Public Library cuts and the effects on working class
communities in the UK;
a brief overview
In 1913 Lenin, in a sharply satirical piece written for
Pravda (What Can be Done for Public Education), extolled the importance of
Public Libraries to the masses;
“There are quite a number of rotten
prejudices current in the Western countries of which Holy Mother Russia is
free. They assume there, for instance, that huge public libraries containing
hundreds of thousands and millions of volumes, should certainly not be reserved
only for the handful of scholars or would-be scholars that uses them. Over
there they have set themselves the strange, incomprehensible and barbaric aim
of making these gigantic, boundless libraries available, not to a guild of
scholars, professors and other such specialists, but to the masses, to the
crowd, to the mob!”
Rabochaya Pravda No. 5, July 18, 1913
And 100 years later we find ourselves in the situation where
347 libraries in the UK have
been closed or are at threat of closure, between
2000-3000
staff made redundant, opening hours slashed and services being handed to
volunteers, private firms or in other ways divested.
According to recent figures in the first two years of the
Condem government
investment
in libraries fell by 16%, so no wonder services are being cut but in my
opinion this isn’t the only reason for the decline, the neo-liberal agenda
prevalent in senior management and policy makers over the last 10-15 years has
been equally, if not more, too blame for the current crisis.
Library users are now called ‘customers’, libraries are
‘re-branded’ as ‘Discovery Centres’, ‘The Hive’, ‘The Lounge’, library staff
are now ‘customer service assistants’ or ‘customer service managers’, self
service is rife and the whole vision is for a more market led service with
choice as the new mantra. But as we will see the concept of ‘choice’ is often
delusionary and is linked to class and access to services and resources.
Library services are also being over-diversified to the
point where they are barely recognisable as libraries, turned into ‘one stop
shops’ that offer a whole host of services not traditionally linked to
libraries.
In my opinion this over-diversification not only detracts
from core purpose of public libraries as bastions of freely accessible
information/knowledge and educational/learning opportunities but crucially if
the public and political perception is altered then it can make it easier to
cut or divest them.
The plot thickens when you look at the links that The
Society of Chief Librarians have with the Chief Leisure Officers Association
which in my opinion is not an informal or coincidental relationship.
Three councils in the UK,
Greenwich, Wandsworth and Hounslow, (with
Croydon, Ealing and Harrow in the pipe line) have privatised their library
services, JLIS in Hounslow are a building firm and GLL (a Social Enterprise) in
Greenwich and
Wandsworth run Leisure Centres and swimming pools. Workers transferred over to
these companies often experience detrimental terms and conditions and are often
denied union recognition. And there serious concerns with private firms that if
profit is the overriding motive then users and the service will suffer?
The Arts Council, the body given the development remit for
libraries in England, has had its funding cut and has had a new Chair, Peter
Bazalgette, with his links to and experience of private finance thrust upon
them, the old Chair, Liz Forgan, was ousted for allegedly being too close to
the Labour Party? So there is a clear political agenda to attract private money
to the sector and to sideline and actively divest the service.
We also have a Secretary of State, Ed Vaizey, and his
sidekick, Maria Miller, who not only refuse to intervene when councils slash
library services but publicly state that the service is in rude health!
Having less paid staff also poses major problems, outreach
programmes are reduced, staff are put under severe stress and strain,
specialist knowledge is lost, morale and motivation levels plummet and the
‘ethos’ is eroded. Slowly but surely the service is ‘hollowed out’ leading to a
less responsive, professional and accountable service. The introduction of self
serve into libraries also leads to staff cuts and changes the relationship
between users and workers to that of one that is more akin to a retail
transaction.
The formation and development of volunteer run so-called
‘community libraries’, which although was originally put forward by Labour and
has been taken up as a desperate option by many communities who have had a gun
put to their heads and told “run your library or we’ll close it”, is now being
orchestrated and bankrolled by ‘locality’, the political wing of the DCLG and
last year for the first time more volunteers where working in public libraries
than paid staff;
“in 2011/12
there were 23,397 volunteers, and 21,780 staff, the first year that volunteer
numbers have surpassed staff numbers.”
So what effect do all these political shenanigans, budget
cuts and changes of perceptions and agendas have on library users, many of whom
are working class and socially and economically disadvantaged?
Well in practical terms having less library buildings, or
costly new PFI ones built in town centres, means that some of the poorer,
vulnerable and less mobile members of a community may have to travel further to
use the service and if they haven’t got enough money for petrol or a bus or
train fare then they are denied access (many mobile and housebound services
have also been cut). Ah! but couldn’t they just access e-books and online
resources I hear you say, well many do but there are still many caught up in
the digital divide without internet access or the skills needed to utilise the
technology. For detailed figures see
http://www.21stcenturychallenges.org/60-seconds/what-is-the-digital-divide/
Also instead of the national service being ‘comprehensive
and efficient’ as stated in the 1964 Act it has now become a postcode lottery in
respect of which level and model of service you are lucky or in most cases
unlucky to have in your local area. This is further complicated by the issue of
class; middle/upper middle class communities often have more time and resources
to fight cuts and to run and develop services themselves which often means that
working class communities lose out.
Public Libraries play a crucial part in the socio-economic
wellbeing of many working class communities, they offer free, although many now
charge for IT use, access to lifelong learning opportunities which leads to an
increase in empowerment and social equity, the very reason that the Condems are
trying to destroy them.
Austerity is a myth perpetrated by the ‘Troika’, banks
and reactionary, imperialist and capitalist governments to attack the working
classes, Public Sector and the Trade Union Movement. We need to mobilise
workers, trade unionists and local working class communities together in a
combined and focussed fight back against these savage attacks before we lose
libraries and many other crucial public services, which it goes without saying
would be a disaster.
