I’ve been a reader at the British Library since 1984 in the day of the old Round Reading Room and I still frequent the Euston Rd building on a regular basis.
I was in the Library on 6th November looking at Eric Hobsbawm’s Revolutionaries, a collection of his writings. Of course J have a copy but I wanted to check the most recently updated edition from 2007 (he died in 2012).
I was looking particularly at a 1969 essay he wrote in the French May of 1968 which has particular relevance now. It follows broadly the line of the article he wrote for Black Dwarf in June 1968. He had been in Paris at a conference on the Night of the Barricades, 10/11th May 1968.
His 1969 piece focused on the role of students arguing that while they could spark protests it required the working class and unions to push through for a real change. It didn’t happen because the unions and in particular the Communist Party did a deal with De Gaulle. Hobsbawm notes in the introduction that the pieces in the book are in the main observations and comments rather than things he was directly involved in. Allowing for this his essay on May 68 was someway from the position of the CPGB of which he was a long time member.
The point being that in the BL you can do this kind of study. Reader’s passes are free and the reading rooms are conducive to reflection.
Like many other British institutions the BL has been starved of resources in some areas. It is now proposing to privatise the security staff who keep the place running as much as the librarians. It also wants to hive several reading rooms as paid for spaces, as if there werent enough such spaces in central London.
The British Library should be a publicly run, public space. A petition is here:
Stop the Privatisation of the British Library! | Megaphone UK
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