This week, a council in Merseyside voted to close 11 public libraries across the Wirral, despite a unprecedented campaign by local residents, parents and children.
It reminded me that libraries, much maligned by the cooler people who I grew up with, are one of the most important features in our cultural landscape, and should be protected at all costs.
Now, call me a geek (most people do) but there's nothing I like more than the smell of a good library and the thought that the decision made by Wirral council may be replicated in councils across the country fills me with foreboding. Public libraries were my bread and butter as a child – by the age of 10, I was on first-name terms with the staff – and it seems to me that denying children the chance to develop their education with knowledgeable librarians and a good range of books is tantamount to neglect.
Wirral council claim that it is simply uneconomical to support their libraries without raising the council tax – but I think that they are worth subsidising, even if it costs a couple of pounds more a month. People on low incomes, especially in a time of economic uncertainty, need libraries – for socialising, for learning and for enjoying the simple art of reading.
What worries me most about this decision is that it may have a knock-on effect for those libraries and reading rooms that are not under the direct control of local authorities, which rely on grants from councils or government bodies to survive.
Take the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, for example. Tucked away in an unassuming building on one of the city's busiest thoroughfares, not many people even know it still exists. The library has just been re-launched by Tony Benn with the help of a £300,000 grant from the National Lottery, aimed at making it more accessible to ordinary readers.
The collection in the WCML – which includes books, pamphlets, posters and banners – is beyond the wildest dreams of even the most enthusiastic social historian. The library contains books and information on all of the major political and social events of the last 200 years, including the Chartist movement and a detailed history of the Suffragettes – the Pankhurst family had roots in the city.
Its annual running costs are in excess of £90,000 and even though they do get a grant from Salford city council there is a substantial shortfall – they need help just as much as anyone, especially in a recession.
Their intimate, cosy atmospheres and the offer of a cup of tea makes them warm and friendly to the visitor and book buff alike.
The musty smell of the thousands of books, with all that history hidden in their browning pages, makes me sure that these libraries should not be forgotten.
