The Age of Austerity and the Assault on Britain's Libraries

Reading United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Professor Philip Alston's report on his visit to Britain and assessment of what the "age of austerity" the Tories and New Labour inflicted on the country (which, to its credit, outraged the British government and gutter press) I remember being struck by his references to the country's libraries. This was a matter not just of their making books and other reading material available to the public, but their affording particular amenities of special importance "to those living in poverty . . . including . . . a safe community space," and "access to a computer"--the latter of special relevance in a time in which the government was making access to much of the social safety net online-only through its replacement of a half dozen earlier programs with the "digital by default" system of "Universal Credit," even though those who need that system most are exactly the people least likely to have personal Internet access. The result was that, as Alston put it, Britain's "[p]ublic libraries are on the frontline of helping the digitally excluded and digitally illiterate who wish to claim their right to Universal Credit," and indeed the country's libraries had to deal with "claimants who arrive at the library, often in a panic, to get help claiming benefits online," with the City Library in Newcastle (a city of some three hundred thousand) alone obliged to assist almost two thousand such claimants in the August 2017-September 2018 period alone.

Of course, this was as the libraries saw their resourcing shrink. Apparently the whole process so far has seen the funding of Britain's libraries slashed by over half and a third of the libraries themselves shut down, with all that this especially means for access to their services outside the more urbanized areas--even as the uses to which libraries are being put grow. (Not only are they safe spaces--they are now "warm spaces" as well.)

The situation seems describable as collapse--all as I suspect that the pain Keir Starmer (who experienced as he in in discarding solemn pledges needed no time whatsoever before his promise that there would be no return to austerity turned into a promise of austerity that he seems almost certain to keep, with warmth in winter one of those things he has explicitly promised to take away from many) means to inflict on the British public's more vulnerable members will be felt in this area as in many others in the months and years ahead.