The battle lines are being drawn. Wirral has been forced to retreat on its plans to close eleven branch libraries but, in a sign that the war is far from over, council leader Steve Foulkes and local Labour MP Frank Field, are grumbling in the wings, blaming campaigners for cuts that may have to be made to make up the shortfall. In their thinking, the Labour council bear no responsibility for a deeply flawed set of proposals. In an excellent article in the Guardian, long time book advocate Rachel Cooke wrote this:
“When the Secretary of State finally took action in April, people were relieved, but they also wondered if a long and costly inquiry was necessary, given the scale both of the proposed devastation relative to the savings it would create, and of the opposition to it. Naturally, it is local people who will foot the bill for the QC who fought the council’s corner in the convoluted process which followed (the inquiry’s report is thought to be highly critical of WBC; now in the hands of the DCMS, no one knows if it will ever be made public). It also goes without saying that more bloody skirmishes are on their way. At least a dozen cash-strapped authorities are considering mega-cuts: closures by the hundreds, shorter hours, the running down of book stock, a vastly increased reliance on volunteers. Leicestershire County Council has announced plans to replace 19 staff with machines.”
Rachel also exposed some of the eccentric thinking going on in Government circles:
“Meanwhile, back at the Kafka-esque Department for Culture, Margaret Hodge has returned to her job as minister after a period of compassionate leave. Hodge is not keen on me – I’m an elitist snob who longs for “a return to the smell of Mansion polish” – and she is not keen on libraries, not in the traditional sense. Her latest batty idea is for a postal library service to “rival Amazon”, though she isn’t saying how much this would cost. Perhaps she isn’t aware that it took Amazon many years merely to break even. This particular piece of nonsense will apparently appear in the DCMS’s now long overdue library “modernisation” review, to be published next month. If so, I can’t exactly say I’m filled with hope for the rest of its contents. But then, I never was. The stuff coming out of the mouths of our politicians has, over a period of years, rarely proved to be anything less than barmy when it comes to our library service (Andy Burnham, the last Secretary of State, said he wanted libraries to be noisier, and for people to think of them as “Facebook 3D”).”
The Campaign for the Book agrees that it would be better to direct resources at better book stock, branch renovations, public promotion of the service and redirecting resources from back to frontline priorities. As Rachel says in assessing the outlook:
“Little wonder, then, that last Friday, even as Wirral celebrated, the all-party parliamentary group on libraries published a report which identified “wide-ranging” failures in the way government delivers library policy. Oh, I hate to spoil the party mood. But this thing isn’t over yet.”
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October 7th, 2009 at 12:52 am
Rahcel Cooke says that “no one knows if [the report] will ever be made public”. According to the DCMS website, “This report will be published subsequently, when the Secretary of State announces his decision.”
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:05 am
Don’t really know if Rachel Cooke is an elitist snob, but she does sound a bit ignorant. Some of what Hodge has said is quite simply what is referred to elsewhere as blue-sky thinking. Certainly I’ve wondered occasionally how the ethos of Bookcrossing.com , for example, might translate, or not, into other scenarios.