PROTESTORS will gather outside Huddersfield Town Hall next week to demonstrate against Kirklees Council’s plan to replace librarians with volunteers.
Paid staff are due to be withdrawn from the centres in Slaithwaite, Golcar, Honley, Lepton, Denby Dale, Kirkheaton and Shepley as part of a cost-cutting exercise.
But fear not, humble villagers! For over the horizon will come the volunteers of the Big Society, riding into town to keep your library open and seeking nothing in return save a few warm words from the grateful populace.
At least I think that’s what it said in the consultation document.
It’s no surprise that there are growing campaigns against this plan in many of the seven villages affected.
For a lot of people in rural areas around Huddersfield the library is the most obvious Kirklees presence in their area. Aside from bin collection, it’s the one thing they can point to with absolute certainty and say “my council tax pays for that”.
And libraries have long provided far more than just book-lending.
For example, the Kirklees website informs us that the centre at Denby Dale also offers computers, photocopying, an information board and a local history collection.
The library hosts weekly sessions about science, crafts, IT and ancestry as well as storytime to help teach children about the joy of books.
All this valuable work is at risk from the council’s plan.
On a personal level, I sympathise with the protestors. In my own naked self-interest, I don’t want to see the library in Slawit undermined in any way.
But what is in Barry Gibson’s interest is not always in the best interests of the public as a whole – as strange as that may seem.
The sad fact is that Kirklees simply has to cut its spending. The financial structure of local government and the budget reductions imposed from Westminster make it unavoidable.
But the council’s plan for libraries appears so ill-conceived that I can’t help wishing the axe would fall elsewhere.
It is a little ironic to hear a Labour-run council peddling the Big Society line, speaking up for one of the Tories’ most toxic policy ideas.
Volunteers are wonderful people and the country would be a much worse place without their efforts. But this should not disguise the simple fact that a well-meaning amateur is no alternative to a seasoned professional.
If the seven rural libraries do lose their paid staff, the public will soon notice a difference in services lost and reduced opening hours.
Ask me to fix your car and I could give it a go. But you’d be walking to work until you paid a trained mechanic to do the job.
Likewise, if you asked me to help run a library, I could have a stab at it.
But it would be better – quite considerably better – if the person working in the library was someone who had worked in a library for years, who had been trained to work in a library, who was paid to work in a library and who had always wanted to work in a library.
David Cameron’s patronising daydream of the Big Society is, at best, evidence of a man with too little life experience. At worst it’s a cynical attempt to mask the real impact of his Government’s spending cuts.
Speaking to library protestors in the last few weeks, I’ve been struck by the fact that every one of them, unprompted, has offered the following opinion: “This is just a prelude to closure.”
Every campaigner believes that when the librarians go, the library will follow soon enough. There may be a short period on Big Society life support but the plug will be pulled in the end.
There is a cynicism at the heart of the library protests, a belief that the council’s assurances are worth nothing.
Kirklees is only partly responsible for the gulf in trust between rulers and ruled.
Successive governments of all complexions must also take their share of the blame for the cynicism underlying the library campaign.
When you invade another country on a lie, people remember.
When you bail out the banks, people remember.
When you fiddle your expenses, people remember.
And when you promise jam tomorrow, people think: “It’ll be plain toast for me if I don’t speak up now.”
