Dear Supporters,
Thank you to all those who turned up to support the March from Hanwell Library to West Ealing Library last Saturday including readers from West Ealing library and local shoppers who joined us at the end point and signed the petition.
As Hanwell Library Users’ Group spokesperson states, “the objective has been to demonstrate to Ealing Council that we want them to keep these libraries under their responsibility for service delivery.
In London, growing evidence indicates that it is not sustainable for a Community Organisation, for each of the seven at-risk libraries, to be able to identify, attract and retain upwards of 60 volunteers to run each library.
And too many Community-run Libraries are competing to identify, apply for and win a smaller number of grants as the grant-giving sector contracts. And each library is going to cost in the order of £20,000 to run each year, with no support from the Council for running costs after the first couple of years.” Carolyn Brown.
The Council’s Cabinet convenes tomorrow, Tuesday (16th) to formally announce its decision to push forward with its proposed Draft Libraries Strategy. We will have another photo call protest so please meet on the Town Hall Steps at 6pm to show your support for the Save Our Libraries Campaign, and do bring your families, friends and neighbours, if possible.
Please don’t be fooled by the Council’s claim to have exercised a fully transparent democratic consultative process. That’s farcical and we will battle on until ours campaign demands by over 16,500 protesters (and rising) are met!
On a related note, after sending the office of Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, the poetic video of the recent ‘Read In’ protest, last week I received a surprise invitation to the Social International Forum at SOAS. Yesterday (day 2), I listened to powerful presentations and took part in a series of workshops, aimed at creating dialogue between politicians, economists and social movement leaders from different parts of the world on the challenges of the climate crisis, internationalist economic policy, migration and trade/protectionism.
It was a fantastic forum of innovative ideas and strategies to address the problems mentioned above, and I was grateful and humbled by an opportunity to give John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn copies of ‘The Wonderful World of WAPPY’. I wrote individualised messages in both books about the power of our youngsters, communities and public libraries to effect change. The reality is that Ealing’s Libraries including Hanwell Library (one of the threatened 7) were highly instrumental in the production of the publication and related creative writing and art workshops. The photos speak for themselves. Here’s an illuminating article by John McDonnell in the Guardian, in which he pledges his support to keep public libraries open, in the face of Central Government funding austerity cuts (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/11/labour-end-austerity-enrich-lives-tax?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR1vLo3BBE8FyJhkXnoj30uWWyybj2rJdQ6ibOUHNLfl8mlc-miYwvatZpU
Thank you all for your indelible support.
See you soon, if it applies.
Grace (Akuba)