Increasingly, this is an age of revolution. Disaffection has even reached England’s green and apathetic land. Libraries are to close and campaign groups have formed online around books blogs and community forums. Slogans are shouted, ministers harangued and the Culture Select Committee petitioned – all to no immediate avail. The dissenters are not above direct action, albeit confined to the sleepily donnish variety of protest. A wave of sit-ins, or read-ins as they are termed, was coordinated last Saturday and I went to watch the tenor of these demonstrations.
First impressions of New Cross Library are thwarted by the pervasive must. The air is coarse: dehydrated by the aggressive central heating, straining with a pained hum. But, all libraries are sacred and New Cross’ determined drabness is warming.
Some of the protesters face losing their jobs. Many others were regular users – a diverse local community who used the library’s various technical facilities and relied on it as the source of trashy fiction and classics alike. There were teachers and a sprinkling of parents, worried that electronic resources and educational material might be lost. Most of all, they were dismayed at the imminent closure of a place in which children can commune in total safety in a troubled borough.
More gnarled political beasts stalked the street outside – clad in leathers and armed with bygone slogans and illiterate literature. I doubt many had graced a library since graduating from short-trousers, but that’s not the point. Their dishonesty is contemptible.
Councils face average cuts of 4.4 percent in 2011, which is a substantial but not crushing privation: the defence budget must absorb cuts of 8 percent, while still fighting a war. Even having made cuts of 4.4 percent, council funding will still stand at the levels of 2006 – a bald time of the barest subsistence, I’m sure you all agree.
Errant councils are closing those services that will most inconvenience the communities they represent. Central government is, of course, not without fault, but the ultimate decision lies with councils. Politics will merit opprobrium if jejune opportunism and spite triumph, thereby realising the fears of the majority who sat-in through the night at New Cross.
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