cease and desist any further writings on this affair.
You do, of course, have recourse to the secular courts of the United Kingdom if you wish to take this further in that manner. Should you wish to do so, I shall be pleased to explain my position in open court.
Yours sincerely,
Sam Norton

I have now received this reply to my above e-mail:

RE: your cease and desist request to me

Sir

Neither English nor American law permits you to engage in what you term “fair comment” with respect to a private company, nor with respect to a private individual – namely, me. Obviously the law does not allow one to cloak his conduct with such sophistry and then go about defaming someone.

Your unreasonableness in the face of my request that you stop defaming me is appalling. Your persistence in doing so without even seeking to know the truth, by talking to me for example, proves that you are in fact acting out of complete malice. Libel with malice, a malignancy of heart, is intolerable in civilized societies.

Mr. Walker is in no way a victim of anything done or not done, said or not said by me. I have no idea what you are on about in saying such a thing. I cannot fathom your judgmental presumptiveness in telling me to apologize to him.

I reiterate my demand that you stop your defamatory blogging and invasion of my privacy. If you do not, I will seek redress in the courts of the country where I live – the United States. As your solicitor will have told you, you are subject to jurisdiction here as you knowingly libeled me on the worldwide web, you know me to be a resident of the USA and you know and intend to injure me where I live in the USA.

Your solicitor also will have told you that you are subject to service of process for a suit in the United States under the Hague Convention. You will then have to answer for your conduct in the venue where you intentionally caused me harm. I hope you understand this.

Mark Brewer