In the British Library Autumn 2025
I’ve been a reader at the British Library since 1984 and I renewed my reader’s pass for another three years a couple of weeks back. When I did so I spoke to the librarian about the strike action (then forthcoming) of PCS members at the Library.
The strike action was primarily about a below inflation pay offer for workers who keep the Library going and have kept it going two years on from the October 2023 cyberattack. But it was also about the wider issue, so common now in workplaces, about the lack of respect shown to the Library’s workers and the important job they do.
The British Library is the national library and a library of record- every book published must be deposited there. Yet as a key cultural institution it feels and actually is undervalued. Of course everything is seen in market capitalist terms, but I also mean undervalued in terms of what a great resource it is.
Perhaps the St Pancras site doesn’t quite have the history of the old British Museum round reading room where both Marx and Lenin studied and the graffiti in the gents toilets was of the highest possible literary standard. But it’s a functional library, which actually works.
The PCS strike got great support and large rallies every day for two weeks. As a fellow trade unionist I hope they win, they certainly deserve to
Zadie Smith has written in the Guardian about the importance of the BL and of the strike
Perhaps the local MP could help. Their name? Keir Starmer
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