| “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need,” Cicero once wrote to a friend. Campaigners in south London were feeling similarly high-minded on Friday — after a sleep- and shower-deprived protest that has prevented, at least temporarily, Herne Hill’s Carnegie Library from being turned into a gym. Their genteel occupation of the Grade II-listed building comes after years of concern about how council spending cuts are affecting library services. Alan Gibbons, a children’s author, has said the public library system faces the “greatest crisis in its history”. Across the UK, the number of council-run libraries has fallen by 12 per cent, or 525, since 2010, according to data provided to the BBC under a freedom of information request. Most of those have been closed; a further 111 libraries are scheduled to disappear this year. The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals says the number of public libraries — including sites handed over by councils to volunteers — fell by 178 in the six years to January. Carnegie Library opened in 1906, one of 660 in the UK funded by Andrew Carnegie. The steel magnate agreed a £12,500 grant to Lambeth on the grounds that there was “no danger the library would be starved”. Now the library, with its attached Ciceronian garden, is caught up in plans to trim £4m from the council’s leisure budget. It is slated to become a gym with an unknown number of bookshelves. “It’s so criminal,” said Michaela Loebner, a nursery teacher and supporter of Friends of Lambeth Libraries. On Thursday evening, shortly before it was due to close for refurbishment, she and protesters entered, spent the night singing Bob Marley songs and kept the shelves open for visitors the next day. “We’re not squatting. We came in perfectly legally — we’re just overstaying,” said Pete Elliott, a project manager. Council spending on libraries in Lambeth since 2010 has fallen from £30 per person per year to £10. One of the borough’s 10 libraries will be closed, and the Carnegie and nearby Minet library will be turned into gyms. The gym’s contractor would provide £1m of revenues in the first year of operation for the Carnegie site, the council says. Protesters argue that Carnegie’s gift to Lambeth was to the community rather than the council, meaning that local consent should be a prerequisite for any substantial changes. Such plans to generate commercial revenues have proved contentious. In March, plans to turn Tate South Lambeth Library into a “healthy living centre” were abandoned after the council conceded that “local people did not support the idea”. Council officials argue that libraries tend to have articulate, educated supporters, while other local services do not. “We have to make savings across the board,” said Lambeth council, which says it must cut £238m by 2018. “That includes adult social care, care for vulnerable children, domestic violence services.” “It’s a really insulting thing to say,” said Ms Loebner. “If they used libraries, they’d know these are exactly the type of people who rely on the libraries.” Carnegie also funded 1,689 libraries in the US. “A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people,” he said. It is unclear how many of them remain, as many did not bear his name. In the UK, the Society of Chief Librarians has taken a glass half-full approach to library closures, arguing that they will not prevent the emergence of “better and more innovative” facilities. Recent experiments include digital platforms, itinerant collections and coding classes. But the priority of the Lambeth campaigners is to protect the books as they are. Preparing for an unknown length of time in the Carnegie Library, Mr Elliott said, “We’re not going to get bored here, are we?” |