A message from Alan Gibbons about National Libraries Day

Four years after I called for a National Libraries Day, an event that is now an annual celebration, I fear for their future. On May 25th that year I said:

“We are delighted to launch National Libraries Day, a week of events in early February leading to a day of celebration of reading, libraries and librarians around the United Kingdom. A reading child is a successful child. A child who goes to the library is twice as likely to be a good reader and that child becomes a literate adult, a lifelong reader. There are 320 million visits a year to our libraries but we can make them even more popular,”
Four years on, the annual number of visits has fallen by forty million. The fall has been steepest in deprived communities, according to research by the House of Commons library commissioned by the Labour Party. The research follows the Cipfa figures in assessing that there were 282m visits to libraries in England in 2013-14, compared with 322m four years earlier.
In deprived areas, the percentage of people using libraries has dropped by more than a fifth from 46.2 per cent to 36.8 per cent.
A third of people aged 16 and 24 had visited a library in the last year, compared with nearly 40 per cent four years earlier.
There are now at least 330 fewer libraries open for 10 hours or more a week, a fall of eight per cent.
A few months ago William Sieghart, author of an independent report on libraries, warned the network was at a “critical moment.” Even the prestigious Birmingham of Library faces devastating service cuts.
Add the number of library closures to branches being handed over to an uncertain future in the hands of trusts and volunteers, book stock reductions and ever shorter opening hours and you have a recipe for possibly irreversible decline.
During my years of campaigning to save our libraries, I have debated with MPs, councillors and the Culture Secretary. I have yet to hear a single comment from any of these people to reassure me that the service is safe in their hands. So let’s celebrate National Libraries Day, but we will have to fight for them if it is to mean anything.

Alan Gibbons, Campaign for the Book

The power of one and the power of many

Sometime over the Christmas break, Five Leaves towers received an email from Alan Gibbons, children's author and organiser of the Campaign for the Book. I don't have it to hand but to precis it said, look, I know you are still munching mince pies, but what do people feel about a day of action around threatened libraries, let's say Feb 5th. We were not picked out, the email was sent to heaps of people and organisations in contact with the Campaign for the Book. And lo! (as folks say around Christmas) the people said yes. The Campaign is not something you can join, send off £20 and sleep better at night. It is not a campaign with local branches, nor is it a campaign that produces print, guidelines, or has Hon. Vice Presidents. There is an annual conference with speakers, but unless I have misunderstood, it is Alan Gibbons stirring us up and encouraging us to do what is right in our own area. On Feb 5th there is action in many parts of the UK - you can read about some of them at Alan's blog, and enter more in the Guardian's map of protest http://alangibbons.net/?paged=2.

If you are in Nottinghamshire come and join the Five Leaves' staff from 11.00am at Beeston Library in Nottinghamshire (there are also events in Sneinton and Stapleford). We'll be "reading-in" and "reading-out". Bring your library card (returns can be made at any Nottingham City or County Library) for a mass borrow or bring along something to read out. The event has the support of UNISON and will in turn support the staff, not get in their way. Do protests work? You can see on Alan's blog stories of local authorities backing off from library cuts. Not all, but some. And here the Council has put back £400,000 into its book fund and £70,000 back into staffing for 22 of the smaller libraries. The fund and the opening hours for these libraries will now only be cut by 50% not 75% - which takes us from catastrophic to bad. But it does save the jobs of many part-time low paid women and make the service viable if diminished. That those libraries will be returned to viability is the direct result of protest, including a letter signed by 100 local writers. So on Saturday we celebrate a minor victory and read in support of our local staff and library workers and users all over the country.

Battle of Cable Street, diary date

If you had planned to take part in the Battle of Cable Street, you are, unfortunately, 73 years and 364 days late, as the 74th anniversary is tomorrow. However we can say that plans are already being worked up for the 75th anniversary in 2011. I posted about the books Five Leaves will be publishing earlier, on 13th August, but can now say that we'll be running a joint launch for the books on 2nd October 2011, with a panel discussion on the literature of the 1930s the previous day. Alan Gibbons, author of one of the books, will also be doing some schools' work on the 3rd October. Many of the Cable Street events will take place in and around Wilton's Music Hall in the East End. Meantime you might want to diary that weekend, and read an interview with one of the participants, Max Levitas, still active at 95 or watch another, Ubby Cowan, talking about the event:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/97180, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FuXR2wFHA0

Looking ahead to Cable Street

October 4 2011 will see the 75th anniversary of The Battle of Cable Street. Three Five Leaves writers took part in the battle, Bill Fishman, Bernard Kops and the late Harold Rosen. I spoke to Bernard a few days ago and he is - as always - looking forward to the next stage of his writing career with three sessions at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. Bill's health has not been great but he is hoping to return to giving talks at U3A on East End history. A couple of weeks ago he was telling me about meeting Gandhi when he was stationed in India. Bill was a supporter of the Indian independence movement. He sometimes surprises local Indians by starting chatting to them in Hindi.

Five Leaves is looking ahead to the five books we are publishing for the anniversary. We are republishing Alan Gibbons' children's book Street of Tall People; the forgotten novel October Day by Frank Griffin; the Cable Street Group's booklet on the Battle; an as yet un-named book on Jewish responses to fascism by David Rosenberg; and Everything Happens on Cable Street, about everything else that happened there. The latter will include everything from the Maltese gangs, the modern day S & M club through to the famous film, To Sir, With Love. Roger Mills, a local resident will be putting that together. Meantime, here's The Men They Could Not Hang with The Ghosts of Cable Street: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzKv5gjOzTA