Libraries Give Us Power: How Birmingham City Council Are Weaponising Community Spirit Against the Community

Even though it became a kind of lads’ anthem, it’s worth remembering that the Manic Street Preachers’ ‘Design for Life’ has the immortal opening line, “Libraries gave us power”. And it’s important to remember that they still do.

In a blog a few weeks back, I wrote about how Sutton Coldfield Library was my real school. I’ve since remembered that the two books that inspired me to enrol on an English A-Level at an actual night school when I was 22 were also both borrowed from the library: Ted Hughes’ Selected Poems and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. (yes, I know Hughes is problematic, but I didn’t then). I felt there was something more to both than just poetry and a good story—metaphor or symbolism or something—but I had no idea how to access it. Hence night school, then uni, and my eventual career as a professional writer and editor.  

This process began back in 2006, the last time mullets were fashionable and when Sutton Library still commanded two floors. Its adult, children’s, music, and reference libraries were all in separate sections. There were plenty of tables and chairs where people could sit and read, study, and write. Nowadays, what remains of its once seemingly endless stock is squeezed into one big room. There’s a solitary table in the corner.

But at least it still exists, for now.

As anyone reading this will know, Birmingham City Council is bankrupt and looking to atone for it by closing 25 of the city’s 36 public libraries. Just as concerning, and what I want to focus on here, is that the remainder will be turned into “community living rooms”, sharing space with other services (whatever they might be), and being run by volunteers. Once more, those in power are proving themselves ruthlessly incompetent and expecting others to pick up the slack, for free, out of the kindness of their hearts. It’s happened with the rise of food banks, and now Birmingham Council seem to be using the same tactic against libraries.

Leaving the real-world problems of this aside for the moment, the issue is that it’s a PR masterstroke on the council’s behalf. “Community living rooms”, volunteers stepping up and doing their bit… All sound so cosy and Blitz-spirit, doesn’t it? And that’s the problem. Those of us trying to oppose this wanton act of cultural and community destruction can easily be painted as bitter, backwards lefties, romanticising an outmoded system: “The council’s broke, though. Everyone’s got a kindle nowadays, ain’t they? Where’s the money to pay for it coming from? How much more do you suggest we increase council tax by, then?” We’re back to the daft and misleading national-credit-card-bill arguments that got flung around in the early days of austerity. “Brum’s gotta tighten its belt. Simples.”

Pointing out that the council has a legal responsibility to provide a free and sufficient public library service just won’t cut it in the face of rose-tinted notions of charity-shop-style volunteer retirees helping out by manning the desk and filing a few books away (“It’s hardly graft is it? And I bet ‘alf of ‘em are on silly money anyway.”)

But it’s not just the right that this PR approach wins over. It also potentially appeals to liberals, those who thrive on romantic ideas of people power, local community businesses, and the can-do, bread-baking, Zoom-quizzing pandemic spirit of looking out for each other while everything goes to shit. You have to give it to whoever thought it up because it’s absolute genius. A pint in the Square Peg says someone in London’s already working on a heart-warming film script and Emma Thompson’s practising her Brummie accent (as long as she’s not doing it by watching This Town, amirite?).

I spent election night 2019 working in a pub where the majority of regulars were so right-leaning that they once questioned a bloke’s heterosexuality because he mentioned that he’d recently played a board game. It was like sitting with the opposition fans when your team loses 10-0, and I ended up in an argument with a few of them about food banks. They were saying how “wonderful” they were; I was saying they shouldn’t have to exist. “Yes but they do, and isn’t it fantastic? What else are they meant to do? Let people starve?” In a sense, they were right of course, and it’s harder to argue against someone you basically agree with, especially when disagreeing makes it seem like you’d rather people were left to die of hunger.

21st century economics are eroding the basic safety nets of 20th century society like the sea is eroding the East Yorkshire coast. Libraries are the latest old cottage that looks like falling in, swept away by waves of similar logic. “There’s an issue, and people are stepping up and making a difference. What are you doing besides moaning?” Okay, libraries aren’t as essential as eating, but that doesn’t mean they’re not vital and don’t still have a role to play—a role that needs proper council funding. Once they’re gone and volunteers have to step in, you can’t go back or argue against it—or you can, but you look like a loony leftie luddite demanding that taxpayers’ money goes on a load of old books rather than “something useful like collecting the bins or fixing all the bloody potholes.”

And what’s the reality of this knitted-blanket vision of community-run libraries? Without funding and trained, knowledgeable staff, they won’t be decently-stocked places where there are plenty of kids’ activities, your nan can get her large-print Agatha Raisin novels and have a nice chat, students can write and research, and those who need internet access can get it for free. They’ll be broom-cupboards that open for a handful of hours every week (assuming they can get the volunteers), and they’ll end up relying on book donations. In other words, give it a couple of years, and once all the decent stock has been sold to keep the lights on, you’ll be left with half a shelf of dog-eared Richard Osman novels in a damp, leaky room where half the strip-lights no longer work.

How modern. How quintessentially British.

Forward!