1. NEMT, were given and still have a flat from which they get an income of about £10k per annum as part of the Legacy but contrary to Gordon’s wishes, NFHT, now known as Northumbria Fishing Heritage get none at all. All they received from the sale of the other flat was £13,000 and that was only after a second legal wrangle which settled in May 2023.
2. Mr Dudman implied, on behalf of the NEMT Trustees that the proposal to divide the Legacy inequitably was made by the NFHT, when he said “As this confirms NFHT’s proposal to us, I trust that you will find it a satisfactory way forward, cleverly shifting the blame for the outcome of the settlement away from NEMT’s board meeting of the 16th May 2018 onto NFHT.
3. In Mr Dudman’s response to “Reply to official complaint 2019-09-30”, he does not say who produced the defamatory and possibly profane document of about 6 Pages, but a clue was given a few years later in the response to my letter sent to beat the deadline for correspondence set before a meeting of the NEMT Trustees that was held on Saturday 14th January 2023 to which I had attached my Objection to proposal by the charity – NEMT. Mr Renwick had added defamatory allegations to his opinion that my objection had included slanderous accusations in his direct response my objection:
Further to your slanderous accusations.
Please supply the evidence you use to form these beliefs.
Please be aware that should any more deflamatory allegations be made we will take advice with a view to legal action.
Yours sincerely
A Renwick.
NEMT Chairman.
4. Mr Dudman said very clearly in paragraph 4 of his “Reply to the official complaint 2019-09-30”, that the on 29th January 2010, NEMT wrote to the Charity Commission supporting the Northumbrian Fishing Heritage Trust’s application to become registered and that the registration was completed two months later and it was important to know that: On 29/1/10 NEMT wrote to the Charity Commission supporting NFHT’s application to become registered, that registration was completed on 29/3/10.
5. In the same paragraph he also said that there should be no conflict of interests between the two Trusts and that NEMT has corporate membership of NFHT: NFHT actively supports NEMT in fulfilling the latter’s objectives and continues as a junior partner, with a successful alliance of interests – not a conflict of interests. NEMT also has corporate membership of NFHT.
It did however leave the Trustees of the latter Trust in a rather vulnerable position which meant that any one of them could be set upon when they complained about the conduct of NEMT’s Chairman or his close associates* and this was brought to a head on March 15th 2024, when the Chair of NEMT falsely accused the Chair of NFHT of sending unauthorised personal letters to NEMT members while falsely accusing me of scamming my own website, I who had maintained the website nemaritimetrust.co.uk for at least ten years.
6. NFHT may not be able to own property but NEMT’s Trustees have used it as an excuse to withhold the share of the annual income from the property from them. The loss to NFHT, is by my estimate, about half of £12k per annum and NEMT’s Treasurer will no doubt be able to confirm these details (sue.griffiths121@gmail.com), though why she was party to withholding those funds, that were rightly due to NFHT, a Trust with the same aims as NEMT, will remain have to remain a mystery to the NFHT Trustees until NEMT declares its interest in withholding half of the annual income of the property held.
7. I never answered Martin Wilson’s demand for information about NFHT because the information was not mine to share. He starts his demand with: As NEMT and NFHT are entering into joint enterprises such as insurances, and are becoming major financial benefactors, I would like to ask as a NEMT trustee, by way of due diligence the following questions.
The first question of his demand for information was under the title:
Membership, Visitors & Volunteers
1. What is the total membership of NFHT as of 1st March 2019?
The answer of course was that it was the same as the membership of NEMT which made his questions 2-7, apart from No. 6, irrelevant:
2. Where is the process of becoming a NFHT member publicised and how do you become a member?
3. How many active volunteers do NFHT have as of 1st March 2019?
4. How often do NFHT volunteers meet?
5. How do NFHT volunteers benefit?
7. What premises do NFHT own/rent? NFHT neither not own nor rented any premises and meetings were held in private homes or suitable coffee houses.
Question 6 was, What projects are NFHT currently engaged in? The answer to that question would have been known by anyone who had joined NEMT before the slipway was was acquired in 2016 and there was no specific project except that NFHT was created to look after the vessels that had been restored and made seaworthy by NEMT’s volunteers.
He concluded his enquiry with the statement: I am on record as objecting to giving monies away where NEMT do not legally need to, and to entering into joint enterprises with NFHT.
His enquiry showed that, he along with the other NEMT Trustees including the Chairman, were aware that I had moved from South Shields to Church St, in Amble, before March 2017.
8. It looks as if though Mr Wilson was not aware that NFHT had no membership list as only members of the NEMT could volunteer to serve the NFHT which had been set up to look after the boats that were had been restored by the NEMT volunteers and their duties involved in setting up moorings for small boats, cobles for instance or finding spaces in marinas for the bigger vessels restored by the NEMT volunteers at 2 and 3, Wapping Street in South Shields.
Mr Dudman’s concern in paragraph 13, being: Worst of all is the suggestion that the board does not value the volunteers – this is most disturbing; nothing could be further from the truth.
The cobles and such could be seen from the earliest days of the Trust, moored on the Tyne between what used to be Fred’s Shed and the Sea Cadets or a marina such as St Peters at St Anthony’s until the NEI Marina opened in 2012 just downstream from the Tyne Bridge. It was reasonably priced and any two of the vessels Rachel Douglas, Favourite and Sovereign could often be found moored against the pontoons, until July 2021when the HFS took their place, and the members of NEMT who lived north of the Tyne such as Messrs Weightman, Nicholson and myself kept a check on them and regularly met to discuss mooring fees etc. and by default, we became the first Trustees of NFHT and were joined by Mr R Branson a few years later.
9. NFHT had been set up to look after the growing fleet of vessels that had been restored by the NEMT and it was manned by the same as those who had helped with the restorations and the division between the two trusts appears to have begun with The official complaint 2019-09-30 and reinforced in July 2021 with the declaration by one of the crew of the Henry Frederick Swan that the Rachel Douglas was of no concern to NEMT and it appears that the situation was not helped by the Manager of the NE1 Marina taking the opportunity to make more money from those wishing to use the Marina’s pontoon.
10. The three of us being Messrs Weightman, Renwick and myself and Mr Renwick as the Chairman of NEMT appears to have deliberately ignored Mr Barnard’s claim that I was not a member. He was copied into the false claim made about my membership made by Mr Barnard on the 17th March 2024 where I am also falsely accused of his defamation.
11. First, Mr Renwick falsely claimed that the site nemaritimetrust.co.uk was not mine and then goes on to make a completely misleading claim: An attempt to remove his access from our website about two years ago has obviously been circumvented, when in fact the reverse was true and we need to look back to when the row between Mr Renwick and myself, began in November 2021.
12. It looks like the choice I gave to Mr Renwick on the 19th March 2024, to back or sack Mr Barnard no longer exists as it appears that Mr Barnard found his way out of a difficult situation by making his own exit sometime between his writing to Peter Weightman and I on the 17th March and when NEMT failed to launch the Henry Frederick Swan on Sunday 7th April, 2024. He simply disappeared.
Mick Dawson
23rd July 2025
*<2024
Kevin Lund <kevin.lund@nemaritimetrust.org.uk>
Barnard, Keith <k.barnard258@btinternet.com>
Dr Griffiths, Sue <sue.griffiths121@gmail.com>
2024
Glenn McCallum
2025
Matthew Cunningham
Keith Trotter