Keith Mitchell and the County Council are zealously pushing ahead with destructive cuts. Targeted for closure are 20 out of the county's 43 libraries.
Article taken from Issue 3 of The Ox-Fly - Oxford's radical newsletter:
http://oxfly.theoarc.org.uk
Article taken from Issue 3 of The Ox-Fly - Oxford's radical newsletter:
http://oxfly.theoarc.org.uk
Libraries provide a hugely beneficial service to communities: a source of knowledge, learning, entertainment, and internet access. Most importantly, they are available for free to everyone, something rare in our capitalist, money-driven world.
So it comes as part of the government's attempt to make ordinary people pay for the capitalist crisis that they are now cutting the libraries.
But not without a fight. A recent public meeting on the subject was huge and the feeling was that we should neither accept the cuts nor the idea that our libraries be run on a voluntary basis.
Many also recognised that we should not turn to Andrew Smith (who also spoke) and the Labour Party, who did plenty of similar things in power. Finally, the fight for the libraries must not be separated from the rest of the cuts; the money to save the libraries should come from the rich, not from cutting elsewhere. "Read-ins" in various libraries on 5th Feb were full of people eager to show support.
The government carefully phrases its 'Big Society' rhetoric in order to make it appear harmless and targeted to good ends. They talk about involving people in running their communities and services. This is precisely what we want. We want a world where we can run our own societies, our own communities, our own production and our own services without the involvement of politicians, bosses and people above us.
However, the government can't just cut us loose, expecting services to be run for free while society continues to be based on exploitation. As long as we are forced to spend huge chunks of our lives working for bosses in order to live, we won't have the time or energy to run libraries in our spare time.
Perhaps the government expects sacked library staff to jump up and volunteer to do their own jobs without pay? Another sign of how out of touch politicians are with everyday life...
So it comes as part of the government's attempt to make ordinary people pay for the capitalist crisis that they are now cutting the libraries.
But not without a fight. A recent public meeting on the subject was huge and the feeling was that we should neither accept the cuts nor the idea that our libraries be run on a voluntary basis.
Many also recognised that we should not turn to Andrew Smith (who also spoke) and the Labour Party, who did plenty of similar things in power. Finally, the fight for the libraries must not be separated from the rest of the cuts; the money to save the libraries should come from the rich, not from cutting elsewhere. "Read-ins" in various libraries on 5th Feb were full of people eager to show support.
The government carefully phrases its 'Big Society' rhetoric in order to make it appear harmless and targeted to good ends. They talk about involving people in running their communities and services. This is precisely what we want. We want a world where we can run our own societies, our own communities, our own production and our own services without the involvement of politicians, bosses and people above us.
However, the government can't just cut us loose, expecting services to be run for free while society continues to be based on exploitation. As long as we are forced to spend huge chunks of our lives working for bosses in order to live, we won't have the time or energy to run libraries in our spare time.
Perhaps the government expects sacked library staff to jump up and volunteer to do their own jobs without pay? Another sign of how out of touch politicians are with everyday life...