Revolution at the London Library

The Stalinists have taken over the London Library

Paul Barker

07 November 2007

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High drama at the AGM of a literary institution

To be a member is like belonging to a kind of club. To roam the open stacks, with their extraordinary assemblages of known and unknown authors, makes me — member No. 0317 — feel, however briefly, that I may be a sort of intellectual, after all.

Or, at least, it has until now had that air of friendly mutual support. The library isn’t a ‘mutual’ in the technical sense of the Yorkshire Building Society or the Wine Society. But it has appeared to be run in a spirit of collegiality. That spirit evaporated last week, confronted with a display of central committee Stalinism. The anger had to be heard to be believed. One distinguished former trustee has said it may be the beginning of the end for a great institution.

This was the AGM, which is normally, I believe, a polite little get-together — meeting the trustees over a glass of wine. What caused the blow-up? Why did I, and so many others, go along for the first time? We’d received a little green brochure, tucked in with the annual report, saying that the trustees had decided to near-double the subs — from £210 a year to £375. No organisation I have ever belonged to, public or private, commercial or charitable, has given its customers such a cold-bath experience. The usual effect of such drastic price rises is to drive people away. A peculiar way to run a railroad.

I went along, ready to propose that the matter should be referred back for further consideration. There are worries about running costs, which the trustees have allowed to drift on. The library has also, as one member noted, plunged into buying, and converting, adjacent property in the dearest part of the dearest capital in the world; the idea is to cling to its policy of holding absolutely every book on site. In the resultant panic, the membership subscription is targeted. Allegedly, it now only covers 55 per cent of its true cost. Even so, why couldn’t any increase be staged, especially at a moment when an authoritative survey finds that the average income of authors from their work is £4,000 a year?

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Margaret Gaskin

November 11th, 2007 3:06pm Report this comment

As a member of the Library who swallowed the increase but didn't attend the meeting, can I thank all those who did for putting up a fight –not against higher prices, which may be inevitable, but against an apparently high-handed attitude that does indeed seem to go against everything I have ever felt about this great institution. The committee may feel they have been preaching to the choir for years now and this sudden increase has at least stirred members from their desks. Well, clearly, all members who care about the institution must stir their stumps and be prepared to give more (in time and commitment) in return for their great inheritance to ensure that a genuine democracy of intellect prevails. We none of us created the London Library, but we should be ashamed to feel that we stood by while its spirit, if not its substance, was destroyed.

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