In 1972 Ricky Tomlinson the well known UK comedian and actor was a qualified plasterer and builder working on the new Wrexham bypass in North Wales, he became involved in union activities to improve the poor working conditions and pay of workers in the construction industry. Following a series of rare construction industry strikes (held peacefully amid amicable encounters with police) he and other Union members were arrested in a climate of judicial secrecy and ad hoc process. Lacking any real evidence, Ricky and fellow union members were imprisoned following a conviction under the archaic 1875 Conspiracy Act and he spent the next two years in a variety of prisons, including a substantial period in Shrewsbury prison. He later found he had been secretly classed as a political prisoner. During his imprisonment Ricky went on hunger strike and endured other privations to impress his innocent status and this status was often openly recognised as such by prison guards and even a prison governor. One of Ricky’s fellows was made extremely ill by their ordeal and died tragically some time later, it is on behalf of his fellow union members that Ricky has campaigned on this issue for many years. Documents relating to the trial and judicial process concerning Ricky and other union members were classified as top secret and this status has been extended to 2021. Ricky is campaigning for wider awareness of this travesty of justice for the “Shrewsbury 24″, for release of improperly classified documentation concerning the case and to clear his name of this criminal conviction for the sake of his family who have also been adversely affected by this episode. Please see the following government e-petition demanding the release of government documents relating to the trial: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/35394  this petition has been subject to a declaration of some 50,000 invalid entries by the UK government. Ricky’s campaign is appealing for fully completed signatures on the petition to ensure this reaches 100,000 – the number needed to trigger a debate on this topic in the UK Government House of Commons, the deadline for the petition is 27 June 2013.

Please also see the following resources -

• The official Shrewsbury 24 campaign site
• Billy Bragg backs Ricky Tomlinson’s call over the Shrewsbury 24
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2000/newsmakers/1569062.stm
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/22/truth-about-shrewsbury-24-strike

Rick Tomlinson describes his Shrewsbury 24 experiences (Youtube):

Personal Appeal from Ricky Tomlinson Ricky Tomlinson writes to Labour movement supporters to ask they sign the Downing Street petition on an historic injustice in the construction industry

“You know me as an actor and performer today but as a young man I was a plasterer working in the building industry and a member of the T&GWU. We were low paid and had some of the worst working conditions of any workers in Britain in the 1970’s. Like any good trade unionists we decided we would take action to change this. We had a national strike in summer 1972. We picketed sites that were not well organised and where union members needed our support. Five months after the strike ended 24 of us were arrested out of the blue and six of us were sent to prison after lengthy trails at Shrewsbury Crown Court.

I was sent to jail for 2 years for carrying out trade union activities. Today you do not hear of trade unionists in Britain being sent to prison but that’s what happened to me and 5 of my colleagues. Others got suspended prison sentences.

Please sign my e-petition to demand the release of Government documents. We believe that they show that there was government interference and manipulation in bringing the prosecutions. The Coalition Government today continues to refuse to release these documents on grounds of “national security”. “

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The book is organised into three main time frames: the resistance of nationalities, 1884-1922; the consolidation of the working class, 1922-1948; and the Mau Mau revolutionary struggle,1948-1963. There are also sections on Kiswahili resistance publishing, overseas support for Kenya liberation, and independence and neo-colonialism.

Each chapter follows a common pattern so that the evolution of publishing can be traced through different historical periods and situations. The emergence of an African nationalist movement between 1884-1922 is illustrated through examples of settler, colonial government, church, South Asian and African publications. The different currents and tensions within these groups is evidenced via their respective publications; for example, the divergence between settler and colonial interests and the support given to the emerging nationalist movement by South Asian publications.

After 1922 there was growing convergence between nationalist and working class politics and this was seen in the growth of trade unions and their publications. Militancy on the streets and in the workplace was mirrored by increasingly radical literature which encouraged the African masses to rise up and overthrow both their colonial and class oppressors. What was striking to me, reading this little recorded episode in the history of British imperialism, was the sovereignty and independence of the liberation struggle. Revisionist capitalist historians would have us believe that all independence movements in Africa were organised and financed by international Communism. The Mau Mau movement needed no such external intervention or interference (although it did receive support from the UK, Canada, USSR, Egypt, Ireland, India, USA and Trinidad).

The core of Never Be Silent is the hidden history of the Mau Mau revolutionary struggle: the establishment of liberated territories; the Mau Mau communications strategy; oral communications; revolutionary publishing; preparation for the armed phase; and the establishment of a people’s press. The Mau Mau were highly organised and carried out their intelligence gathering operations under the very noses of the colonial regime. Mau Mau seemed to be everywhere in Kenya, and the authorities became increasingly desperate to control the situation. This led to the declaration of a National Emergency in 1952, after which many publications were closed down, only to re-emerge with a different title or guise.

The aims of the Mau Mau were clear, and articulated via a sophisticated communications strategy and a well organised leadership. When it became obvious that armed struggle was the only way forward, these actions were well planned, targeted and carried out. The colonial response was swift and savage, leading to mass arrests, torture, executions and random violence. What we would now call crimes against humanity and genocide were perpetrated against the Kenyan people; crimes for which there should be both justice and reparations.

No amount of reprisals and arbitrary actions could deflect the Mau Mau from their mission and it strengthened the resolve of the masses who rallied behind their leaders. After such an inspirational model of self determinism and focused intent, it is all the more shocking and shameful that the work of Mau Mau was ultimately undone by the post independence ruling class in Kenya. Neo-colonialism is always a more damaging and insidious offspring than its odious parents, colonialism and imperialism.

But reading this book does not leave you with feelings of disappointment and defeat; far from it, you come away feeling energised and ready to use the valuable lessons of Mau Mau in today’s struggles. The quotes which are liberally scattered throughout this book should be used in library and information schools throughout the world to teach the next generation of library workers that information truly is power. We have the information tools at our disposal to shift power away from rich oligarchies and into the hands of the working class. Where that has been achieved, in countries such as Cuba, society has been transformed.

The other central message in this book is that, in the face of injustice and oppression, library workers should never be silent: they should speak out against the illegal invasions of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. They should speak out in support of asylum seekers and refugees who are their fellow workers. And they should put their skills in the service of those who are most excluded and who have the greatest needs. As Durrani concludes, ‘people struggling to change their society always find ways of establishing their own system of communicating with the people they lead and by whom they are led. Their mission of revolution, of change, of peace, of social and economic justice requires that they should never be silent.’

Shiraz Durrani: Never be silent; publishing and imperialism in Kenya, 1884-1963 2006.

London: Vita Books. ISBN: 978-1-869886-05-9.

More than 40 practitioners joined in the effort, contributing 25 chapters that address the myriad obstacles and opportunities facing Caribbean libraries.

The book begins by providing essential historical perspective followed by coverage of trends, projects and issues in library management, innovative services, integration and impact of information technology, cooperation and resource sharing, training library users, distance education, and the changing roles and attitudes of librarians.

The Caribbean is a vast, dispersed and diverse region. The contributors to this book come from St Maarten, the Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, St Croix, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada and the US.

One notable exception is Cuba, which is more often linked to Latin America than the Caribbean, although it is a close neighbour of Jamaica and Haiti.

Cuba, unlike any other country in the Caribbean, or any other ‘developing country’, has built a library service which is the envy of many ‘ First World’ countries, with stock, staffing levels and opening hours which exceed Public Library Standards in the UK, one of the world’s richest nations.

Cuba has given its libraries both political priority and resources, and libraries have been a key tool to achieve and maintain Cuba’s free education system and high levels of literacy. From the moment that Cuba was declared ‘Free of Illiteracy’ in 1961, libraries (in conjunction with a flourishing indigenous publishing industry) have played a vital role in the cultural life of the nation.

Other Caribbean libraries, which suffer from ‘crippling resource constraints’, have much to learn from Cuba. Another issue of common concern to Caribbean libraries are the ‘expensive fast paced technological developments.’

For many Caribbean countries it is just a case of not being able to afford the high costs associated with internet access; for Cuba this issue is compounded by the US blockade which makes accessing the information super highway even more difficult and expensive.

Caribbean libraries in the 21 st Century is an informative and inspiring work that will appeal to any information professional, student or scholar seeking to understand how librarianship can and is flourishing in challenging circumstances.

John Pateman, Head of Libraries, Lincolnshire, UK

Review by John Pateman

This was by far the best book I have read on librarianship for a very long time. I wore my pencil out underlining all the statements which I agreed with.

The subjects of Librarianship and Human Rights can be viewed as dull in themselves and a very dry and boring combo when hitched together. But this is no dusty, academic, detached tome. Instead it is a lively, passionate, committed, well argued call to arms.

At its core there is a challenge to the perceived professional wisdom that librarians should be objective, neutral and apolitical. Rather, we should not separate the personal, political and professional, particularly in this age of the so called War on Terror when human rights are constantly being eroded and under mined.

Even the concept of Universal Human Rights itself is contested here, as an essentially western capitalist ideology which cannot and should not be applied to all countries and all people’s all of the time.

Samek succeeds in all three of her stated aims: to encourage library workers to take a stand; to challenge professional rhetoric about human rights; and to position the library as a point of resistance.

Samek then moves us beyond the rhetoric and presents a wide range of practical strategies and examples of social action used in library work for social change. The UK based organisation Information for Social Change features prominently here.

This is a manifesto for a new critical library movement as part of a more humanistic profession which should oppose the following: commodification of information, corporate globalisation, privatisation of public services, monopolisation of the media, and profit driven destruction (or private appropriation and control) of cultural artefacts and the human record.

Inspiring, affirming, activating, energising, I ran out of superlatives to describe this book. If you are a library worker who wants to change the world, read it today – because tomorrow may already be too late.

(317 words)

John Pateman

Head of Libraries, Learning & Inclusion

Lincolnshire County Council

Alternative Publishers of Books in North America, 6th Edition Author: Byron Anderson, compiler Price: $18.00

ISBN-10: 0-9778617-2-4 ISBN-13: 978-0-9778617-2-.

Library Juice Press – October 200.

Preface by Nancy Kranich. Past President of the American Library Association.

A review by Martyn Lowe

What makes for a good Book review? Just how does one review any directory?

One can make a descriptive review, an analytical review, or a critical review of any work.

In the case of a critical review, what is it that one should criticise ? Could it be the work as a whole, or does one view such a work purely for its political content? One thing is very clear to me: That any review of Alternative Publishers of Books in North America can only be reviewed within its own stated aims. Thus I’ll start this review with the stated aim of the directory compiler. Within the context of this work the term ‘alternative’ may be taken to mean those publishers who are not a part of the mainstream media, or owned by one of the large multi-media companies.

As Byron Anderson writes within his introduction to the directory: ‘ The Presses profiled in the directory were culled from hundreds of small, active independent presses.’ He also goes on to state that : ‘ The directory’s editor makes no pretence that the profiles represent a complete, comprehensive list of alternative publishers’.

An Alternative viewpoint. In her preface to this work Nancy Kranich examines the US media, & just how it is dominated by a few very large & very powerful companies. Companies which have a near monopoly upon just what people read, watch, or hear about. This is also a very informative essay upon just how the major broadcasters & publishers are interlinked within the USA, & how this near monopoly is very detrimental to small independent publishers.

Alternative does not mean radical. There is also major distinction which should be made here. Alternative does not mean radical, or political. One may hold very radical views, & yet live a very conventional lifestyle. One may engage upon very unconventional activities, & still hold what are otherwise very conservative views. As Byron Anderson points out within the introduction to this work: ‘ Alternative Press as a term is nearly inexplicable. Everything is alternative to something else…’ He goes on to state that: ‘ Alternative publishers counter the concentration of media ownership, which for the publishing industry amounts to six conglomerates that dominate in book sales and marketing..

Thus one should approach this directory as a reference tool which focuses upon ‘alternative’ subjects, or Issues which the monolithic mainstream multi-media corperationsare just not interested in publishing books about.

The structure of this work. The structure of the book is a fine example of just how any directory of publishers should be organised. By far the great part of the directory is the section.

Presses, including imprints. There are 126 US, 19 Canadian, and 18 international publishers listed in alphabetical order. This listing includes contact and technical information, plus the printing policies of each of these publishers.

It also gives something of an historical overview upon how each of these publishers came in to being. The subject index covers 102 subjects, & shows which publishers cover what issues. These subjects include such issues as ethics, poetry, politics, cultural studies, globalisation, and Human Rights.

The most interesting part of the directory being: ‘Alternative Publishers of Books: A bibliography, 1996-2005.’ For just this 5 page bibliography alone, the directory is well worth while being adding to any library reference shelf.

Alternative subject headings. If I have any criticism of this work, then it has to do with the Subject index. Although this is as much to do with which publishers are included within the directory, as it has to do with anything else.

For example: In the subject index we find Vegetarian, but not Vegan. There is Animal Rights, but not Animal Liberation. Atheism and Humanism are not mentioned. This is a pity as I know that there are a lot of good North American publishers which cover these subjects.

On the other hand Sexuality & erotica are given a subject listing, which at first glance might seem very strange to many a European reader who is used to this kind of subject area being well covered by main stream publishers. Though, upon further reflection, I realise that this may result from the very different attitudes which people have to these issues within the states.

Growing better with each edition. As I have already stated above, one should look at this work within its own stated context. Looking back upon the 3rd edition of this work, which was published in 1997, it is possible to see just how much more has been covered within this 6th edition. e.g. The subject index has become much more comprehensive over the years.

Moving on to the next Edition. Alternative Publishers of Books in North America is one of the most useful reference works I know about, and should be stocked within every radical book shop.

I look forward to seeing just how this work will continue to grow with each future edition.

Martyn Lowe

Film review by John Pateman

This is England is the latest film from Nottingham based director Shane Meadows. Like his previous films, it is set in the white working class community of the East Midlands, and it was filmed in Nottingham and Grimsby.

It is the semi autobiographical story of Shane’s teen age years as a skinhead during the early 1980’s. This was the second wave of skins, following on from the original youth culture of 1969. The opening credits set the scene – to the beat of a heavy reggae soundtrack images are shown of Thatcher’s Britain and the Falkland’s War.

Shane’s father was killed in this conflict and he lives with his mum in a Council flat. She is not well off and his clothes are not fashionable. When he is taunted by a boy at school about his flared trousers and a joke about his father’s death, he flies into a rage and is caned for his crime.

Walking home that day he meets a bunch of skins who can see he is upset and ask him what’s wrong. A friendship with them develops and he adopts their image and dress – short haircut, Levi jeans and braces, Dr Marten boots and Ben Sherman shirt. Shane even gets a girlfriend but the peace of the group is shattered when Combo arrives fresh from 3 years in prison.

Combo is the star of the film – a very angry young white working class man who falls under the influence of the National Front and who splits the group of skins into those who are prepared to follow his narrow nationalist agenda. He literally draws a line on the floor and asks those who are with him to cross it. Most don’t but Shane does and he falls under Combo’s spell. Events turn increasingly sinister as an Asian shopkeeper is threatened and Combo is further frustrated when his approach to a young skin girl is rejected.

One of the skins, Milky, has a Jamaican background and Combo asks him whether he considers himself English or Jamaican. This is an echo of Norman Tebbit’s notorious English or Pakistani test which he set for young Asian cricket fans. Milky passes the test and Shane wraps himself in the England flag, but Combo’s rage against the world intensifies and this leads to a shattering climax to the film. Suffice it to say that Milky ends up in hospital and Shane ends up throwing his flag into the sea, as more images of dead and wounded Falkland’s soldiers from both sides are shown at the end of the film.

This film captures very well the context and environment of Thatcher’s Britain in which greed was good and there was no such thing as society. Combo was a product and victim of that society – he deserves understanding and empathy rather than condemnation. The film also enters the mindset of white working class youth and gives an insight into why they are so angry and resentful and how this can easily be turned into racial hatred and nationalism.

Shane Meadow’s previous films are also well worth watching for vivid and humorous vignettes of white working class culture – Twenty Four Seven; Once Upon a Time in the Midlands; A Room for Romeo Brass; and Dead Man’s Shoes. All are available on DVD.

Review by John Pateman

I have been a fan of Billy Bragg’s music for many years and have seen him play live several times. I am also aware of his politics and so I was not surprised when he wrote this book about progressive patriotism and a search for belonging. I also went to a talk on this subject by Billy as part of the Lincoln Book Festival and was very impressed by the strength of his political argument for a new Bill of Rights which all classes and races in England can unite under.

What does it mean to be English? What does it mean to be British? Does the rise in popularity of the St George’s flag represent a new beginning or symbolise the return of the far right? Is the Union Jack too soaked in the blood of empire to be the emblem of a modern multicultural state? In a country in which all of us are born under two flags, what does it mean to be a patriot?

In 2006, Billy saw his home town Barking in the front line of the debate over who does and does not belong in 21 st century Britain, when the BNP became the official opposition group on Barking and Dagenham Council. Billy links this to the attacks on London of 7 July 2005, when 52 people were killed and many more injured during attacks on the public transport system.

This book is an urgent, eloquent and passionate response to these events. Reflecting on the history of his home town and family (many of whom came from dissenting traditions and trade unions) and revisiting the music that inspired him (especially the Clash), Billy pits his own values against those of traditional Britishness in a search for a sense of belonging that is accessible to all and in so doing, offers positive hope to a nation no longer sure of its own identity.

The issues which Billy raises will not go away any time soon as we continue to come to terms with an increasingly multicultural society, which many people are far from comfortable with because in some ways this seems to threaten what England stands for. But Billy proves that England has stood traditionally for fairness, justice and tolerance and we must reassert these collectivist values and turn back the tide of consumerism and individualism.

As Billy says, the real enemy is not Capitalism or Conservatism but Cynicism – the people of England must wake up politically and be active in creating a new kind of society, building on the work of the Levellers, the Chartists, the Suffragettes and the Trade Unions. In the absence of a written constitution we need a Bill of Rights which protects the citizens of this country – no matter what their background – from arbitrary power.

As I write this review one of the MPs for Barking, Government Minister Margaret Hodge, has called for local indigenous people to be given preference over newly arrived immigrants in the allocation of social housing. The other Barking MP and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party contender John Cruddas has argued that it is a question of supply rather than demand. As the public arguments over the future and extent of Multicultural England continue to rage, Billy Bragg’s book makes an important contribution to that debate.

My view is that the US and UK are not liberal democracies – they are Selfish Capitalist states (what D’Angelo calls postmodern consumer capitalism). They are also one party states – it doesn’t matter if you vote Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Labour, you are voting for a capitalist party which does not seek to change the capitalist system. As Ken Livingston (Mayor off London) once ‘If voting ever changed anything, they would abolish it.’ Voting does not make any difference, but it gives the illusion of choice and control. Many people are now seeing past that illusion and refusing to vote.

By supporting democracy and civil education, Public Libraries are supporting capitalism. Education and Public Libraries were invented by capitalists (such as Andrew Carnegie) to take the pressure out of the capitalist system, to prevent revolution. Capitalism has survived so long because it is able to accommodate and reform itself to prevent social unrest and revolt. Education and Public Libraries are two prime examples of accommodation and reform. Their overt purpose was social change – to improve the lives of working people. Their real purpose was social control – to control the reading habits of working class people and to ensure they have the skills to perpetuate the capitalist economy.

I also have a problem with the concepts of ‘high’ and ‘popular culture’. To me these are just devices of the capitalist system to divide people along class lines. High culture is for rich and middle class people; popular culture is for poor and working class people. We should not go along with this device. Culture is culture, period. Democracy is not possible under capitalism. Public Libraries and Education are not Public Goods, they are tools of the capitalist state. Given that is my starting point, when I compare bookstores with Public Libraries, I am comparing one agent of the capitalist state with another. This leads me to believe that bookstores are more effective and efficient in serving capitalism than Public Libraries. Bookstores are attractive, comfortable and welcoming; there are no petty rules such as having to give proof of identify to join, or fines for keeping books overdue. Public Libraries are an inefficient and ineffective vehicle for serving capitalism objectives – in many ways they have outlive their initial purpose and that is why their existence is now threatened in the cut throat competitive world of Selfish Capitalism.

It is futile for Public Libraries to try and compete with bookstores, which are a more effective servant of capitalism; their failure to compete is evidenced by massive and long term falls in book issues and visits, while book sales continue to rise. Instead of trying to compete in what Kim and Mauborgne call a Red Ocean of cut throat competition, Public Libraries should seek to use Blue Ocean strategy and create uncontested market space which will make the competition irrelevant. A good example of this is the Idea Store in Tower Hamlets. The use of Public Libraries in Tower Hamlets was declining and unsustainable; people were voting with their feet, particularly the working class and other disadvantaged communities. Use of the Adult Learning Service was also in terminal decline. Public Libraries and Adult Learning were trying to compete in a Red Ocean with bookstores and other learning providers. Instead they developed a Blue Ocean strategy which involved closing the stand alone Public Libraries and stand alone Adult Learning Centres and combining them into Idea Stores. This Blue Ocean strategy created uncontested market space and made the competition irrelevant. Use of the Idea Stores is now much higher than the previous use of the old stand alone Public Libraries and Adult Learning Centres. Use is particularly high among working class and other disadvantaged communities.

The precursors of Public Libraries in the UK were Mechanics Institutes. These were owned and controlled by the workers. Similarly so called ‘Penny Deadfuls’ and ‘Seditious Tracts’ were being circulated and read aloud in pubs and gin houses. These were a threat to the capitalist system which invented Public Libraries to control the reading habits of the working class and steer them towards ‘healthy literature’. This is where the division between ‘high culture’ and ‘popular culture’ began. It was a divide and rule tactic, which worked very well. Public Libraries were part of a much bigger Victorian social control movement which also encompassed museums and public parks – ways to control and police the ‘idle time’ of the masses. Working class people were rightly suspicious of these institutions – and Education – and saw them as both patronising and controlling. They did not want middle class people to tell them what to read and how to think. That is why Public Libraries have never been successful in capturing a mass working class audience. They have appealed mostly to the upper working class – those who aspire to adopt middle class attitudes, behaviours, values and lifestyles.

As D’Angelo quite rightly says, it was the development of postmodern consumer capitalism which really threatened the Public Library. There is no place for institutions like Public Libraries in what Oliver James has termed Selfish Capitalism, which is a key driver of ‘Affluenza, a contagious middle class virus causing depression, anxiety and ennui’. One vaccine for this virus is to consume what you need, rather than what you want. The parallels for Public Libraries are clear. Since the 1950’s Public Libraries have been infected by the Affluenza Virus – instead of trying to meet the needs of the working class, they have pandered to the wants of the middle class. This worked well all the time that the middle class wanted books and information and during the 1960’s and 1970’s book issues, particularly adult fiction, soared. The success of Public Libraries became equated with book issues, quantity rather than quality. The problem is, when the middle class could get their wants elsewhere – through cheap books and internet access – they stopped using Public Libraries and issues and visits plummeted. The way to reverse this trend is to stop pandering to the wants of the middle class, and start meeting the needs of the working class.

In order to meet the needs of the working class it is necessary to engage them in the planning, design, delivery and evaluation of Public Library services. They should be involved in every aspect of Public Library operations, including book selection which should no longer be the sole preserve of middle class librarians. D’Angelo strongly defends the traditional ‘gate keeper’ role of the Public Librarian. I think that we should truly empower the working class by giving them a real stake and say in our institutions and society. This was what Old Labour called ‘transferring power and resources’ to the working class. Of course it is unlikely to happen because this would be a real threat to the status quo and to the established power structure of capitalism. For Public Librarians to resist this transfer of power is natural because Public Libraries are servants of capitalism. Among the arguments put forward for Public Librarians to maintain their gatekeeper role is that ‘they know what is best for the working class, they know what books will improve them the most.’ Such an attitude is both insulting and patronising. Working class people are able to work out what is good for them. They may not be attracted to ‘high culture’ but there is equal value in ‘popular culture’. D’Angelo poses education and entertainment as if they are mutually exclusive; they are not. The best books / films / media are both entertaining and educational. If a subject is not entertaining / enjoyable, it is less likely that people will want to learn about it. Worthy but dull does not work, as educational standards in the UK have shown. Working class children are best engaged and educated through a mixture of teaching methods which involve books and a range of other media (including visual and aural). So called ‘trashy novels’, DVDs and other media will always have a role to play, and should be stocked by Public Libraries if there is a demand for them and if they meet an identified need. Education and Entertainment are not mutually exclusive.

There are some siren voices in the UK, lead by ex book seller Tim Coates, which would have us believe that if we go back to basics and focus on books all of our problems will be solved. But trying to compete in the Red Ocean of the book retail market will not work. We need a new Blue Ocean strategy, and this will require re-inventing, rebranding and repositioning the Public Library. The Idea Store in Tower Hamlets is one example of this new approach. Discovery Centres in Hampshire are another. Combining and relocating Public Libraries with a range of other service providers (retailers, schools, Children’s Centres, Multi Use Centres) is the way forward for the Public Library. These new models of service delivery, combined with community engagement and community ownership of Public Libraries, will create a new Blue Ocean of uncontested market space which will make the competition irrelevant.

A good example of this in recent years in the UK is the People’s Network, offering free public access to the internet. It is possible that as many people visit Public Libraries today to get free internet access, as to borrow books for free. The combination of free book loans and free internet access has created a Blue Ocean of uncontested market space. Visitor figures are increasing and, if we can convert free internet users into free book borrowers, our book issues will go up as well. To make this conversion happen we need staff with the right set of skills, the most important of which is Customer Service. We should employ staff for their Customer Service skills first and foremost, and then teach them any technical skills which they require to carry out their jobs. Under capitalism the citizen is the customer, the customer is always right, and if we don’t give the customer what s/he needs, we will become irrelevant and people will stop using us.

The People’s Network was a Tipping Point which made people start using Public Libraries again. Malcolm Gladwell has described Tipping Points as ‘little things which can make a big difference.’ For Tipping Points to work, three rules need to be met: the Law of the Few says that it takes only a few people (who Gladwell characterises as Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen) to spread a good idea or product; for ideas and products to work they need to have the Stickyness Factor, which will make people want to use them; and the Power of Context is the environment in which the idea or product is located. We should identify the Connectors (people with wide social and professional networks), Mavens (people with information and expertise) and Salesmen (people who can influence and persuade) who can spread the word about how Public Libraries can meet people’s needs. We should make sure that the message about how Public Libraries can meet needs is Sticky enough to persuade people to use our services. And we should ensure that the Context of our libraries provides an attractive, welcoming and comfortable environment which people will want to visit, again and again.

We should restructure the basic operations of Public Libraries to meet customer needs. We should focus on Customer Service. We should replace our hierarchical chain of command and supervision with matrix management. We should reduce layers of management and supervision and shift power and resources to front line staff and communities. We should replace professional librarians who are ‘the gatekeepers of culture’ with staff and communities who are empowered and skilled in identifying, prioritising and meeting needs. We should replace library qualifications with management qualifications. We should remove the distinctions between ‘high and low culture’ and ‘good and bad books’. We should stop polarising ‘Education and Entertainment’. We should stop pandering to middle class wants and start meeting working class needs. We should make libraries as comfortable and popular as shopping malls and book stores. This is the route by which Public Libraries will survive and grow.

John Pateman

References

1. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, Abacus, 2001
2. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Rennee Mauborgne, Harvard Business School Press, 2005
3. Affluenza by Oliver James, Vermillion, 2007

A Review by Paul Catherall

This text by Ruth Rikowski comprises a thorough yet accessible overview on the effects of Globalisation resulting from the policies of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), specifically regarding implications for the public sector.

The book reveals the profit ethic of the WTO in enabling business to run public services. State-run services are usually run at cost, rather than for a profit margin, thus public funds benefit public users of these services, reflecting a social ethic where resources are distributed for the benefit of society. However, the WTO directives discussed by the author could increasingly see public services owned or managed by private business, whose aims are for profit (rather than social justice). The accumulation of profit from hospitals, libraries and schools clearly indicates a shift in the ethics of public service provision – the implications for corporate provision may result in lower quality services, a reduced range of services and poorly resourced staffing (due to retention of funds as profit).

The continuing agenda of privatisation and commercialisation of public sector services is evident in the UK as a result of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), i.e. City Academies replacing comprehensive schools, private clinics/ hospitals and corporate involvement in library provision – these aspects are discussed in some detail in Rikowski’s book. The author also demonstrates how the text is informed by an ‘Open Marxist theoretical analysis of value’, illustrating how in the modern climate, intellectual labour is pivotal to the economic system and how the WTO is attempting to integrate intellectual property and knowledge-based services into the business sector and ultimately within the global market.

Part 2 considers ‘The General Agreement on Trade in Services’ (GATS), describing how this WTO directive is having important implications for public services across WTO member countries, including sectors such as education, libraries and health services; Rikowski illustrates how this WTO agreement will liberalise (i.e. release or open) government funded sectors to competition from the private sector.

In part 3, the author desribes the ‘Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights’ (TRIPS), which Rikowski indicates is “about transforming information, knowledge and ideas into intellectual property rights which can then be traded on the global market in the form of international tradable commodities” (p.187); Rikowski describes how concepts of IP (intellectual property) conflict with the free flow of information and access to information. For the author, the ‘balance in copyright’ described in TRIPS favours the protection of business interests in exploiting intellectual property (i.e. via royalties), rather than allowing for the open dissemination of research for the wider community (such as pharmacutical research for the development of new medicines).

In conclusion, this book is highly ambitious, attempting to convey the big picture on factors driving the transfer of public services to coprorate ownership and the ethical and theoretical objections to commercialisation. Additionally, the author considers practical approaches for Information Professionals and other individuals to get involved in the wider discussion on the GATS and TRIPS agreements.

This is an important text and highly recommended for anyone concerned by the privatisation of library services or the wider public sector in general.

Ruth Rikowski has served as an observer on the EBLIDA WTO Working Group (European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations), she is a Visiting Lecturer at South Bank University and the University of Greenwich and is the Series Editor for the Chandos Series for Information Professionals (Chandos Publishing). Ruth was also the Book Reviews Editor for Managing Information, the Aslib monthly magazine, from 2001-2004.

Paul Catherall is a Web Developer at the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education and a postgraduate research student with the Department of Information and Communications at Manchester Metropolitan University, he is also the author of Delivering E-Learning for Information Services in Higher Education (see http://draigweb.co.uk ).

Brief Bibliography

Information for Social Change activist Web site and e-journal. http://libr.org/isc [Accessed 01/08/06.]

Rikowski, R. (2005) Globalisation, Information and Libraries: The Implications of the World Trade Organisation’s GATS and TRIPS Agreements, Oxford, Chandos Publishing

The Flow of Ideas – Web site of Ruth and Glenn Rikowski. Includes information about the Rikowskis’ various publications and talks and the events that they have been involved with. http://www.flowideas.co.uk [Accessed 01/08/06.]

The GATS and Libraries (Portal to GATs information on libr.org). http://libr.org/gats [Accessed 01/08/06.]

UK Government PFI Web site. http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/documents/public_private_partnerships/ppp_index.cfm [Accessed 01/08/06.] To order copies contact: Turpin Distribution Services Ltd, Blackhorse Road, Letchworth, Hertfordshire, SG6 1HN, UK. Telephone: +44 (0) 1462 672555 Fax: +44 (0) 1462 48097. Email: books@extenza-turpin.com ISBN 1 854334 084 4 (pbk); 1 84334 092 5 (hdbk) See more about this book from Chandos website http://www.chandospublishing.com/catalogue/record_detail.php?recordID=35

Mike Palecek’s latest book The Truth is a vital book on a vital subject. Democracy (of any definition) is threatened in the United States more than any time in her history. It is threatened not only by the erosive events enacted by the Bush Administration (and the events are many, both in domestic and foreign affairs), but also by the inertia in response, or non-response, by a truly frightening number of the American public.

The book is organized with even-numbered pages carrying quotes of significance to the point of the lockdown of America (from Goebbels, from Goering, from Ari Fleischer – but also the wonderful and inspiring words of such human beings as St. Augustine, as Thomas Jefferson, as well as writers and thinkers and journalists ranging from Helen Thomas to William Shakespeare..) and the odd-numbered pages relate the story of Pete Penny. Either the quotes alone or the story would be fully satisfying, but together they serve in creating an acute tension of the individual life in historical context. This same tension is further played out in the very, very funny sections that run throughout an otherwise almost Kafkaesque unraveling of the life of one man. The extremely comic attend the tragic of both the story and history’s narrative, just as the ludicrousness of an absurd President underline the daily horror. The horror of the Administration’s avarice and lies in a bloodshed which shows no signs of abating; the mockery and indifference to much that the American people have valued; the ravaging of any American dream.

It is without hesitation that I urge everyone to read this book. For those who are lost in the chaotic events of our times, it is illuminating and for those who are familiar with the aspects that Mike describes, his lucidity and fine perceptions further organize our thinking.

(I found out the truth, man, but it’s better to stay stupid, go to ball games, smoke cigarettes and fish from the shore. Figuring it out is not the hard part. It’s what are you gonna do, now, man? That’s when it gets tough. What you gonna do now?)

Reviewed by Sheila Conroy, International Progressive Publications Network For more information: http://www.iowapeace.com

Reviewed by: Jeremy Hunsinger, Center for Digital Discourse and Culture

Digital Play sounds fun and in the end it is. The book is both a fun read and a serious critical study of the social, economy, political, and cultural systems surrounding the computer game industry. Computer games are a significant part of many young people’s lives, they form a significant part of their informational environment, and over time have transformed from being simple graphic abstractions like space invaders to approximating real life through simulations such as The Sims(tm), Rainbow Six(tm), VirtualU(tm), and others. The variety and substance of these games provide experiences for their users, and as such, we need to understand them, but like the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and books we read, we have to be concerned about how games are produced and are producing cultures, markets, and social change.
The authors of Digital Play are beginning to provide an account of computer games for people interested in the larger social issues. However, that is not all they do in the book. Using a critical perspective derived form the plural sources of Harold Innis, Marshall McCluhan, Raymond Williams and the regulation school of political economy, the authors provide an extended theoretical presentation of the issues surrounding computer games. They develop a theory of media analysis based on “three circuits of interactivity”, which they illustrate with successive diagrams showing the development of their theory (p. 51). By adding theoretical complexity and flux to their model, they develop an analytical, through which they can then examine the computer game industry as it develops through time, and attempt to match the evidence to the theory.
The evidence in the book is extensive. The authors provide us with a critical history of the computer game industry that covers over one hundred pages, going into some detail examining the changes surrounding the technical infrastructure, the economic implications and the games themselves. They use this history and open up some of the central questions of the computer games industry, such as who produces the games, for what reasons, and what kind of labor do the players perform in the games? By introducing these questions through the historical analysis, the authors can later seek some answers by analyzing how their theory fits the reality when providing the answers.
By asking these questions, the authors also open up the third section of their book which centers on critical perspectives. They analyze how certain brands are formed and how those brands commodify play, not just for adult games, but more seriously for children’s games. Children’s games are much more brand oriented then the games like Oregon Trail(tm) that I played when I was in school. However, I should note that the authors are primarily focusing on commercial games and not necessarily taking into account the wide spectrum of educational games, serious games, and critical games that are beginning to make their presence known to gamers online and off. Also in this section, the authors deal with the question of gender stereotyping and capitalist structuring provided in many computer games. They provide an insightful chapter on “Designing Militarized Masculinity” which delves into some serious questions about the media ecology that certain games produce.
Overall, if you are seeking to familiarize yourself with the computer game industry from the perspective of critical cultural theory, then “Digital Play” is a must read. While other books are more narrowly focused on gender construction in computer games, or developing a computer game, this one is focused more on the system, the governance, and the effect of computer games on society as a whole. It however is not an indictment that some might be looking for in a critical analysis, instead following the tradition of Innis and McLuhan, it is a probing, historically based, theoretical analysis that brings to light questions and provides some interesting answers and explanations.

Reviewed by John Pateman

These two books should be read together because they form two side of a seamless story. Che focuses on theory while Fidel talks about practice. Che is historical (1965 speech, 1965 letter, 1966 speech) while Fidel is contemporary (speeches made between September 2000 and November 2001). Yet, despite these differences, the political analysis and solutions offered to social and economic problems are the same. When Che and Fidel worked together in the early years of the Cuban Revolution they must have been a formidable team. For 6 years they established the roots of the Revolution and then, in 1965, Che decided to leave Cuba and export the Revolution to other countries, while Fidel stayed in Cuba to deepen and broaden the Revolution, a process which he continues to lead to this day.

Che’s speech to the Afro-Asian conference in Algeria in February 1965 focuses on the need to integrate the struggle for national liberation with socialist ideas. The importance of economic planning is emphasised. Che’s letter on “Socialism and Man in Cuba”, published in March 1965, stresses that “there is nothing that can educate a person…like living through a revolution”. For Che, socialism could not exist if economics was not combined with social and political consciousness. Without an awareness of rights and duties, it would be impossible to construct a new society. Back in 1965 Che was already warning of the dangers of neo-liberalism and globalisation.

Che’s message to The Tricontinetal Conference of Solidarity ewith the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America, which took place in Cuba in January 1966, was “Create Two, Three, Many Vietnams”. The content of Che’s speech, especially his remarks about the crisis in the Middle East and Israel, is surprisingly relevant today. The idea of internationalism on a global scale outlined by Che in his message represents a synthesis of this thought and political praxis. Che recognised that the national bourgeoisie was incapable of standing up to imperialism. Under these circumstances the only way to liberation would be through prolonged peoples war. This book is published in association with the Che Guevara Studies Centre in Havana, established to promote, both inside and outside of Cuba, the thought, life and works of Comandante Che Guevara, recognising the extraordinary significance of his theory, praxis, and ethical legacy – and their validity and timelessness in today’s globalised world..

“War, racism and economic injustice” is a sharp, brief selection of recent speeches and interviews with Fidel Castro dating from June 2000 to November 2001. Among them are speeches given in Venezuela, Panama, Cuba, the United States and South Africa. Also included are interventions in the Millenium Summit held at the United Nations in 2000 and a landmark speech to the Racism conference held in Durban, South Africa, in August 2001. Fidel presents a damning indictment of the present world economic and political order. The final two items are speeches given by Fidel on September 22 and November 2 2001 in which he calls on the world to unite against both terrorism and war. This book is published in association with Editora Politica of Havana. And is a continuation of a previous editorial project published in 2000 as “Capitalism in Crisis – globalisation and world politics today”, also by Fidel Castro and published by Ocean Press. This is an essential read as well. For more information about Ocean books visit their website at www.oceanbooks.com.au or contact Global Book Marketing at info@globalbookmarketing.co.uk

This is the 49th edition of this highly useful little publication, which retains its usual format. It begins with a short feature: last year it related to the start of the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for Children; this year the feature is on using the World Wide Web by activists within the peace movement.

The diary section is a week to a view, running from Monday to Sunday. Each week has its own quote or campaigning note as an introduction and for every day (except January 6 and 26, March 9, June 8, August 19 and September 10) there is an anniversary; the anniversaries included have been changed since last year’s diary.

After the week to a view for 2002, there is a four page forward planner section for 2003. Unfortunately, the usefulness of this section is marred somewhat by what is presumably a printing error. In my copy at least, the abbreviations for Monday and Wednesday (Mon and Wed) had been split over two lines, so that the days of the week do not match up with the dates themselves.

The World Peace Directory (a subset of Housmans World Peace Database) gives contact details for almost 2000 organisations throughout the world working for peace and conflict resolution, the environment, and human rights. International organisations are listed first, and the remainder are listed by country, from Afghanistan (four organisations, addresses in Pakistan) and Albania to Zambia and Zimbabwe. The countries with the most organisations listed are Britain (9 pages) and the USA (6 pages). This year there are 66 pages devoted to the Peace Directory, 4 fewer than last year. The publishers claim that this directory is the most comprehensive and up-to-date of its kind published anywhere in the world.

The combined diary and world peace directory will be immensely useful to a wide range of activists, although I suspect that very few will make use of more than a few of its contact details. Its usefulness lies in the fact that they are there and they are comprehensive.

Reviewed by Ruth Rikowski

Perhaps, unbeknown to the authors, this is an illuminating book. It provides insights into the direction in which we are all being pushed – within this latest version of capitalism. It also provides many facts to substantiate the arguments that are presented by the authors. It focuses on areas such as globalization, the knowledge economy, knowledge management and e-commerce (there is a chapter on each of these topics). These can all be seen to be aspects of this latest phase of capitalism (see also Rikowski, 2000a and 2000b). The other two chapters in the book examine ‘Customer-Relationship Management’ and ‘Business Ethics in the Knowledge Economy’.

Boyett and Boyett refer to the ‘gurus’ on the main different subjects covered in the book (one ‘Guru list’ for each chapter). Thus, they list the ‘gurus’ (or experts) on the knowledge economy, for example, and the ‘gurus’ on globalization. This is very helpful as a reference tool. At the end of the book they also provide detailed information about all the different gurus referred to throughout the book, in alphabetical order, by the authors surname. There is also a long bibliography and a notes section. Thus, the book is well researched. There is also an index.

The chapter on ‘Globalization’ is very interesting. Boyett and Boyett are of the opinion that the gurus who research and write about globalisation tend to focus on one of two main issues – the social implications of the emerging global economy or the implications of globalisation for business.

Focusing initially on the first of these two points, Boyett and Boyett cite various critics of globalisation, such as Luttwak, Friedman and French. It is this type of critical analysis that makes the book illuminating and powerful. Luttwak is the author of ‘Turbo-Capitalism’ (1999) and he argues that globalisation is forcing a new kind of capitalism on the world that is different from the controlled capitalism that we have had in the past. Very interestingly, he refers specifically to the threat to libraries from this new form of capitalism. Thus, in ‘Turbo-Capitalism’ Luttwak says that what is demanded in this new order is:

“..the privatization of state-owned businesses of all kinds, and the conversion of public institutions, from universities and botanic gardens to prisons, from libraries and schools to old people’s homes, into private enterprises run for profit. What they promise is a more dynamic economy that will generate new wealth, while saying nothing about the distribution of any wealth, old or new.” (Luttwak, 1999, p. 27)

Friedman, on the other hand, argues that globalisation forces us into an economic and political ‘Golden Straitjacket’ (as there is, apparently, ‘only one way to economic progress’ – Boyett and Boyett, p.257) and French is concerned about the environmental problems arising from globalisation. As Boyett and Boyett say, according to these experts: globalization creates tremendous economic inequalities, destroys cultures, and devastates the planet. (Boyett and Boyett, 2001, p.205)

However, having written a useful summary about some of the critics of globalisation, Boyett and Boyett then seem to be rather dismissive of them and conclude that globalisation is inevitable anyway. From this position, they then decide that there is little to be gained from pursuing these critical issues further, but rather that we need to consider how businesses can succeed in the global economy. Thus, they say: “Globalization is a lot of things, say our gurus, but the most important thing to know is that it is here to stay. That reality leads us to the second big globalization issue. If globalization is here to stay, how do businesses play the game ? How do they succeed in a global economy ?” (Boyett and Boyett, 2001, p.266)

Boyett and Boyett then attempt to answer this question, and it is this dual role that is played throughout the book that exposes the weakness of the book. Is the book attempting to provide a deep, important analysis, or is it just trying to answer questions raised by business and endeavouring to help businesses to succeed in this global economy? (i.e. a ‘How to succeed’ guide for business!) The writers move from analysis to the seemingly important topic of business success in an apparently seamless fashion, which can only lead to confusion for the reader.

Boyett and Boyett appear to recognise that we are living in free-market capitalism and that this is, in essence, what globalisation is. They refer to Friedman’s ‘Cold War and Globalization’ chart (Friedman, 2000, pp.7-15), for example, which highlights the importance of Professor Joseph Schumpeter’s ideas regarding globalisation, where the essence of capitalism is “creative destruction” (Boyett and Boyett, 2001, p.240). Having arrived at this conclusion though, they do not take it further.

They also fall short in this way, in other chapters in the book. In the chapter on the knowledge economy, for example, they explain how we are moving into the knowledge economy and they refer to the importance of value networks and information. Boyett and Boyett say, for example, say that: “Information is the ‘glue’ that holds together the structure of business” (Boyett and Boyett, 2001, p.45)

They then go to say that we might even be moving into a new ‘post-knowledge economy’. Thus, they say that: “A new post-knowledge economy may be emerging that is based not on the exploitation of information, but on stories. This market for feelings may gradually eclipse the market for tangible products. Six such emotional markets can be discerned now: adventures for sale, the market for togetherness, friendship, and love, the market for care, the who-am-I market, the market for peace of mind, and the market for convictions”. (Boyett and Boyett, 2001, p.47)

They conclude the chapter by saying that: “Ultimately, we may see the development of an even newer post-knowledge economy in which the chief values won’t be food, material things, information, connectivity, emotional satisfaction, or experiences but individual or personal transformations” (Boyett and Boyett, 2001, p.47).

This shows incredible, albeit scary foresight about the direction in which the knowledge economy/post-knowledge economy may be heading. Yet, they do not consider the implications of all this. A real missed opportunity.

Similarly, with the chapter on knowledge management. Boyett and Boyett emphasise the importance of human capital and structural capital for knowledge management (KM), for example, and say: “Knowledge management, say our gurus, is at least about nurturing human capital and then turning human capital into structural capital.” (Boyett and Boyett, 2001, p.101)

Then, they look at the works of some of the KM gurus, such as Edvinsson and Malone and Thomas A. Steward and see how they examine human capital and structural capital. However, they do not take the analysis further. What does it actually mean? What does it actually involve? – transforming human capital into structural capital?

In conclusion, this book identifies and explores some of the main directions in which capitalism is going, such as globalisation and the knowledge economy. However, in attempting to provide both an analysis and a critique, as well as a guide to help businesses to succeed, it ‘muddies the water’ and leaves the reader feeling somewhat dissatisfied and possibly confused. However, given its informative, well-researched and at times, critical nature, it is a worthwhile book to read. It also demonstrates how books that on the surface might seem to be quite ‘conventional’ (e.g. supporting the needs of business), can also be quite illuminating and useful, and I suggest that further reading of these types of books could prove to be worthwhile.

References

Edvinsson, Leif and Malone, Michael S. (1997) Intellectual capital: realizing your company’s true value by finding its hidden brainpower. New York: HarperBusiness

French, Hilary (2000) Vanishing borders: protecting the planet in the age of globalization. New York: Norton

Friedman, Thomas L. (2000) The lexas and the olive tree: understanding globalization. New York: Anchor Books

Luttwak, Edward (1999) Turbo-capitalism: winners and losers in the global economy. New York: HarperCollins

Rikowski, Ruth (2000a) The knowledge economy is here – but where are the information professionals? (Part 1) in Business Information Review, September, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 157-167

Rikowski, Ruth (2000b) The knowledge economy is here – but where are the Information professionals? (Part 2) in Business Information Review, December, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 227-233)

Stewart, Thomas A. (1998) Intellectual capital: the new wealth of organisations. New York: Doubeday

“Privately managed state school chain launched. Britain’s first federation of privately-managed state schools was officially launched this week claiming it will use the latest technology to beat teacher shortages…The government’s national plan for secondary schools unveiled last month showed 3Es (3 E Enterprises) influenced ministers’ thinking on the future of comprehensives. In the green paper, it said it would enable private, voluntary or successful state schools in a way that would “further develop the model” put forward by 3Es” (Local Government First, 17 March 2001 )The privatisation of Britain’s schools has begun. The takeover of “failing LEAs” by private companies is making way for the wholesale takeover of the education service by 3 Es and other organisations which will help New Labour to dismantle the comprehensive system. This is part of a bigger process – globalisation – which will affect every aspect of our lives, if the WTO gets its way. But, as “The Battle in Seattle” points out, there is a well organised anti-capitalist movement which will fight them every inch of the way.This book – which spans from “the morning after Prague (Sep 2000) to “post-Nice postscript” (Dec 2000) – applies a Marxist analysis to globalisation and examines the impact of this new stage of imperialism on Education. The WTO is attempting to greatly extend the remit of the old GATT to cover issues such as Trade Related Intellectual Property Measures, and agreements on information technology and telecommunications. As a result, the Battle for Seattle was not only significant for Education – it also has major implications for the mass media, communications industries, the Internet and information workers. The WTO has recognised the growing importance of the “knowledge structure” (knowledge has become a significant factor of production) and there is an emphasis on knowledge-based industries (which includes schools, libraries, ICT, etc). While global media corporations are becoming homogenised, there is a parallel move to privatise education and commercialise information. The Education Green paper marks a sharp shift away from the comprehensive system and towards increased specialisation. This shift is being aided by the National Curriculum and the growth of private sector education consultancies. Education is significant for anti-capitalism because Education, as a commodity, is crucial to the capitalisation of people. In New Labour speak, the knowledge economy has replaced manufacturing and workfare has taken over from welfare. The “businessification” of schooling will reduce teacher resistance to these changes and will produce workers who are able to help the UK compete in the global economy. Workers will be educated and trained to maintain capitalism – they will become agents in their own oppression. To prevent this happening another social universe must be created -socialism, based on addressing human need. We can look, for example, to Cuba where a socialist education system has played a crucial role in building social justice, equality and solidarity for progressive social change. Neo-liberalism has both a national and an international focus. It needs to be countered on both these fronts. Nationally, there are struggles going on all over the world, including the landless peasants movement in Brazil, Mexico’s Zapatistas, and the Carnival Against Capitalism in London. Internationally, wherever the world capitalist movement meets, it can now expect to meet resistance from workers, who use the Internet to organise across borders, and then join up in a forceful show of direct action. The latest manifestation of this (“Activists clash with police at Naples Forum”, Morning Star, 17 March 2001) took place at the third Global Forum meeting on governance in Naples. The significance of Seattle was the scale and the degree of organisation of this resistance, although there are debates as to whether the protests were anti capitalist or pro socialist (among other alternatives to capitalism). The question, after Seattle, is “what next ?”, and the author suggests the need for a new vision, principles, policies, and organisation. In terms of the struggle within Education, there is a need for critical pedagogy (for more on this see other works by the Hillcole Group of Radical Left Educators). This book provides a very useful Marxist analysis of the past and gives hope for a future where humanity is not dominated by capital.

John Pateman

Originally published in the US by Temple University Press, Philadelphia, this is an in-depth study of gay men in Cuba from pre-revolution to the present.

The history of the treatment of gay men in Cuba very much reflects Cubas recent history – this falls into four periods: before the revolution in 1959; the early years of the Revolution (1960s and 1970s); the rectification process (1980s); the Special Period (1990s). Before the Revolution in 1959, Cuba was used as Americas playground, and gay, black and working class people suffered persecution under the Batista dictatorship. After the Revolution, the situation of all oppressed groups improved in Cuba, but this level of improvement was uneven. Some groups such as women benefited quickly and obviously: a mass organisation for women, the FMC, was formed, and the number of women in professional positions increased greatly. A Family Code was introduced in 1975, which constitutionally made women equal to men, but, nevertheless, Cubas powerful machismo endured, and it is only very recently that issues such as domestic violence have been discussed in the Cuban press.

The Revolution was also quick to condemn racism, and several senior government positions were taken up by Black revolutionaries. Racism is still a fact of life in Cuba, but Fidel Castro has stated that the Revolution has done all it can to stamp this problem out the rest is down to the people themselves.

However, much less effort was made to tackle homophobia, and during what the Cubans now refer to as the lost years of the Revolution the 1970s and early 1980s there was active repression of gay people and institutionalised homophobia. Ian Lumsden attributes this to Cubas Spanish and African heritage (explored in an essay by Tomas Robaina on Cuban sexual values and African religious beliefs), but points out that the Catholic Church has had little negative impact on this issue.

Ian Lumsden is very critical of the Cuban leadership in general, and Fidel Castro in particular, whom, he says, plays on his macho image as The Commander in Chief. Fidel does not seem guilty of direct homophobia, but of a more indirect variety which refuses to discuss or accept the gay community as part of the revolutionary struggle. As a result, many gay people who identified with the revolution (and who would have been among its greatest assets) became disenchanted and alienated. Many left Cuba and some even joined the anti-Castro movement in Miami.

At the same time, refreshingly, this book does not take as its starting point the need to be critical of Cuba just because of the countrys political position. Ian Lumsden is an associate professor of political science at Atkinson College, York University, Ontario, Canada, and writes in his introduction:

Postrevolutionary Cuba has at various times filled me with hope and admiration, exasperation and frustration, anger and despair. I have admired the social changes that have benefitted countless Cubans, and I have been outraged by the Castro regimes authoritarian treatment of some of its citizens, including friends of mine, who have been jailed, forced into exile, or cowed in their daily lives. I have marveled at the formulation and implementation of programs that the rest of Latin America cries out for. Yet I have also been exasperated by the regimes bureaucratic nature and disgusted by its dogmatic imposition of policies that were foredoomed to failure and that inevitably brought hardships to ordinary Cubans. (p xi)

In the 1980s, Cuba went through a rectification process, aimed at breathing new economic and political life into the country. Old policies and practices were challenged, many of them were scrapped, and the country generally opened up. This created space for the gay community, and others, to raise their concerns and discuss their requirements as citizens of Cuba. This led to changes in the law and sex education. The erosion of traditional machismo accelerated, but a setback occurred as a result of AIDS, which Cuba reacted to by confining PWAs in secure sanatoria. This policy has since been reversed.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the tightening of the US blockade, Cuba entered a Special Period during the 1990s. This impacted on all sectors of Cuban society, but had a disproportionate effect on the gay community. Cuba has now got over this crisis, partly through increased tourism, although this has proved a double-edged sword the economy is recovering, but organised crime and other related phenomena have reappeared.

Gay life in Havana today reflects what Lumsden calls an imperfect revolution in an imperfect world. Gay people are able to make a much greater contribution to the revolution and to key sectors of Cuban life. One major breakthrough occurred in the field of cinema with the release and official approval of Strawberries and Chocolate, whose main characters are a homophobic Young Communist and his gay friend. In the music industry new wave Cuban singer-songwriters such as Pablo Milanes were breaking down barriers through songs such as The Original Sin which demands the right of gay people in Cuba to feel that they can see their tree, their park, their sun, like you and Ithat they can surrender their hearts in the most sweet intimacy of love. Cuba, which has a rich cultural life, has used the cultural industries to challenge age-old prejudices, and now there are many well-known gay Cuban poets, actors, directors and singers. The manifesto of the Gay and Lesbian Association of Cuba (28 July 1994) makes a list of simple demands for more space, more meeting places, more freedom and more means of expression:

Every individuals sexual freedom should be respected.

This should have been recognised by the Cuban leadership in 1959, but the drive for collective socialism trampled many individual aspirations in its path. The US blockade of Cuba distorted Cubas development, but this is no excuse for a revolutionary leadership and Communist Party to depart from basic Marxist-Leninist principles.

As Ian Lumsden says, recognising that there are very stereotyped views, both of Cuba and of gay men:

My study has been written as a contribution to this discourse. To a certain extent it represents a response to the lack of information, to misinformation, and to prejudiced opinions, particularly within the gay communities of North America of which I am a part. My work is also intended to enlighten general readers, including those Leftists who ignore the oppression of homosexuals when they denounce violation of human rights in the Third World. (p xxiii)

This is a fascinating book, in part the result of personal interest and travel in Latin America and in part a well-researched study. In places, we felt that it was a bit too well-researched, as references and quotes got in the way of some of the points Lumsden was making, but, overall, this is an important work which deserves wider readership. It presents a balanced view of Cuba and homosexuality. It is critical but generally supportive of the broad social improvements that have taken place in Cuba since 1959. Cuba provides health, education and social services which are the envy of most developing countries and many developed countries. Cuba has achieved much over the last 41 years, but some shadows including the treatment of gay people lie across these achievements. It is to be hoped that the struggle to build socialism in Cuba will continue in the future, with the active and welcome involvement of all sectors of the population.

John Pateman & John Vincent October 2000

By Mark Abendroth

With a forward by Peter McLaren. Published by Litwin Books. ISBN 978-1-936117-06-2.

Confidence in neo-liberalism has been seriously shaken by the worldwide financial crisis and so it is a good time for re-appraising Cuba’s National Literacy Campaign in 1961 and determining what can be learned from it regarding an alternative model for human development. The Literacy Campaign has been studied before, but Mark Abendroth uses a new analysis based on his theory of critical global citizenship.

The Literacy Campaign is undeniably among the world’s greatest educational accomplishments of the 20 th century. Before the Campaign almost a million Cubans lacked basic schooling due to race, class, gender and geographical isolation. A total force of 308,000 volunteers worked with 707,212 illiterate Cubans and helped achieve a first grade level of reading and writing. Cuba’s overall illiteracy rate was reduced from over 20% to 3.9% in just one year.

Volunteers included popular educators, workers from factories and 100,000 students between the ages of 10 and 19 who carried in their knapsacks a pair of boots, two pairs of socks, an olive-green beret, a blanket, a hammock, a lantern, and copies of a teacher’s manual and a student primer). The volunteers lived and worked with their students during the day and taught them in the evening. This Campaign broke down barriers between urban and rural areas and challenged discrimination against women and Black people. Red flags were hung over doorways signalling Territories Free of Illiteracy. The end of the campaign was celebrated on 22 December 1961 with a Rally of the Pencils outside the National Library at the Plaza de la Revolucion in Havana.

An understanding of the Cuban Revolution and its Literacy Campaign requires a careful study of Cuba’s long history of struggles against colonialism, slavery and illiteracy. Abendroth traces this history back to Cuba’s first revolutionary Hatuey, the Taino warrior who led a resistance against Spanish invaders in 1510. Cuba’s First War of Independence started on 10 October 1868 and freedom fighters such as Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, Maximo Gomez and Antonio Maceo paved the way for Cuba’s most celebrated national hero, Jose Marti, and his struggle for Cuban and Latin American independence. Spanish colonialism was replaced by US neo-colonialism in 1898 and the legacy of this still exists today in the US military base at Guantanamo Bay.

The triumph of the Revolution in 1959 built on these early struggles for independence and Fidel Castro was the latest in a long line of freedom fighters. The seeds of the Literacy Campaign were sewn by the Rebel Army which conducted literacy drives, initiated by Che Guevara. After Batista was ousted in January 1959 the new government began to formulate the National Literacy Campaign early in 1959. Education and ideas would become the primary weapons for defending the Revolution.

Military barracks were converted into schools and 10,000 new classrooms were opened. The Agrarian Reform Law was implemented in June 1959 and campesinos suddenly became owners of the land they worked. Foreign owned factories were nationalised and this put Cuba on a collision course with the US who imposed a trade blockade on the island which exists to this day despite annual UN resolutions, carried by huge margins, calling for it to be lifted. The US backed an attempt to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961 and this led Castro to declare the socialist nature of the Revolution, which was increasingly influenced by Soviet and Chinese thinking. Abendroth reminds us of the importance that Lenin and Mao attached to education in the building of socialism.

The National Literacy Campaign took place at a critical stage of the Revolution when Cuba was faced by increasing US hostility and the threat of invasion. It is argued that the Campaign succeeded in 1959 because it followed the Revolution’s 1959 triumph. Conversely, the Revolution likely would not have survived without the success of the Literacy Campaign. On 26 September 1960 Fidel Castro made the following promise at the UN in New York: ‘In the coming year, our people intend to fight the great battle of illiteracy, with the ambitious goal of teaching every single inhabitant of the country to read and write in one year.’ The Cuban government declared that 1961 would be the Year of Education.

On 5 January 1961 counter-revolutionaries assassinated Conrado Benitez, an 18 year old volunteer teacher in the mountainous Escambray region. Before long, all literacy instructors who left their homes to teach in rural zones became known as Conrado Benitez brigadistas. The National Literacv Commission had four departments ? Technical, Publicity, Finance and Publication ? which worked together to support the volunteers and manage the logistics of the campaign. The manual Alfabeticemos and the primer Venceremos (We will triumph) were the central texts of the campaign. They were tools for literacy instruction and also civics textbooks for the Revolution. Themes of nationalism and internationalism together supported the growing idea of a critical global citizenship.

The Conrado Benitez brigadistas had an average age of 15. They were given seven days training before embarking on their journey to a remote rural region. Over 105,000 instructors had been trained by August 1961. But between July and August a census identified that there were 250,000 more illiterate people than had initially been estimated at the start of the campaign. More instructors were recruited into what became known as Homeland or Death brigades, named after a slogan coined by Fidel Castro. On 5 November Melena del Sur became the first municipality to declare itself free of illiteracy. Tragically, another young teacher, 16 year old Manuel Ascunce, was murdered on 26 November together with the father of his host family, Pedro Lantigua. Like Conrado Benitez, Ascunce became a martyr who inspired Cubans to finish the work of the campaign.

Over 1.25 million Cubans participated in the Campaign either as an instructor or student. Abendroth identifies three themes which ran through the campaign and which are central to his focus on critical global citizenship: civic engagement of youth; popular education; and critical global education. Many of the Cubans who Abendroth interviewed spoke passionately of their sense of global citizenship while remembering their work as instructors or students in the campaign; and it is the testimony of these Campaign participants which forms the most powerful chapter of the book. Here are just three statements, from the many which Abendroth quotes, which sum up the Campaign and its legacy:

‘When I was 17, I couldn’t read or write. When my children were 17, they had finished high school. My daughter is an economist.’

‘Socialism has given us life and has taught us that with work and struggle we can live well with all that we need.’

‘The Literacy Campaign helped instil in me a sense of solidarity with other people.’

This is the essence of critical global citizenship. There are many global problems that will not be resolved until a critical mass develops a conscience of them and a political will to mobilise against them. The Literacy Campaign was one of the greatest achievements of the Revolution. It enabled the development of a free education system, from nursery schools to universities. Everywhere in Cuba there are school buildings and education centres which can be identified by a bust of Jose Marti which stands outside of them. The Literacy Campaign also enabled the development of a thriving publishing industry in Cuba, which is unique among developing countries. This, in turn, enabled book shops to sell books at very affordable prices and there is a passion for books and reading in Cuba which is evident at the annual International Book Fair held in Havana. The Literacy Campaign also enabled Cuba to develop a comprehensive network of public libraries, which are the envy of many developed countries.

The Cuban people have become critical global citizens who will never again be easily subjugated by neo-liberalism or by any other nation. A Battle of Ideas is the latest phase of the Revolution to engage young people in the construction of socialism. Cuba is a giant school in which learning goes far beyond the four walls of a school. Participatory democracy is a reality in Cuba through a local, municipal and national electoral system known as Poder Popular. Cuba continues to send thousands of doctors and teachers to countries in need, and the Yes I Can literacy teaching method has been adopted by 15 countries and has been recognised by UNESCO.

The Literacy Campaign made all of this possible; and the Literacy Campaign was made possible by the Revolution. But the Revolution is still threatened by US aggression, which continues under the Obama administration. Abendroth concludes by setting us all a challenge to sustain the Cuban Revolution and become critical global citizens: ‘People around the world can be moved to pressure the US government to end the blockade and to let Cuba live in peace. This is a worthy project for critical global citizens.’

I would like to begin by saying that Bob Usherwood has always been one of my very few library gurus and heroes. He has been an inspiration to me throughout my career, both as editor of a very radical Assistant Librarian, and as a consistent champion of public library values. Bob was still teaching race and class when these concepts were deemed to be long past their sell by date. I like to think that professionally we have a very similar genetic make-up – a 99.9% DNA match – and many of our differences are of nuance rather than substance, of emphasis rather than outcomes, of journey rather than destination. When I became a Fellow of the Library Association I had the additional honour of this being conferred on me by Bob who was President of the LA at that time. I regard Bob as not just a fellow traveller (if you will excuse the pun) but a comrade. Another comrade is John Vincent who manages the Social Exclusion Network. John, like Bob, was at one time the Lambeth chief librarian – there must be something in the water in south London which produces progressive librarians. As a result of my review in CILIP Update of Bob’s important and well argued book, Equity and Excellence in the Public Library (1), I was approached by Ashgate Publishing to write a book with John Vincent about libraries and social justice. My presentation tonight is a good opportunity to rehearse some of the arguments which we will be presenting in our book.

Boom and Bust

One of the themes which we will be exploring is that of Boom and Bust, which is very topical in the current economic climate. We want to understand why there have been waves of progressive librarianship which have not been sustainable. For example, the Boom of community librarianship in the 1970’s was followed by the Bust of Thatcherite library policies in the 1980s. Since 1997 we have seen a Boom of activity around libraries and social exclusion, but this looks likely to be followed by the Bust of a Cameronite government. Like Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, we want to understand how this cycle of Boom and Bust works and attempt to break it, if possible. One thing is for sure, adherence to high professional standards (which is my definition of Excellence in this debate) did not prevent this cycle of Boom and Bust, and may even have contributed to it. Equity on the other hand (which I define as social justice), offers a better chance of breaking the cycle, or at least of future proofing the service when the going gets tough. Excellence, in the form of outdated professional practices, attitudes and behaviour has contributed to the steady decline in the use of public libraries, and a new approach based on Equity is needed to halt and reverse this decline. Being Excellent for a dwindling number of traditional library users will not safeguard our future. Instead we need to develop new audiences, widen access and participation, and become more relevant and, dare I say it, more popular, by which I mean more relevant to the lives of local communities. Populism does not have to be the enemy of Excellence; but Excellence can be the enemy of Equity. High professional standards can be received and perceived as cultural elitism. The problem with the Boom and Bust of progressive librarianship is that the Booms are never very high or long lasting; while the Busts are very low, and go on for years, with 1979-97 being the most recent and painful example. One reason for this is that lip service is paid to Equity when it is expedient to do so, and then it is dropped when it is no longer necessary. Equity is not embedded in our professional culture and sometimes Excellence and professional standards are used as an excuse or smoke screen for not pursuing social justice objectives and outcomes. One of the main reasons why Equity is not mainstreamed in our profession is that we do not employ the right man (or woman) for the job, which leads me into my second theme.

The right ‘man’ for the job

The right ‘man’ for the job? The role of empathy in community librarianship (2)was a research project carried out by Kerry Wilson and Briony Birdi at the University of Sheffield. Like many other very important pieces of research, this report was launched in a blaze of publicity, articles were written in the professional press, but it has now disappeared without trace. No doubt it is collecting dust on the shelves of many librarians who are themselves are not the right man for the job. Every Chief Librarian in the country should read this report and implement its recommendations immediately. But it does not make for comfortable reading. It points out that library staff are strikingly homogenous in terms of gender, age, ethnicity and social class and yet the communities they serve are increasingly diverse. The older, female, white, middle class librarian is a reality and not a stereotype. To compound this there is a strain between the traditional skill set of the librarian and the more generic skills which are required to meet community needs. To quote the research, this mismatch in skills has ‘raised some debate over the role and value of accredited library qualifications and professional status for library staff working in community based and social inclusion roles…a library qualification is not a prerequisite for effective community based library services.’ The research also found that ‘those who wish to preserve professional status at all levels of public library service, and within all aspects of service provision, feel that within a social inclusion context, libraries are starting to provide too many ‘non library’ services, and that the service is going too far in destabilising traditional roles and concepts of the profession.’ In other words they see Equity as an enemy of Excellence. Wilson and Birdi point out that ‘such perceptions could be very damaging to the social inclusion offer from public libraries within modern society.’ Library staff do not show empathy to library users who do not reflect their background and values. The evidence suggests that there is strong resistance to cultural change in libraries, to certain traditionally excluded groups, and to the social inclusion agenda as a whole amongst public library staff. Older librarians in particular are more likely to be resistant to cultural change and objectionable towards the targeting of excluded groups and communities. This lack of motivation to develop Equitable services is also reflected in their lack of knowledge and interest in social inclusion and community librarianship. Social exclusion has become a common expression and concept since it was first introduced from France by New labour in 1997. The term is used widely in the media and there have been a raft of reports written about the subject, most notably Open to All? Public Libraries and Social Exclusion (3) which was published in 2000. Yet when Wilson and Birdi carried out their research in 2006, over 50% of library staff claimed to be only partly aware of national social exclusion policy and debate, and the qualitative data suggests that awareness is considerably lower than this. Lack of appropriate training is partly to blame for this and another factor is the ‘tick box’ approach to equality and diversity which demonstrates lip service to these issues and engenders cynicism among staff. Social inclusion services are regarded as add- ons rather than part of the core library offer. One of the recommendations proposed by Wilson and Birdi is that less emphasis should be placed on professional skills and more stress should be put on communication skills, listening skills, influencing relationships, reflective practice, improved confidence and assertiveness, negotiation skills and dealing with conflict. I would argue that this is an Equity skill set and that it should replace those skills traditionally associated with professional Excellence. But in the last resort staff can only be enabled to show higher levels of empathy towards members of all communities if they are willing – and have some natural capacity – to do so. As Wilson and Birdi conclude ‘the future recruitment of the right man for the job will be intrinsic to the effectiveness of public libraries contribution to the social inclusion agenda, and should be an absolute priority for the future of community librarianship.’ But having the right workforce in itself is not enough if Equity is to triumph over Excellence. We also need the right strategies, structures, systems and cultures and this takes me onto the third theme, Developing a Needs Based Library Service.

Developing a Needs Based Library Service

In 2003 I wrote a book called Developing a Needs Based Library Service (4) which was published by NIACE (National Institute of Adult Continuing Education) in their ‘lifelines in adult learning’ series. It is interesting to note that this book was commissioned by the adult learning sector rather than the public library sector. However, since I became Head of Libraries and Adult Education in Lincolnshire I have realised that the same debate about Equity and Excellence is raging within the professional world of Adult Education. Put quite simply a Needs Based Library Service is based on that good Marxist principle of ‘from each according to their ability, and to each according to their needs.’ In practical terms this means developing a library service which has the strategies, structures, systems and culture which enable it to identify, prioritise and meet community needs. In order to identify these needs all sections of the local community have to be actively engaged in the planning, design, delivery and assessment of library services. As Wilson and Birdi have demonstrated, issues of Equity tend to exist at the margins of professional practice and are rarely mainstreamed. The starting point for developing a Needs Based Library Service would be a vision and strategy which has Equity as its core value. This strategy should itself be developed by using an inclusive approach which engages all key stakeholders in the process. A typical community is made up of 20% active library users, 20% passive / lapsed users and 60% non users. Traditionally most effort is put into engaging active users, some effort is put into engaging passive or lapsed users and little or no effort is put into engaging non users, yet they are the majority of our communities. Once an Equity based strategy has been developed the staffing and service structures need to be aligned with this strategy to ensure that they are fit for purpose and able to deliver the new strategic objectives. Staffing structures need to be made flatter, less hierarchical and less professionalised. As Wilson and Birdi observed, professional skill sets need to be replaced with more people and community focused skills. The service structure also needs to be aligned with the Equity based strategy and this means putting library services where people can access them easily and conveniently. The age of the standard alone library is over and we now need to collocate public libraries with other services and adopt the multi use and one stop shop approach. I am no fan of the private sector but we have much to learn from bookshops and other retail operations in terms of creating a quality library experience. In doing this we should not adopt the transactional / customer based approach of the High Street, but build on our greatest strength which is that public libraries are democratic and accountable. Similarly, systems and procedures need to be aligned with the Equity based strategy and this will require the ditching of many professional practices which do not meet any community needs but which provide safe and secure comfort zones for librarians. Many of these procedures are barriers to access and in my view every public library service should scrap the following processes tomorrow: the requirement to show proof of address and identity before joining a library; fines and charges; overdue notices; fixed issue periods; limits to the amount of books which can be borrowed; and library counters and desks. Finally, the organisational culture needs to be aligned with the Equity based strategy. Culture has been defined as ‘the way we do things around here’ and it is manifested in the attitude, behaviour and values of library staff. An Equity based strategy requires an inclusive culture and this takes us back to having the right man for the job. Culture change can be accelerated by service planning, performance management and workforce development. But ultimately, as Tom Peters once said, ‘if you cannot change the people, then you have to change the people.’ And that takes me onto my final theme of Co-Production.

Co-Production

My definition of Co-Production is ‘handing over the keys of the public library to the local community.’ It is sometimes said that public libraries should return to their historical roots of helping the ‘deserving poor’. Setting aside for this evening the social change or social control debate which goes with this notion of the ‘deserving poor’, I would argue that we should go even further back in history to the time when local communities ran their own libraries. Some communities continued to do this right up until the Public Libraries Act was passed in 1964. In these communities all aspects of library provision, including staffing and stock selection, were managed by local people. At some point public libraries were hijacked by the middle classes who came to dominate both the running and the use of public libraries. We need to give public libraries back to local communities by actively engaging them in the planning, design, delivery and assessment of library services. To date this has been mostly in the form of using volunteers, but this approach is much too limited. Volunteers tend to be middle class and part of the problem rather than the solution. Also, volunteers have no power, which remains in the hands of middle class professionals. For Equity to assert itself over Excellence this power has to be shifted from librarians to the community. This should not mean that cash strapped local authorities simply dump the libraries which they cannot afford to run on the local community. Instead the transfer of power should be in keeping with the principles of Co-production. Good examples of Co-production are patients’ self help groups and time banks, where members swap free services that can range from baby-sitting to legal advice. The word was coined in the 1970s and the application to public libraries is obvious. A central concept is ‘the core economy’ – the vast fund of goodwill and bright ideas at grass roots level, which in reality is what keeps services, families and communities going. Co-production is supported by a wide range of organisations including UNISON, the Cabinet Office, the New Economic Foundation (NEF) and Compass. As Lucie Stephens from the NEF explains ‘Co-production is not more passive choice. Co –production is action taken. We need to re-focus on the relationships between individual people at the frontline, working as facilitators to release huge assets in the community – skills, talents, networks, social capital, reciprocity. One-way transactions create dependency’ (5). In other words, we must stop treating library users as mere consumers of ‘choices’ provided from above by library professionals. Instead we must share power and resources with local communities. UNISON point out the need ‘for people to have meaningful control over their lives and the services they receive’ (6) and Compass believe that it is the ‘alliance between public servants and members of the public that will provide the strongest and most durable basis for effective, responsive and popular public services’ (7). The NEF are clear that local communities must be encouraged to ‘use the human skills and experience they have to help deliver public services, broadening and deepening those services so that they are no longer the preserve of professionals, but shared responsibility. This is a challenge to the way professionals are expected to work. By shifting professional practice in this way, the basic objective shifts as well. Delivering public services ceases to be merely about tackling symptoms and immediate needs. It depends on reaching out into surrounding neighbourhoods to build the social networks that can tackle the underlying causes and increase the capacity of the core economy’ (8) I would like to end with some dictionary definitions of Equity and Excellence because language is the basis of culture and if we change the professional language which we use then we can also start to change the professional culture. The dominant paradigm for a long time has been Excellence which one dictionary defines as ‘cleverness’ and ‘superiority.’ Equity, on the other hand, is defined as ‘acting fairly or justly’. In my view it is time for cleverness and superiority to be replaced by fairness and justice. The age of Excellence should end and a new era of Equity should begin.

References

• Bob Usherwood (2007) Equity and Excellence in the Public Library, Ashgate Publishing
• Kerry Wilson and Brony Birdi (2008) The right ‘man’ for the job? The role of empathy in community librarianship, Arts & Humanities Research Council
• Dave Muddiman et al (2000) Open to All? Public Libraries and Social Exclusion, LIC Research Report 84
• John Pateman (2003) Developing a Needs Based Library Service, NIACE
• Laura Swaffield (2008) Users and staff together can revive public life, Library and Information Update
• Shaping the future: Unison’s vision for public services (2008), UNISON
• Zoe Gannon and Neal Lawson (2008) Co-production: the modernisation of public services by staff and users, Compass
• Co-production: a manifesto for growing the core economy (2008), New Economics Foundation

Tottenham,

England.

Ronald Elly Wanda

I first discovered The Marcus Garvey Library at Philip Lane in Tottenham almost a decade and a half ago and have remained a frequent visitor ever since. It is host to a number of controversial hard and paperbacks and many activities that other public libraries dare not entertain. It is, to say the least, ‘Radical’. For a start, it is named after a gentleman who once observed that:

For man to know himself is for him to feel that for him there is no human master. For him Nature is his servant, and whatsoever he wills in Nature, that shall be his reward. If he wills to be a pigmy, a serf or a slave, that shall he be. If he wills to be a real man in possession of the things common to man, then he shall be his own sovereign. When man fails to grasp his authority he sinks to the level of the lower animals, and whatsoever the real man bids him do, even as if it were of the lower animals, that much shall he do. If he says “go.” He goes. If he says “come,” he comes. By this command he performs the functions of life even as by a similar command the mule, the horse, the cow performs the will of their masters. For the last four hundred years the Negro has been in the position of being commanded even as the lower animals are controlled. Our race has been without a will; without a purpose of its own, for all this length of time.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the renowned fiery Jamaican writer, anti-racist, social and political justice crusader who famously advocated Pan-Africanism as a solution for many problems (primarily racism and slavery) that plagued Africans especially those outside of Africa. He led the largest organized mass movement of people of African ancestry ever. Garvey has come to be best remembered as a champion of what singer and Rastafarian philosopher Bob Marley, also inspired by Garvey’s enterprise, once tunefully termed the “exodus” movement. The movement sought to inspire all Africans in the diaspora to “redeem” Africa, and for the European colonial powers to leave Africa. At one time, he also said: “I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there”.

He was born on the 17^th of August 1887, the youngest of his father’s 11 children in St. Ann’s Bay, in countryside Jamaica. He was a bright student from the start; he attended infant and elementary schools in St. Ann’s Bay later receiving private tuition from his godfather Alfred Burrowes, a Printer, whom he later became apprenticed to. His passion for social and political activism is said to have been triggered at an early age by his love of books from his father, a skilled mason, and Mr Burrowes, who were both widely read and had private libraries. Although born in Jamaica, he lived for years in New York City, the Caribbean and London, making study visits to Panama, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela and other parts of what was then British protectorate or the so called “Empire”.

“Everywhere”, noted Garvey in his travel journal, “Black people are experiencing great hardships”. His appeals to the colonial administrators, following the distressing situations in Central America, Europe, America and Africa itself were ignored. Convinced that unity was the only way to improve the conditions for black people, he returned to Jamaica on the 1^st of August 1914 and launched the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities League (UNIA). He then led the association with the motto “One God! One Aim! One Destiny!” It sought to unite “all the people of African ancestry of the world into one great body to establish a country and Government absolutely their own.” In 1928 he presented a Petition to the League of Nation (now UN) in Geneva, on behalf of black people around the world. The petition outlined the abuses that black people around the world face and sought redress through the Organization. One other important aspect of the petition was its exposure of the barbarity of the South African regime and its unfitness to govern Namibia.

To say the least, Marcus Garvey was a successful publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and international crusader for Black Nationalism. He achieved his aims of promoting a positive spirit of pride and love, assisting the needy, reclaiming black empowerment, and establishing universities and colleges for purposes of educating the ‘black child’. From 1935 until his untimely death, owing to poor health, in June 1940, he lived and worked in London. In November 1964, his remains were extracted from Kendal Green Cemetery in London and finally returned to Jamaica, having been proclaimed Jamaica’s first National Hero; he is rested at the National Heroes Park.

Today, the rights and freedoms that the ‘black man’ partially enjoys are immensely owed to the bruising battles that were fought by Garvey and others like him, the courage they took and victories they secured we must never forget.

In the past, the problem of the momorialisation of slavery was the absence of memorials. In 1988 for example, the then managing director of Heritage Projects Limited dismissed the very idea of a Museum of Slavery as being “unacceptable” to the British Public. Although speaking for himself, he exemplified the fact that for slave-holding and slave trading nations, remembering the facts and redressing the legacy of African slavery across the Atlantic remains a controversial and fraught exercise. Henceforth, it is heartening to see such despicable attitudes slowly changing and Garvey’s memory and other significant anti-slavery crusaders kept alive worldwide; from ‘The Marcus Garvey library’ in England to ‘The Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute’ in Mbale, Eastern Uganda, his spirit and inspiration continues being memorised in all cultural corners of the world.

Upon entrance to the contemporary building hosting The Marcus Garvey Library in Tottenham, one is fittingly greeted by a foundation stone of Marcus Garvey that was planted by Marcus Garvey Jnr. on the 7^th of August 1987 to commemorate a century since his birth. The stone, noticeably scripted entirely in capital letters, critically announces:

“IT COMMEMORATES THE CENTENARY OF THE LIFE AN`D WORKS OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BROTHER MARCUS MOSIAH GARVEY THE AFRIKAN BORN IN JAMAICA W.I ON THE 17^TH AUGUST 1887, THE PEOPLE OF HARINGEY AND INDEED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD HONOUR HIS LIFE COMMITMENT TO HIS PEOPLE IN REGENERATING BLACK PRIDE SELF RELIANCE AND CONFIDENCE”.

A message, (as I discovered), that resonates with you throughout your entire period at the library. On 30^th July 2008, following a short visit to the centre, a helpful senior librarian Lee Francis agreed to engage my hazy enquiries, the transcript of which follows below:

Ronald Elly Wanda (hereafter, R.E.W): When did this library open?

Lee Francis (hereafter, L.F): Well, the complex has been opened since the 1980s but the library itself (Marcus Garvey library) hmm, it became operational, about 1993!

R.E.W: You have less material covering ‘black literature’. Is it because of fewer readers or for that matter less demand for this division?

L.F: New books come in all the time. I order them. I also look after the ‘black literature’ section, and I usually order books as and when they are requested by our readers. We usually use one supplier throughout the Council (Haringey Council), however we have started branching out, especially now that internet technology (and IT) has advanced and made many things possible. There are some books (especially those of Black interest) that I cannot sometimes find through our local supplier, when this arises I usually order them using Amazon (the internet supplier), I find them much quicker and reliable, given the fact that we have ordering deadlines, for instance a book shouldn’t take us more than 10 days once an order has been made etcetera. Also there is high demand for some books in the black literature section, which is why we have labelled many of them ‘reference only.

R.E.W: I’ve noticed you have a large section dedicated purely to Marcus Garvey…

L.F: Yes we do. We have a large section upstairs dedicated to Marcus Garvey. We have books and speeches by him as well as books and essays written about him. The very latest is a biography that came in last week. We also have a vast selection of materials on the slavery subject.

R.E.W: Great man he was!

L.F: Yes, I agree.

R.E.W: I once tried ordering a book through Waterstones by Dani Nabudere that was published in Lusaka, Zambia. It took the bookshop almost 2 years to tell me they were giving up trying. Do you face similar problems in ordering books published elsewhere in the world, least of all Africa?

L.F: No. Usually if a book is written in English, it is easy for us to try and get hold of it than say if it is in another language. Place of publication, I do not think is very much an issue. Here in Haringey, we have more than 100 spoken languages; as learning provider, we are trying to reflect on this diversity, but I think it would be impossible to stock all books in all these languages, some of which include Vietnamese, Latino, Afrikaner, Welch, Japanese, Swahili and so forth. We also have a large collection of DVD programmes in many languages that reflect the diversity of our community.

R.E.W: How about some out of print books?

L.F: We sometimes loan books that we are unable to get from a publisher, from the British Library for a three week period. Also, and increasingly so, we are buying second hand books from Amazon (the internet bookshop), and it only takes 10 days!

R.E.W: This library is buzzing with activities for all ages!

L.F: It certainly is! The Marcus Garvey Library is not only a library but an interactive forum, where the community meets to discuss relevant issues and problem that it faces. This library actively engages and liaises with the local further and higher education providers such as the College of North East London (CONEL) and Middlesex University (MU) and their students. They (students) tap into our resources when researching their discourses and often offer us suggestions such as new materials and books that we can order, these are sometimes specialist books and other relevant resources that the community can make use of, they include books and DVD software on hairdressing, Criminology, Business, and Management etc. That said, there are between 12 and 13 other agencies that tap into our resources and are constructively engaging with our local community as well. Next month (August) we will be launching ‘Books on Therapy’, an initiative that we have come up with in association with local GPs (General Practitioners), it was a pilot scheme that initially started in Cardiff, that we have also embraced. Most of this information is on the leaflets titled “What’s on in Haringey Libraries” that is also available on the Council’s website. There is also Black History month coming up in October; where we usually have lectures by invited guest speakers, plays and dances, new book launches and many more exciting things!

R.E.W: Thank you Mr Francis.

L.F: Thank you!

What Haringey Council seems to have achieved at number one Phillip lane in Tottenham is a redefinition of the library for our modern age. The Marcus Garvey library has become a template for what can be called a ‘civic outcome’, the library as a place of respect, mutuality, and enlightenment in our increasingly antagonistic multi-racial, multi-cultural society. And it is a model which other libraries in the surrounding boroughs (in particular the newly launched Enfield central library) have begun desperately to follow. Enfield Central library like Haringey’s Central library in Wood Green also opens on Sundays, from 12 noon to 4 pm. For those with strong religious inclinations, this increasing popularity of the library can be seen as a miserable indictment of Britain’s post-Christian age. Instead of attending churches, wretched secularists seek some kind of spiritual fulfilment amid the ‘written word’; where readers unlike worshippers have a far more appealing menu full of classics such as Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things fall apart’, Ngugi wa Thiongo’s ‘Decolonizing the Mind’, Ben Okri’s ‘The famished Road’ or even good old pamphlets on contemporary local issues such as ‘Community Justice News’, that immediately serves a practical purpose for the user. Reading, says Alberto Manguel in his latest book ‘The Library at Night’, has become a “ritual of rebirth” which both invigorates the reader and awakens old books to new life and freedoms.

That said, Marcus Garvey Library has played a key role in extending ‘learning’ to disenfranchised members of the community on matters ranging from the civic to the domestic, thus in a sense transforming them from unapprised into informed citizens, equipped with the capacity to modify, if so they wish, their society.

For if society is allowed to exploit and oppress certain individuals, by say, striping them off the possibility to get an education, to learn spiritual values, to harmoniously develop their diverse abilities, then freedom for such a people becomes only a “spectre or an unrealistic ideal or dream”, because the virtues of freedom and democracy cannot truly be enjoyed without an education.

As indeed we are reminded by Aristotle in his book ‘The Politics’ (also available at the library) that for as man is best of all animals when he has reached his full development, so he is worst of all when divorced from law and justice. “Injustice armed is hardest to deal with”, says Aristotle, “and though man is born with weapons which he can use in the service of practical wisdom and virtue, it is all too easy for him to use them for the opposite purposes”. Dependence on the ‘radical library’ and at the same time active participation in its continued transformation ought to be the real objective of us all as librarians, library users, writers, educators, students and community members.

Finally, slavery as a subject, at last seems to have caught the public’s attention. Last year alone, I recall three major BBC films that went on to offer three hours viewing into the squalid corners of the Atlantic slavery, perhaps cunningly put to commemorate the so called 200^th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in 2007. Yet even more remarkable is the way slavery was so marginal to mainstream intellectual and popular interests until relatively recent. For the political and ruling establishment here in Britain, slavery has long seemed a distant phenomenon; something that unfolded in Africa, the Americas or in the Atlantic. The fact that the British orchestrated much of the slavery in the Atlantic by the mid-18^th century has generally gone unnoticed. Today, that is no longer true and historians are recognising the centrality of African slaves in the shaping of the modern world by, say the late 18^th century. Marcus Garvey library is a store full of information that brings this forgotten history to the forefront of historical discourses for both the native and diasporic library user.

Ronald Elly Wanda MCIJ is the president of Pan African Society (UK) based in London

Notes:

I am grateful to Lee Francis at Marcus Garvey Library for all the help he gave me whilst touring the Library.

‘Man Know Thy Self’ an essay by Marcus Garvey. For an in depth, including commentaries on this essay and many others please access http://www.marcusgarvey.com/wmview.php?ArtID=565// accessed 31st July 2008.

For a detailed discussion on this topic see Francis Fukuyama, the End of History 1991 cited in R. E. Wanda’s “The Immigrant and ‘Britishness’ in Britain” that can be accessed on http://libr.org/isc/issues/ISC24/A32-Wanda.pdf

Aristotle, ‘The Politics”, by T.A Sinclair, 1962, Penguin Books, London. P.39.

By Ronald Elly Wanda

On Thursday the 3^rd of July, I was the only member of the Press caucus to attend the funeral of one of Britain’s latest knife-crime victim. Abiodun Olubukunola Ilumoka aka Abby was buried at the East Finchley Cemetery, following a well-attended mass at St. Stephen’s Church at Cannonbury Road in Islington where the 41 year old had lived near her mother all her life. Her horrific death did not arouse the interest of any national media perhaps because another white teenager Ben Kinsella, less than a mile away from Abby’s murder scene had also been knifed. Like most individuals who knew her well, I still find it difficult to understand what provoked her former boyfriend (that has since been charged with her murder) to commit such a cowardly and gruesome crime.

Not much is known of her killer boyfriend except that he was a 32 year old unemployed illegal immigrant from Ghana that was subsequently homeless. He had previously worked as a Barber somewhere in Islington but was then sacked at around March of 2007. Abby is said to have met him at around the same time and fell pregnant soon afterwards, she then sheltered, clothed and fed him.

On that fateful Saturday 14^th of June, she was supposed to have gone to her mother’s house for dinner, as was her routine, -just two streets off Annett Crescent, where she’d lived. It was not to be. At around 6.45 pm Islington Police and London Ambulance were called to her house following reports of an earlier fracas, only to discover Abby, who was seven months pregnant, bleeding heavily from sustained head injuries and multiple stab wounds in the stomach. She was then rushed to Royal London Hospital, where Doctors fought hard to try and save her and her unborn baby. At around 10.15pm, Abby and her unborn baby girl were pronounced dead…

“She was a really nice girl. It’s a pity the manner in which she went!” said Mrs Maria Akinfe, an old friend of Abby’s mother during the funeral proceeding. “I still can’t believe it! It is a real tragic…I fear for the future of my children”, said another woman, wiping her tears, also at Abby’s funeral. In spite of the government’s insistence that violent crime and in particular knife-related attacks have reduced, the outlook of most people especially at Abby’s funeral seemed to have a contrary reflection.

Although Abby’s death was resultant of a domestic-argument-turned-violent that later escalated to a horrific and brutal murder; it exhibits an overall epidemic of fatal knife attacks in London executed largely by teenagers on the “teen-community”. From Ben Kinsella in Islington to an orphaned Ugandan university student in Walthamstow to a Somalian gang-member in Camden to a prospering Harry Potter Actor in Kent; these are just some of the 21 teenagers that have died a violent death since the beginning of this year, and it is anyone’s guess that this number is likely to increase.

As if to reassure, a recent edition of The Economist hurriedly observed: “one might think that deaths by the blade were becoming more common”. Adding, “That isn’t the case”. It went on to argue that “Last year there were 258 people killed by sharp instruments, a number that has barely changed since the turn of the millennium. As a proportion of total homicides (which have been rising slowly for decades), death by sharp instruments is no more frequent now than it was ten years ago, though knives”, it warns, “remain Britain’s favourite murder weapon” (The Economist, 31^st May 2008).

The truth in part, lies in this powerful Observer editorial for it rightly notes that there is a criminal sub-culture in Britain into which the political establishment does not seem to have an insight to. Says the Observer: “It will remain impenetrable unless politicians can mobilise a wide social coalition, crossing party lines, involving teachers, parents, children, police, ex offenders, charities, religious and cultural leaders to consult on policy. The sad fact is that not only has there been no action to get tough on the causes of crime, there has been tragic weakness of resolve fully to understand what lies behind crime” (Observer, 6^th July 08).

These days one thing that people remember most of the former Prime Minister Tony Blair (his illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq aside) has to be his pledge of “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. To the man on the street, it seems that the Labour administration has found it easier to honour the first part of that promise than it has the second. The two (crime and its causation), it must be said, go hand in hand. As such one must address both simultaneously, otherwise it would be like a doctor offering a prescription to a disease that he does not fully understand and cannot adequately inform of any subsequent side effects.

Whilst it is not clear whether the government’s much publicised prescription – the so called ‘Youth Crime Action Plan’ or for that matter the Conservative’s ‘Hug a Hoodie’ and ‘Responsibility revolution’ prescriptions will prove effective, or yet again end up disappointing and wasting millions of tax payers money. One thing clear though, is that the ‘real’ remedy may not lie with the political establishment but instead with the cultural institutions.

The latest research has found that of 90 families linked to Fips (a government sponsored experimental programme); the proportion showing widespread anti-social behaviour fell from 61% to 7%. There are plans to extend the programme’s reach to 20’000 families. A think-tank aiming at shaping the debate on the role of fathers called Fatherhood Institute recently also noted that “there was a need to intensively engage with vulnerable families”. Its chief Executive, Duncan Fisher, said “I think we have got engagement with families wrong in some ways, and this is the panic that follows that. I believe this issue has arisen because we haven’t invested to a significant extent in support services for parents, particularly struggling families”. As a point of interest, at the last census, almost 60% of all afro-Caribbean families with children had a lone parent; whilst the figure was only 25% for white British families (The Guardian, 19^th July 2008).

Whilst these figures do not necessarily mean that all single parent homesteads are a breeding ground for future gangsters, criminals and murderers; it is fair to point out that there seems to be a correlation sandwiching fractured families and violent and often drug-related crime. Lest we not shy away, may the debate on ‘parenting or lack of it -in relation to crime’ commence, even if it has been (regrettably) started by a pampered old Etonian.

Ronald Elly Wanda MCIJ is a political scientist based in London.

Reference and Technical Services Librarian

Columbia County Public Library

308 NW Columbia Ave

Lake City, Fl 32055

(386)-758-1018

cheris.carpenter@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Research into ‘Web 2.0 accessibility’ for people with disabilities has recently gained momentum in library and information science studies. This is due to the unique problems disabled individuals face because they must rely on digitized formats. People with disabilities who use assistive technologies are often restricted by incompatibility issues involving software and hardware when retrieving Web content because they have been constructed without consideration for disabled user access. The result has been a new dilemma emerging for many information centers and libraries regarding how to provide access to Web 2.0 technologies which are not designed for persons with disabilities and are incompatible with many assistive technologies. Careful consideration must be given in the development stage of web design to the layout, navigation and compatibility of different assistive technologies used to view the site.

Making Web 2.0 Accessibility Mainstream

The global nature of Web 2.0 technology has offered unlimited potential for many people with disabilities when accessing web resources. Web 2.0 communication technologies present viable opportunities for disabled persons to collaborate online without being affected by the many preconceived stereotypes about disability. [Arrigo, 2005] But, despite the abundance of new opportunities there are significant technological barriers for those who: •May not be able to see, hear, move, or process some types of information. •May have difficulty reading or comprehending text. •May not be able to use a keyboard or mouse. •May have a text-only screen, a small screen, or a slow Internet connection. •May not be able to speak or understand fluently the language in which the document was written. •May have an early version of a browser, a different browser, or a different operating system. [Craven, 2007]

Research into ‘Web 2.0 accessibility’ for people with disabilities has recently gained momentum in library and information science studies. [Craven, 2003] This is partly due to the unique problems disabled individuals face because they must rely on digitized formats. [Gerke, 2004] In this paper, ‘Disabled’ is a general term which includes individuals who may not consider themselves disabled under the standard legal definition. However, these individuals do have “limitations of sensory, physical or cognitive functioning, which affects access to the Web. These limitations may be injury-related and/or aging-related conditions and they can be temporary or chronic.” [Burgstahler, 2002]

Disabled individuals use computer ‘assistive technologies’ to access the Web, in conjunction with graphical desktop browsers, text and voice browsers, multimedia players, and plug-ins. [Craven, 2007]

Examples of Assistive Technologies: •Screen readers that can only read and navigate basic ASCII and HTML text, not images. •Alternative keyboards or switches. •Screen magnification which enlarges all or part of the screen. •Braille Bars which represent six-dot tactile code of Braille electronically and respond to the text presented on screen. •Talking Web browsers which convert web pages directly into speech. •Speech input, which allows the user to speak commands or to dictate to the computer rather than using the mouse and keyboard. •Visual notification [Craven, 2007]

In the United States, the two most common screen reader products are JAWS from Freedom Scientific and Window-Eyes from GW Micro. [Adobe, 2006] Screen readers enable disabled users to hear, rather than read, the contents of a web page; however, a screen reader can only read text, not images or animations. [Craven, 2007] Users with mobility impairments may need to rely on the keyboard instead of the mouse to navigate web pages. This would include individuals with paralysis, nerve damage, arthritis, or repetitive motion injuries who may employ touch screens, head pointers, or other assistive devices. In these cases it is critical that the essential components of a website are navigable without a mouse. [Adobe, 2006]

Web 2.0 Accessibility

“Web 2.0 Accessibility” is defined by the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) as, ‘…when people with disabilities have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to individuals without disabilities.’ [WAI, 2004]

Web 2.0 accessibility essentially means that a person with a disability can interact, navigate, and contribute to the Web. [EDNER, 2002] A multitude of accessibility issues have arisen with Web 2.0 applications because they have been constructed without consideration for disabled user access. People with disabilities who use assistive technologies are often restricted by incompatibility issues involving software and hardware when retrieving Web content. [Moonan, 2007] The result has been an increasing number of disabled individuals who have access to computers and utilize assistive technologies to access the Internet, but are unable to actually retrieve online resources. [Craven, 2007]

The concept behind Web 2.0 Accessibility attempts to address two issues. First, how disabled users access electronic information; and second, how web developers enable web pages to function with assistive devices used by individuals with disabilities. [Adobe, 2006] For the disabled user, the dilemma has been identifying tools that provide the most convenient access to web-based and other electronic information; and for the web developer, it has been removing barriers that inhibit web accessibility tools from functioning effectively. The proliferation of digitized resources produced by information centers and libraries has erected new barriers for disabled individuals who rely upon computer assistive technologies to access resources on the Web. The result has been a new dilemma emerging for many information centers and libraries regarding how to provide access to Web 2.0 technologies which are not designed for persons with disabilities and are incompatible with many assistive technologies. [Adobe, 2006]

Is Web 2.0 Accessibility Important?

Because the World Wide Web has become an essential resource in most aspects of life due to the digitization of public services such as education, commerce and government; the accessibility of Web 2.0 resources for the disabled has become a dominant social issue both in the United States, Canada and Europe. [Thompson, 2003] Over the past few years, the United States, Canadian and European governments have acknowledged this issue and responded by enacting legislation and legal requirements for the certification of accessible resources on the Web for the disabled.

In 1995, the United Kingdom’s ‘Disability Discrimination Act’, made it “illegal to discriminate against disabled people by refusing to serve, by deliberately not providing a service that is normally offered to other people, by offering a lower standard of service, or by treating the disabled person less favorably”. [EDNER, 2002] In Canada, equal access is ensured by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and in the “duty to accommodate” as an operational requirement in federal and provincial human rights laws.[EDNER, 2002] In 1998, when the United States Congress significantly strengthened Section 508 of the ‘Americans with Disabilities Act’’, its primary purpose was to provide access to and use of Federal Electronic and Information Technology (EIT) by individuals with disabilities; and in 2001, the US Congress officially applied guidelines for the “Web Accessibility Standards” segment of Section 508. [Thompson, 2003] The W3C guidelines adopted by Section 508 set the requirement for WAI compliance for all US government and public agencies at the minimum level of web accessibility. The United Kingdom Cabinet Office e-Government Unit further extended e-Accessibility legislation for WAI compliance. UK law states all web accessibility guidelines must adhere to a level slightly higher than the minimum required by the WAI to be in compliance with all government and public services websites. [Craven, 2007]

A far-reaching statistic to consider when assessing the accessibility of Web 2.0 web technologies by disabled people is the study by the US Census Bureau in 2000, which reported that out of 54 million disabled Americans, 8.7 million of them were poor. [Stewart, 2002] Since most Web 2.0 technology depends upon the speed of a person’s Internet connection this statistic would seem to indicate that there is a significant portion of disabled persons who may be unable to financially afford the cost of high-speed Internet. This is one area where the responsibility of libraries and information centers to overcome accessibility barriers on the Web becomes apparent. If a disabled person is poor, then they are more likely to use the public library to access the Internet and other online resources. Therefore, a library simply providing screen reader technology or enhanced vocalized software on their computers is insufficient to meet all of the needs of their disabled patrons.

It should be noted that Web accessibility tools also benefit non-disabled people or those individuals who may be temporarily disabled due to illness or injury. [Thompson, 2003] For example, technical support for screen reader software not only can benefit blind users, but also users who occupied with other tasks; while captions for audio not only benefit deaf users, but can also increase the efficiency of indexing and searching for audio content on Web sites. [Burgstahler, 2002]

“Web 2.0 Accessibility” is essentially a two-pronged issue: the first being the “readability” of content on the site by assistive technologies and the second is the “usability” of the site by the disabled. Recent research has shown that disabled users face significant usability problems when trying to navigate around web sites. This was evidenced by CERLIM’s NOVA project which identified significant navigation problems for visually-disabled users when they attempted to maneuver around a site using assistive technologies. [Craven, 2004] Their research discovered that because the Web is designed for parallel or non-serial navigation, which offers non-disabled users multiple options within one page (i.e. frames, tables, drop-down menus, etc.); this has caused problems for disabled users who are navigating a site using assistive technologies (e.g. Screen readers).

Screen readers restrict disabled users to searching one frame at a time on a web site. [Craven, 2003] This causes the screen reader to ‘read out’ each hypertext link on a page one by one; a process which is both confusing and time-consuming for the disabled user. These issues were researched further in a 2004 study of Internet accessibility by researchers at City University in the UK who found that out of a sample of 196 respondents, 20 percent of them were visually or physically disabled. [Pilling, Barrett, Floyd: 2004] The results of the study revealed that disabled users would like Web sites to have the following: •Guides on the home page informing people about the site’s contents. •Less cluttered pages •Fewer graphics and advertising •Links to be clearer and fewer •Print size and colors to be easily changeable •Greater standardization of assistive technology formats •Search to be more clearly marked and more precise •Better accessibility for voice recognition system user [Pilling, Barrett, Floyd:pg.34-36]

Physical Barriers to “Web 2.0 Accessibility”

Currently, most Web 2.0 applications have physical ‘accessibility barriers’ that make it difficult or impossible for many people with disabilities to use them. Previous studies have indicated that although adaptive software can aid someone who is physically or visually disabled access the Web, many Web 2.0 technologies are incompatible with the current adaptive software. [Ryder, 2004] People who use assistive technologies also cited problems they experienced when accessing the Internet as primarily being related to distorted screen reader magnification and lack of support and training using assistive technologies. [Pilling, Barrett, Floyd: 2004]

Other physical barriers to Web 2.0 Accessibility include: •Keyboard access involving the use of shortcut keys, tab navigation, and/or keyboard navigation when the site has been designed to be navigated using a mouse. Most Web 2.0 technology depends upon the speed of a person’s Internet connection while the majority of disabled or elderly persons use dial-up and may be unable to financially afford Broadband or DSL. [Craven, 2007]

•Dynamically created websites using PDF, FLASH, Ajax and JAVA are inaccessible. Ajax is being used on an increasing number of web systems, (e.g. Google Apps and Gmail), while JAVA is predominantly used in business applications. [Craven, 2007]

•The increased use of video and graphical displays on most websites which assistive technologies have a difficult time translating. Videos and graphics are being used more and more to augment web content without providing textual alternatives. [Epp, 2006]

•Incompatibility across assistive technologies. Ideally, all Web pages could be read by all screen readers. However, most assistive software and hardware systems are not compatible with each other. [Epp, 2006]

•Security issues arise when disabled users, in particular the visually impaired try to logon to certain websites. Websites try to prevent ‘bot’ attacks by requiring sighted users to type in an encrypted display of letters or numbers to verify login authenticity. This is a measure used to prevent ‘bots’ from reading the characters. These characters are deliberately made ambiguous and it is almost impossible to see them if you are visually impaired. [Zajicek, 2007]

Universal Accessibility

The term ‘Universal Accessibility’ has been defined by the WAI as, “the ability to make the Web available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.” [WAI, 2002] The W3C Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) submitted techniques and guidelines which provide technical recommendations for ‘Universal Accessibility’ on the Web. [Adobe, 2006] These guidelines include descriptions of accessibility solutions for web authors and developers and are widely considered the international standard for Web accessibility. While most of these guidelines focused on the needs of people with visual disabilities, they also addressed the needs of people with hearing, learning, and physical disabilities. [WAI, 2002] The W3C and WAI have provided an important framework for ensuring accessible Web design development, and assessment.

Current WAI guidelines for Universal Web 2.0 Accessibility are as follows: [WCAG, 2008]

Guideline One: •Provide text alternatives for all non-text content. •Provide synchronized alternatives for multimedia. •Ensure that information and structure can be separated from presentation. •Make it easy to distinguish foreground information from its background.

Guideline Two: •Make all functionality operable via a keyboard interface. •Allow users to control time limits on their reading or interaction. •Allow users to avoid content that could cause seizures due to photosensitivity. •Provide mechanisms to help users find content, orient themselves within it, and navigate through it. •Help users avoid mistakes and make it easy to correct mistakes that do occur.

Guideline Three: •Make text content readable and understandable. •Make the placement and functionality of content predictable.

Guideline Four: •Support compatibility with current and future user agents (including assistive technologies). •Ensure that content is accessible or provide an accessible alternative.

Design-for-All

“Design-for-All” is defined as “the process of planning for access to electronic resources as they are being developed to ensure that they are accessible to people with a wide range of abilities or disabilities.” [W3C, 2008] Careful consideration must be given in the development stage of web design to the layout, navigation and compatibility of different assistive technologies used to view the site. This type of ‘forward-thinking’ web development forms the basis for the principles of ‘Design-for-All’. The overall idea behind the concept of Design-for-All is inclusiveness in the design of Web 2.0 technologies wherein every possible audience member regardless of ability can access, navigate, and contribute to the Web. Website designs which follow this concept are far less expensive to implement than developing accommodation strategies once a person with a disability requires access.

One development that appears promising in assisting web developers interested in utilizing the Design-for-All method is a combination of the commonly used web application ‘Ajax’, DOM scripting, and basic HTML mark-up called, “Hijax”.[Keith, 2006] “Hijax” was developed by a British web developer named, Jeremy Keith. Keith, who is also a member of the Web Standards Project, a group which advocates for the advancement of “web standards,” developed the “Hijax” code to facilitate web accessibility on any site published on the Internet. Jeremy Keith used his expertise in web development to design a code that utilizes existing Ajax applications and also adds a layer of progressive enhancement. [Keith, 2006] The specifics of his research go far beyond the scope of this paper, but simply defined, “Hijax”: •Uses (X)HTML to mark up content on a web page. •Uses CSS to describe how the content should display. •Uses DOM Scripting (JavaScript and the Document Object Model) to describe how it should “behave”. [Keith, 2006]

Keith’s method ensures the ‘degradability’ of a web page or web application by using unobtrusive JavaScript applied to Ajax. [Keith, 2006] The main objective behind using “Hijax” is to ensure that web pages and web applications work for disabled people who don’t have JavaScript or ActiveX on their browsers. [Keith, 2006]

Principles of Design-for-All

When creating accessible electronic resources, the principles of Design-for-all should be employed. [8] The WAI published a comprehensive list of guidelines to aid in the production of accessible web sites which adhere to this concept of “design-for-all” and the guidelines are available in three categories: accessibility of Authoring Tools (ATAG), User Agents (UAAG), and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or (WCAG). [Craven, 2007] The primary recommendations for ensuring the Design-for-all of Web 2.0 resources are: [Craven, 2007] 1.Create unobtrusive JavaScript.[WebAIM, 2005] 2.Page organization: for layout and style be consistent whenever possible by using Cascading Style Sheets or Extensible Stylesheet Language. [Craven, 2007] 3.Images and animations: provide meaningful descriptions using the ALT text tag.[WebAIM, 2005] 4.Sound files: provide captioning for all sound files. [Craven, 2007] 5.Colors: must be contrasting with consideration for people with visual impairments.[WebAIM, 2005] 6.Fonts: use plain fonts because they are easier to read, avoid italics and heavily scripted fonts.[WebAIM, 2005] 7.Font size: the most readable font size for visually impaired persons is 14pt-this size can be adjusted to suit the individual user.[WebAIM, 2005] 8.Tables: make sure text can be clearly read line by line and cell by cell. [WebAIM, 2005] 9.Frames: must be labeled properly or ideally the site should include a No Frames version. [WebAIM, 2005] 10.Hypertext links: use meaningful text to describe a link, avoid vague instructions like “click here”. [WebAIM, 2005] 11.Charts, graphs, and statistical information: use the “D” link or “Longdesc” attribute. [WebAIM, 2005] 12.Check your work, validate,-use tools, checklist, and guidelines at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/Resources. [Craven, 2007]

A comprehensive list of the guidelines are available on the current WCAG 1.0 working document which has been the standard used the past few years, however, the new WCAG 2.0 recommendations were released by the WAI in April 2008 and will soon become the next standard working document. [WAI, 2008]

The current working draft for version 2.0 consists of four design principles: [WAI, 2008] •Content must be perceivable. •Interface elements in the content must be operable. •Content and controls must be understandable. •Content must be robust enough to work with current and future technologies.

Each WCAG 2.0 design principle is given with a number of check points which should be applied independently of the technology used for the Web site. WCAG 2.0 represents an important shift in paradigms since the implementation of WCAG 1.0 because WCAG 2.0 now evaluates web accessibility from the end user’s standpoint. [Craven, 2007] This means that web accessibility is no longer evaluated by the information sent by a web server, but whether or not the information is retrievable to the end user.

Simple Evaluation of Web 2.0 Accessibility

The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) in the United Kingdom issued a report of the findings of a study they conducted in 2004. The study conducted accessibility assessments of 1,000 web sites and found that over 81 percent were non-compliant with the most basic WAI WCAG requirements. [DRC,2004] The DRC study also reported that the visually-impaired and other disabled individuals who rely upon screen-readers were the most affected by poorly designed Web sites. [DRC 2004] The report suggested that this was due to pervasive misconceptions of cost, lack of knowledge and interest, and “perceived commercial obstacles” by Webmasters. [DRC, 2004] In 2004, a similar, study was conducted of 175 Webmasters in the United States and they gave coinciding reasons for non-compliance with Web accessibility guidelines. [Craven:2007]

Although, misconceptions are prevalent among Web developers that accessible sites are unattractive, boring, or expensive; it is possible to develop visually appealing, dynamic, interactive web sites without extraordinary cost or sacrificing accessibility. [DRC 2004] Web developers who want to build and maintain accessible web sites can access inexpensive – and sometimes free – applications. Likewise, web authoring tools have even begun to aid developers in the creation of accessible sites with their “Accessibility Preferences” options built directly into the web design application.

Website Validation Tools

Validation tools check a site for compliance with WAI guidelines and accessibility standards. [A-Prompt, 2008] One example of this is A-Prompt, which was created through the joint efforts of the University of Toronto’s Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (ATRC) and the TRACE Center at the University of Wisconsin. [A-Prompt, 2008]

A-Prompt, is a licensed software tool which enables Web authors to create Web pages which are more directly accessible by disabled users. A-Prompt also provides Web authors the ability to make repairs and are compatible across different assistive technologies. [A-Prompt, 2008] Other free web-based validation tools which provide valuable checks on potential accessibility problems have been produced by WebAIM and the W3C. WebAIM’s product is the WAVE 3.0 Validator and the W3C tool is the HTML Validator; both application check whether web pages are accessible to people with disabilities and are validated to accepted standards. [W3C HTML, 2008]

Assessments of web accessibility can be done using a variety of methods, but this is only a part of the overall process of assessing web site accessibility. Results from automated testing are often misinterpreted and do not provide a complete analysis of web site accessibility. [Craven, 2007] It is recommended that combination of measures should be utilized as suggested by the W3C section “Evaluating Websites for Accessibility”. [Craven, 2005]

The suggestions included: •Semi-automatic and automatic testing using validation tools (which validates markup) and accessibility checking tools (to validate accessible mark-up has been used). •Manual evaluation using relevant criteria for assessment such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) checkpoints and priority levels. •User testing of specific features of a Web site; this should include people with a mixture of disabilities, different technical abilities, and users of assistive technologies. [W3C, 2004]

Implementing Basic Web 2.0 Accessibility

Before an information center or library can make their website accessible, they must understand accessibility, be committed to ensuring accessibility, learn how to implement accessibility, and understand their legal obligations. [Epp, 2006] Information centers and libraries should follow a six-step process to provide accessible content on their Web sites:

1. Adopt a Web accessibility policy.

2. Develop a plan to implement that policy.

3. Broadly disseminate the policy and train anyone developing Web pages, including faculty and students.

4. Include a reasonable timeline in the plan for implementation of Web accessibility.

5. Include measures for enforcement in the plan.

6. Make training and resources on accessible Web design available to Webmasters. [Epp, 2006]

Conclusion

In response to the legal requirements mandated by the 1990 ‘Americans with Disabilities Act’ US public institutions widened doorways, added handicapped parking spaces and built wheelchair ramps; ensuring equal access to information through the design of accessible web sites is an extension of the same process. Web sites, like buildings, can be designed or redesigned to meet the needs of all people, including those with disabilities. Libraries and information centers in the public and private sector are discussing and designing mechanisms for adherence to internationally accepted standards of Web accessibility that facilitate online resource sharing. The implementation of ‘Design-for-All’ principles in the development and procurement of web technologies in information centers and libraries is an important step towards ensuring patrons with disabilities are provided full access to online resources. Information centers and libraries which are actively involved in researching various disability and rehabilitation technologies can contribute a variety of expertise and opportunities for enhancing the implementation of Section 508 and legally pressure producers of assistive technologies to provide more accessible formats. Libraries and information centers are well positioned to be leaders in the development and promotion of policies for the procurement, development, and use of accessible web technologies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. A-Prompt Project

http://aprompt.snow.utoronto.ca

Accessed: 18 Jul. 2008.

2. Adobe. What is Accessibility? 2006. http://www.adobe.com/macromedia/accessibility

Accessed: 18 Jul. 2008.

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Management of controversial material in public libraries

John Pateman

David Sherman

In the post-9/11, post-PATRIOT Act cultural environment, some institutions have come under criticism by people who feel their openness and accessibility contribute to a vulnerability that terrorists could exploit in order to cause harm. Legislative and regulatory action have sought to limit both access to information and individual privacy, and public opinion seems to have become more accepting of these limits. Libraries, as the most open of cultural institutions, have become a focal point in this controversy. The desire to restrict potentially harmful information is hardly new, however, and questions on whether legitimate restrictions can be placed on the provision of information by librarians involves issues of professional ethics, social policy, and long-standing cultural traditions.

Traditional role of libraries, the Enlightenment tradition, and value-neutrality

The social role of the library has traditionally been envisioned as a place where people can find whatever information they need; libraries are, after all, “storehouses of knowledge from which each reader can draw as he requires” (Foskett 1962, p.10). Since people have complex and varied roles in society and a wide range of informational needs, libraries need to own or have access to large amounts of information on a wide variety of topics. Librarians, as part of their professional function, should provide the information requested by the patron, and should not question the reason a patron is requesting particular information except insofar as necessary to clarify the request. Objectively providing requested information without making judgments on its value or appropriateness is called “value-neutrality”, and it requires dedication and self-awareness on the part of the librarian.

Foskett (1962, p.10) clearly expresses the idea of value-neutrality as it relates to reference service: “During reference service, the librarian ought virtually to vanish as an individual person, except in so far as his personality sheds light on the working of the library”; the librarian should have “no politics, no religion, no morals.” The American Library Association’s Code of Ethics also seems to advance this view, saying, “we distinguish between our personal convictions and professional duties and do not allow our personal beliefs to interfere with fair representation of the aims of our institutions or the provision of access to their information resources,” and “we uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources” (American Library Association (ALA) 1995).

Value-neutrality has its intellectual roots in the ideas of Enlightenment Liberalism. Enlightenment thinkers thought that the fundamental attribute of human beings was their capacity to reason. If people are allowed to develop and exercise this central attribute, these thinkers argued, both individuals and society as a whole will improve, because individuals will ultimately be able to make greater contributions to society. Artificial limits to individual liberty, imposed by the state or other social institutions, would have the effect of stifling the progress of individual growth and depriving society of ideas and creativity necessary for progress to occur.

The concepts of human reason and individual liberty lead naturally to the view that society and individuals function best when they are allowed to express ideas freely. In order to properly fulfill its natural capacities, human nature requires intellectual freedom; in a sense, because of human nature, people have a right to ideas. To limit their access to ideas would be to neglect the central aspect of their humanity.

These views about human nature influenced and were eventually incorporated into democratic political systems that made individual liberty and intellectual freedom central concerns of government and society. Social systems and institutions that evolved under the new political systems also incorporated these views of human nature, and frequently acted to further the values and goals of individual liberty.

One particular social institution that has developed a special role in democratic systems is the library. Particularly with the development of tax-supported public libraries, libraries became a place for all people, regardless of their place in society, to gain knowledge and find information they need. Libraries act as “a place of education…the uplifter of the common person, and…[the] cultural center of the community” (Alfino 1997, p.91). Under this view, “librarians should rededicate themselves to the role of ‘public intellectuals’, leading their communities in the discussion of issues” of social importance (Alfino 2001, p.483).

Since the goal of Enlightenment Liberalism is to promote the progress of society by developing individuals capable of using reason, libraries have a responsibility as public institutions of cultivating self-governing individuals. The library’s resources should be available to educate and enlighten all members of society so that they can better govern themselves, and by extension, better govern society.

Further, the Enlightenment thinkers felt that as people gained knowledge, and became capable of self-governance, they would better be able to make moral judgments because they would have a better understanding of the world. Information, even potentially harmful information, should therefore not be censored, because it allows people to get a complete picture of the world from which to make responsible judgments.

Libraries, as democratic institutions, should be value-neutral in order that they might fulfill their social role as contributors to the development of self-governing individuals in a free society through the provision of information. Swan (qtd. in Wiener 1987, p.162) writes that limiting access to information based on a librarian’s personal judgment would amount to “denying another person’ right to the knowledge necessary for his/her own ethical decision.”

Challenges to the Enlightenment view of librarianship

The value-neutral Enlightenment Liberal view, however, encounters a problem if the patron has motives that are less than pure. Does value-neutrality continue to be valid if the library patron intends to use the information for harmful purposes; and should information be withheld from the patrons if the librarian believes this is the case? Enlightenment Liberalism tended to view human nature in a positive way: human beings were seen as rational, inquisitive, and, when properly educated, having a natural tendency to moral action. However, the intervening years from the Age of Enlightenment to the present day have shaken, many would say undermined, any faith in the power of human reason. World Wars, multiple genocides, psychological and literary exploration of human irrationality, behaviorist and geneticist views of humans as determined actors: all of these developments and others have made the idea of a moral human nature seem somewhat naïve, and provide a serious challenge to a value-neutral stance in reference service.

Hauptman’s analysis of his 1976 experiment reflects this loss of faith in the Enlightenment view. During a period when the United States experienced a number of bombings by extremist groups, Hauptman (1976, p.626) approached reference desks at six public and seven academic libraries and asked for information on constructing an explosive device capable of destroying “a normal suburban house”; he found the results shocking: none of the thirteen librarians he asked “refused to supply the information on ethical grounds.” He concluded that the librarians in the study were completely ignoring ethical concerns about sharing information that is potentially dangerous, and hiding their ethical inaction behind claims of professional responsibilities.

He framed his charge that librarians were acting amorally by not “sensitizing” information, or determining what information is acceptable to share with patrons, as a conflict between professional responsibilities and personal ethical obligations (Hauptman 1996, p.328). Hauptman (1979, p.198) considered the dissemination of information “a rather dubious professional commitment” that should not take precedence over personal ethical decisions. He argued that “protecting and advancing the free flow of information is commendable, but there may be times when it is ethically unacceptable” (Hauptman 1988, p.42).

Hauptman’s view is a clear challenge to the idea of value-neutrality, and his experiment brought about a serious debate over if, and how, information could or should be “sensitized”. His experiment became a model that others replicated, and, although the results were similar, the conclusions reached by other researchers were very different.

Dowd attempted to replicate Hauptman’s experiment in the 1980s, and chose a topical question in the way bombings were topical to Hauptman’s experiment; he made the request: “I want to find out how to freebase cocaine” (Dowd 1989, p.486). Like Hauptman, Dowd found that none of the reference librarians refused to answer the question; he did, however, note two things that Hauptman had not. First, none of the reference librarians had engaged him in a reference interview. Second, “reference aid at these libraries ranged from extensive to minimal,” and, of those that gave minimal assistance, “the sources chosen were not the best possible given [his] unusual information need” (Dowd 1989, p.487, 489). Hauptman’s feeling that librarians should “sensitize” certain information seemed to be already occurring when some of the librarians were asked for information on controversial topics. Whether caused by an insufficient understanding of his informational needs, or simply a lack of comfort in dealing with the topic, the result was poor quality reference service. By not engaging Dowd in a reference interview, it was not possible to understand the intent of his request.

A study in Slovenian libraries returned similar results. Juznic had students in the library studies program at the University of Ljubljana ask for information on one of three “morally disputable” subjects: ways in which to perform suicide, necrophilia, and finding pictures of corpses. The students were asked both to observe the reactions of the librarian, and to “evaluate the appropriateness of the materials or directions” given to them by the librarians (Juznic 2001). Nearly two-thirds of the librarians acted in ways other than “totally calmly” to the requests (responses included: worried, indignant, uncertain, officious, embarrassed, and others), and nearly sixty percent of the students were less than satisfied with the information received (Juznic 2001). The concerns expressed by Dowd were seen in the Juznic study as well: reference librarians sometimes did not make a serious effort to find information they were uncomfortable with.

When a noticeable lack of quality reference service regarding controversial materials occurs, attacks on value-neutrality become serious concerns. Patrons seeking information on controversial issues could be denied information seemingly at the whim of the librarian. If personal ethical concerns are to take precedence over the “rather dubious professional commitment” of providing information, what would be the effect to a patron requesting information on abortion providers from a staunchly pro-life reference librarian? Hauptman (1979, p.198) raises this question, but does not attempt to answer it.

Also, if the provision of information by librarians is only a “dubious professional commitment,” it raises the larger question of what the role of librarianship is at all. Hauptman (1988, p.42) compares the value-neutral stance to “the case of the lawyer who fervently defends an admitted criminal and gets him off on a technicality. The criminal’s rights have been protected, but at the expense of both his or her victims and society.” Again we see Hauptman’s rejection of the views of Enlightenment Liberalism; where the Enlightenment thinkers would see the protection of a criminal’s rights as defending the interests of society by maintaining a strict adherence to the rule of law, Hauptman sees simply a lack of personal ethical behavior. The question raised by these opposing views becomes one of the place of librarianship or others professional commitments: does librarianship advance society, even morality in society, by sometimes engaging in behavior that, outside the confines of professional action, may cross ethical lines; or is society better served by individual conscience acting outside professional guidelines?

Communitarianism as an alternative model of librarianship

One response to the question comes from thinkers who challenge the ideas of Enlightenment Liberalism, and argue that morality is a socially constructed set of rules, rather than moral laws determined by universal principles of reasoning. This view, which Gremmels and Haste label Communitarianism, disputes the Enlightenment Liberal belief that the exercise of reason itself can help people to become moral. Thinkers in the Enlightenment tradition, from Adam Smith’s “impartial spectator” to John Rawls’ “parties situated behind a veil of ignorance,” have emphasized the idea of impartiality and objectivity as a necessary part of determining moral laws or proper ethical behavior. They argue that personal interests and culturally ingrained views must be overcome in order to properly judge a situation.

Communitarians, on the other hand, argue that such objectivity is not possible, and they present a critique of Enlightenment thought as a whole. For the Communitarians, the idea of individualism, one of the core beliefs of Liberalism, is false. They argue that, “people simply are not solitary beings capable of ‘autonomous reasoning’ from behind a veil of ignorance, or in a state of suspended objectivity from one’s cultural context. They are deeply social, embedded in culture and in social practices” (Haste 1998). Values are therefore not the result of moral laws arrived at by human reason; rather, they are created by social interactions. People are unable to completely remove themselves from their cultural and personal prejudices, so pure rationality, and therefore objectivity, are simply not possible. Since objectivity is not possible, value-neutrality essentially becomes an unachievable standard.

Gremmels (1991, p.364-5) argues that librarianship itself is hardly value-neutral; rather, it clearly embraces the values of the Enlightenment: “we believe that information is a useful commodity, a good thing. We believe that it is better to be literate than illiterate. The Statement on Professional Ethics is full of values: freedom of information, freedom from censorship, and professionalism.” She suggests that rather than attempting to maintain “mindless adherence to an impossible standard of objectivity,” librarians should embrace a communitarian view, which would allow reference librarians to place the common good over the information needs of an individual patron (Gremmels 1991, p.367). It “would allow the reference librarian to say no…to Hauptman when he posed the bomb-building question and refused Dowd’s request for the how-to’s of freebasing cocaine” (Gremmels 1991, p.368). The needs and values of the community, in this view, should replace attempts at value-neutrality. Librarianship, and other professions under the Communitarian view, would have it’s purpose and mission defined and controlled by the values of the community.

The problems with the Communitarian view are clear if any attempt is made to maintain the traditional function of librarianship. Communitarian values would have “allowed the reference librarian to say no,” but as Dowd (1989, p.491) points out, they would have said no to two researchers who simply wanted information and had no intentions of doing anything illegal or unethical. Gremmels (1991, p.368) acknowledges that “public interest theory offers no help to the librarian in deciphering the intention of the client”; yet, if it is easier to deny patrons information without any better method of determining the intent of the patron, it is easy to envision a scenario in which community libraries become increasingly provincial in their views because community values are continually reinforced by limiting information through reference service and collections development.

Another potential problem with a Communitarian philosophy of reference service is how to determine or measure community values and opinions. Even in a fairly homogenous community, there will undoubtedly be differences of opinion. Is a simple majority view an acceptable measure of community value? Under that definition, in a town whose primary employer is a military base, it would probably be acceptable to not provide access to Fahrenheit 9/11, or other anti-war films or materials. Or would a library in a town with a single major employer whose products were poorly reviewed in Consumer Reports be acting in the community’s interest by not subscribing to that magazine? The Communitarian view is vague when it comes to defining what public interest actually is, and when that is combined with the fact that community values change, the role of librarianship would not have a standard by which to operate.

Marco provides an alternate view of objectivity as a function of librarianship’s social role that responds to Communitarian objections to Enlightenment Liberalism. Marco (1996, p.33) argues that the debate over professional ethics has become too “expansive,” in that it is attempting to deal with personal morality when that should be an extraneous concern for professional ethics. His “narrow view” of professional ethics is that of a “set of mutual obligations between the profession itself and the society that establishes and maintains it” (Marco 1996, p.33). On the surface, this view seems to be consistent with the Communitarian view; however, there is a difference. He writes that within the societal mission of the profession, there are “role obligations” which define the role of the profession, and personal ethical considerations simply should not come into play: “A person joining a profession accepts its moral system, so there should be no problem for her in obeying the rules of it” (Marco 1996, p.34). Finks (1991, p.86) makes the same point this way: “Librarians are behaving properly (or ethically) when they act in such a way that they fulfill their function.”

Social definitions of reference librarians require that they “give information assistance which is requested, even if possible use of the information by the patron may be personally objectionable to the librarian” (Marco 1996, p.37). Objectivity, then, becomes a role obligation of librarianship. While the Communitarians are correct in pointing out that no individual is free of preconceived ideas, the librarian needs to be aware of their own attitudes and beliefs in order “to keep them from detrimentally influencing professional practice” (Bunge 1999, p.34).

Marco (1996, p.37) does draw limits, however; he writes that if there is a clear and present danger in providing the information, “the librarian has the duty not to impart it.” How, then, is it possible to determine a clear and present danger? Further, how do we set rules or guidelines that prevent the denial of information based on the personal whim or discomfort of the librarian, yet prevent actual harmful action?

Criteria for making judgments on limitation of information

Several factors need to be addressed to begin to make any determination. First, the difference between suspicion of intent and knowledge of intent is important in making any decision to deny information to a patron. Both Hauptman and Dowd used specific phrasing of the reference requests in their experiments in order to lead the reference librarians to suspect that their requests were for illegal purposes; however, neither one ever said directly that they were planning on blowing up a home or freebasing cocaine. It is easy to think of other reasons why a patron would request such information: curiosity, research, writing crime fiction, etc. Under conditions of suspicion of the patron’s intent, without real knowledge, it is very difficult to justify withholding the requested information.

If the reference librarian does have evidence or knowledge that the patron is going to use the information to do harm, however, denial of service may be justified. Someone coming to a reference desk saying “I want to rob a bank, and I need to know how to effectively plan the robbery” or “I need to know how to burn my neighbor’s house down so it looks like an accident,” would clearly be putting the reference librarian in a situation that crosses the lines of both ethical and legal activity. A librarian’s duty to provide information cannot be a license to freely cooperate in the commission of crimes. This type of activity would violate the strictest interpretation of value-neutrality because of its basis in the idea that knowledge leads to moral action and moral improvement. Reference service should err on the side of providing information if there is only a suspicion of criminal intent, but draw the line at providing information when knowledge or evidence of illegal or immoral intent exists.

Another criterion to determine the limits of providing information is the potential harm to the community if the suspicions about the patron’s intent turned out to be true. Koster (1992, p.76) writes that, in addition to professional values, each ethical decision on whether or not to share information includes “three other sets of values that are also relevant: broadly held societal values; the personal values of the librarian; and third-party values, of the user, the institution, or another party.” Koster feels that, since each situation is different, the weight given to each of the values under any particular circumstance will be different. A patron asking a reference librarian for information on radar detectors that implies he wants to get away with speeding must have the balance between suspicion and knowledge, and the balance between competing values, weighed differently than someone asking for information on poisoning a city’s water supply.

A related criterion is the concern about the long term good of the community when deciding whether to withhold information. The Enlightenment Liberal view is clear on this account; when information is withheld, the community will suffer because individuals will not be allowed to fully develop their reason, and will not contribute as effectively to the community’s needs. The question then becomes: is the potential short-term harm that may occur because of information being used for harmful ends serious enough to justify the long-term loss to the community that would occur by withholding information?

The question takes on a deeper meaning when the danger of a chilling effect on use of the library could occur. Bunge (1999, p.40) writes that we should “consider the result that might come from limiting the librarian’s obligations to the client… students who cannot rely on the confidentiality of their interactions with reference librarians…are likely to avoid using the reference librarian’s service.” If a decision is made to weigh community values and suspicion of intent over the individual’s right to know, patrons of the library, particularly those investigating controversial topics, may cease to view the library as a useful place to find information.

An extreme example of this scenario was seen with the FBI’s Library Awareness Program, and the potential for government collection of patron data that exists under the USA PATRIOT Act. Cleghorn (1971, p.398) reports an instance of federal agents “obtaining the names of people who had checked out books on guerilla warfare by Che Guevara…The librarian willingly provided the names, which included those of two teen-agers who apparently were working on term papers.” Deciding that material is unsuitable for patrons has the danger of leading down a slippery slope toward keeping records on, or reporting on patrons who do ask for such information. While this is a separate ethical issue altogether from value-neutrality, it needs to be kept in mind as an example of how determining that certain information is “sensitized”, to use Hauptman’s phrase, could lead to more serious, and intrusive, actions.

Conclusions

The vast majority of reference questions will have no ethical implications at all. There is no direct moral significance in giving patrons information on finding resources on gardening, the capitol of North Dakota, or population statistics of the former Soviet Union. However, if a question like Hauptman’s bomb-making request arises at the reference desk, the librarian will be put in a position of weighing different factors and values that will affect their decision on whether to provide that information. The criterion used to make the decision, including the intent of the patron (as far as it can be determined), the potential harm to the community, the remoteness of the harm, and the long-term good of the community, all should be weighed with the goal of maintaining the social role of librarianship as defenders of intellectual freedom and providers of information to the public.

Views, such as Communitarianism, that attempt to make it easier to withhold information, even for ethical reasons, run the risk of becoming contributors to censorship. If reference librarians attempt to judge all difficult questions by the fact that there is a potential harm to the community, then “our intellectual freedom and our ethics would soon be hostage to misapplied evidence in the hands of arbitrary authority” (Swan 1982, p.112). Librarians act to help the development of society by producing intellectually and ethically self-directed individuals through the fulfillment of their role obligations in a society based in the traditions of Enlightenment Liberalism. Before deciding to accept views that seek to make it acceptable to withhold information, librarians need to realize that, “if the truth were withheld from everyone, including you, then you would not have enough evidence to decide what are the truths that are to be withheld” (Mintz 1990, p.11).

Works Cited

Alfino, M. & Pierce, L., 1997. Information Ethics for Librarians. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland.

Alfino, M. & Pierce, L., 2001. The Social Nature of Information. Library Trends, 49, p.471-485.

American Library Association Council. 1995. Code of Ethics of the American Library Association. [Online]. Available at: http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/statementspols/codeofethics/codeethics.htm [accessed 10 January 2008].

Bunge, C.A., 1999. Ethics and the Reference Librarian. The Reference Librarian, 66, p. 25-43.

Cleghorn, R., 1971. When Readers Become Suspect. In B. Katz & J.J. Schwartz, eds. Library Lit.- The Best of 1970. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, p.398-404.

Dowd, R.C., 1989. I Want to Find Out How to Freebase Cocaine or Yet Another Unobtrusive Test of Reference Performance. The Reference Librarian, 25/26, p.483-493.

Finks, L.W., 1991. Librarianship Needs a New Code of Professional Ethics. American Libraries, 22, p.84-92.

Foskett, D.J., 1962. The Creed of a Librarian: No Politics, No Religion, No Morals. London: Library Association.

Gremmels, G.S., 1991. Reference in the Public Interest: An Examination of Ethics. RQ, 30, p.362-369.

Haste, H., 2005. Communitarianism and the Social Construction of Morality. [Online]. Available at: http://tigger.uic.edu/~lnucci/MoralEd/articles/haste.html [accessed 10 January 2008].

Hauptman, R., 1976. Professionalism or Culpability?: An Experiment in Ethics. Wilson Library Bulletin, 50, p.626-627.

Hauptman, R., 1979. Ethical Commitment and the Professions. Catholic Library World, 51, p.196-199.

Hauptman, R., 1988. Ethical Challenges in Librarianship. Phoenix: Oryx, 1988.

Hauptman, R., 1996. Professional Responsibility Reconsidered. RQ, 35, p.327-329.

Juznic, P., Urbanija, J., Grabrijan, E., Miklava, S., Oslaj, D. & Svoljsak, S., 2001. Excuse Me, How Do I Commit Suicide?: Access to Ethically Disputed Items of Information in Public Libraries. Library Management, 22.1/2. Available at: http:// 0-proquest.umi.com.helin.uri.edu/pqdweb?index=0&did=115921709&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt= 3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName= PQD&TS=1113865420&clientId=16241 [accessed 1 Apr. 2005].

Koster, G.E., 1992. Ethics in Reference Service: Codes, Case Studies, or Values? Reference Services Review, 20.1, p.71-80.

Marco, G.A., 1996. Ethics for Librarians: A Narrow View. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 28, p.33-38.

Mintz, A.P., ed., 1990. Information Ethics: Concerns for Librarianship and the InformationIndustry. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland.

Swan, J.C., 1982. Ethics at the Reference Desk: Comfortable Theories and Tricky Practices. The Reference Librarian, 4, p.99-116.

Wiener, P.B., 1987. Mad Bombers and Ethical Librarians: A Dialogue with Robert Hauptman and John Swan. Catholic Library World, 58, p.161-163.

John Pateman

What are we to make of the BBC2 White Season? What does it tell us about the white working class? And what is its relevance to public libraries? The BBC should be congratulated for their bravery in airing this series which was bound to stir up a certain level of controversy. Britain, the most class riddled country in the world, does not feel comfortable talking about class. It is now safe and acceptable to discuss race, gender, sexuality, disability, age and faith, but class is the final taboo. There is an inherent problem in designing a TV series about class because the media, like all professions, is dominated by the middle class. So it was inevitable that the White series was going to be a middle class view of working class people. However, BBC2 did well to avoid the worst stereotypes (as portrayed in programmes like Eastenders and Wife Swap) and constructed a realistic and challenging view of contemporary white working class culture.

The first programme in the series, Last Orders, told the story of the embattled Wibsey Working Men’s Club in the city of Bradford. The Wibsey Club has been operating at a loss for several years and members’ worries for their club mirror wider anxieties. With high unemployment and a perception that recent Asian immigrants receive the lion’s share of Government benefits, members feel that their very community is under threat and that racial tensions could erupt at any time. Once regarded as the ‘backbone of the nation’ white working class communities like Wibsey now feel themselves the object of ridicule. They have been forgotten by a Labour government which is reluctant to acknowledge their existence and they have fallen off the edge of the policy agenda, with the smoking ban the latest example.

What can the public library do for communities like Wibsey? First and foremost they can work with the white working class community to celebrate its history and culture. This can be achieved via local history research and projects documenting how the area has developed over the years. This will demonstrate how the community has changed over time, in common with many other parts of the UK. The reasons for these changes can then be examined. This will create a natural bridge to explore the history and culture of other communities which have moved into the area. Library programmes which are focused on inter generational and inter cultural projects are very successful at easing community tensions, building awareness and empathy between communities and developing social cohesion.

Rivers of Blood took a historical perspective on immigration and race relations. Forty years ago Enoch Powell, the maverick Conservative MP, gave a speech on immigration in which he predicted a future of racial strife in Britain. The ‘rivers of blood’ speech outraged the political establishment, who considered it both racist and inflammatory. However, the speech struck a chord with the public who wrote to him in their thousands, and London’s dockers came out on strike in support.

Freedom of information and freedom of expression were at the heart of Powell’s speech and these are also central to public library values. What the dockers were protesting about was that Powell was sacked for speaking out on a very important subject that was of great concern to them and their families. Nobody asked the white working class if they wanted large numbers of newcomers to settle in their communities. Those decisions were made by middle class professionals who did not live in these localities. The public library can play an important part in giving white working class people a voice and a place where they can air their views and concerns. This has inherent risks and needs to be carefully and sensitively managed but if successful it can make working class people feel listened to and valued. Public libraries pride themselves on their neutrality and they are one of the very few remaining free democratic public spaces in our communities.

White Girl was a compelling film about an inspirational 11 year old girl, Leah, and her family’s relocation to an entirely Muslim community in Bradford. It explored the hopes and tensions that can arise when two very different cultures collide. For Leah’s mother Debbie the move is about getting away from an abusive partner but being the only white family in a wholly Asian community was not part of her plan. For Leah, the feeling of isolation is heightened at school when she discovers that she and her siblings are the only white kids. But Leah views the Muslim culture and faith with innocent fascination, finding a refuge of calm and safety which is in sharp contrast to the pain and sadness at home. Befriending Yasmin, her young Asian neighbour, and with the gentle guidance of teachers at school, Leah learns that her new world is not as alien as she first feared. However, nothing prepares Debbie for the shock of seeing her daughter wearing a hijab.

This programme follows the theme of inter cultural learning and public libraries can play a significant role in helping different communities to understand each other. This can be achieved by putting on displays and exhibitions and holding events which explore aspects of community culture. Sport and the arts provide a very safe platform for these issues to be discussed around and can lead onto more profound subjects. The popular media constantly demonises Muslims, and public libraries can help to portray more positive images of this much maligned community. Having stock relevant to both white working class and Muslim communities is also very important and this can help to promote togetherness rather than division. The recent MLA proposals on managing ‘extremist’ stock should be vigorously opposed by public libraries which already have stock policies for dealing with these issues.

The Poles are Coming looked at the issues created by the recent large influx of migrant workers from EU accession states. This phase of immigration is different from those that preceded it in two respects – the numbers are much larger and the immigrants are our fellow white Europeans. But this does not make it any easier for local communities to accept. Listening to some people in Peterborough it would appear that the city is being pushed to breaking point by the arrival of a huge number of Eastern Europeans. Some want the Poles, and others, to go home. So does the city of Gdansk which now cannot find enough workers to fill its shipyards or build its football stadium for Euro 2012.

There are few communities in the UK which have not been affected by this issue. Places like Lincolnshire where I work, and which have seen little demographic change, are now having to manage large numbers of new arrivals. This is a challenge to migrant workers and to local communities, and public libraries can work with both to ease tensions and build mutual understanding. Migrant workers are attracted to public libraries because they provide free internet access for them to email home and look up first language websites. Public libraries are an ideal venue for different communities to meet and build awareness of each other’s needs, many of which are shared – a decent home, a good school, a secure job, health and happiness. Positive action can be taken to recruit migrant workers to public library services and work can be done with local schools to develop community solidarity.

Work with primary schools is particularly important and The Primary captured a term in the life of Welford Primary School in Birmingham’s Handsworth area. Welford is a thriving school with pupils from 17 different ethnic backgrounds and only a handful of white pupils. The film followed headmaster Chris Smith and the pupils at Welford revealing what life is like for nine year old Nathaniel, 11 year old Aleyx and their diverse peer group, Mariam, Saubia, Conrad and Xhosa. The film was an inspiring example of how a charismatic head and his staff can navigate their way around the minefield of community relations and build a cohesive school based community.

Although the school library was not featured in this film, public libraries are well placed to work with local schools and raise cultural awareness through reading, story times, talks, events and displays. School Library Services can supply materials for the classroom which support national curriculum areas such as Citizenship. Public libraries can work with the Ethnic Minority Achievement Service and Traveller Education Service to support pupils for whom English is not their first language or those who do not have a cultural tradition of going to school.

Working with young people is very important because this will help to shape the views and attitudes of the next generation, but working with older people is vital as well. The final programme in the White series, All White in Barking, looked at how a traditional white working class community in East London was dealing with demographic change. Lifetime Barking residents Susan and Jeff have never said hello to their Nigerian neighbours, insisting that ‘they are not our people’. Dave is so angry by the influx of non white faces to Barking that he becomes a BNP activist – yet both his daughters have relationships with the very people he is lashing out against.

Public libraries can work with people like Dave to find out why he is angry and what this is based on. If it springs from popular media denigration of new arrivals then the public library can help Dave understand the real situation. This could be through the production of myth busting information giving the facts and fiction about immigration, the real numbers and the stories behind them. This can show that new arrivals are not taking our jobs, schools and health service away from us; that migrant workers do not jump the Council house queue or hospital waiting lists; that refugees often live in appalling accommodation conditions and are exploited by employers; that asylum seekers are not legally allowed to work and have to live on

‘Views sought on controversial stock in libraries guidance’ (1)

‘Smith seeking to close websites that promote jihad’ (2)

‘Lecturers warn against college “spy” rules’ (3)

By John Pateman

A common theme runs through these recent news headlines – the Government wants to recruit librarians, internet site providers, students and lecturers in its ‘War Against Terror’.

The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) has launched a new consultation on managing ‘controversial stock’ in libraries. This follows from the Prime Minister’s national security statement to Parliament in November 2007. The MLA was commissioned to produce guidance for public libraries on the management of ‘extremist and inflammatory material’.

The first principles of the draft guidance are that ‘Free expression and open libraries remain essential to British democracy’; and ‘Libraries operate within the law to provide free access to a diversity of information, opinion and ideas in a neutral and hospitable environment.’

The problem is that stock selection is now subject to a range of laws, some of which are contradictory. The guidance seems to suggest that individual librarians should use their personal judgement in deciding which law to apply. One consequence of this could be that librarians become risk averse and decide not to stock books which can be regarded as ‘controversial, extremist or inflammatory’.

There is a precedent for this which the guidance does not mention, and that was the disastrous effect on stock selection of Clause 28 which made it an offense to ‘promote homosexuality’. As a result many library authorities refused to stock the Pink Paper or gay books and this policy and practice remained in place long after Clause 28 was repealed.

For many years the primary legislation relating to public libraries was the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 which puts a duty on local authorities ‘to meet the general requirements and any special requirements of adults and children.’ As the guidance points out, these duties may present ‘problems for libraries located in areas that contain a high proportion of residents with radical beliefs.’

However, the Public Library Act has now been qualified by the Terrorism Act 2006 which defines a ‘terrorist publication’ as one that is likely ‘to be understood by some or all of the actual or potential recipients as a direct or indirect encouragement or inducement to commit, prepare or instigate terrorist acts’. Contents that are likely to indirectly encourage terrorism include any matter ‘which glorifies the commission or preparation (whether in the past, future or generally) of acts of terrorism.’

A librarian could be found guilty of providing access to this material if it was proved that they did so as the result of both a ‘guilty act’ (such as loaning the material) and a ‘guilty mind’ (the intention to encourage or induce an act of terrorism). The sentence for this offence is imprisonment for a maximum of 7 years.

A librarian could also be found guilty of the offence of ‘encouragement to terrorism’ but this is less likely because the defence of innocent dissemination is wider. The maximum sentence for this offence is also 7 years.

Section 3 of the Terrorism Act applies to providing internet access and a librarian must comply with any section 3 ‘notice’. The notice is a ‘declaration by a police constable that the statement, article or record is unlawfully terrorism related.’ When the notice is issued the librarian must, within 2 working days, stop making the matter available to the public (for example, by blocking an offending website).

Section 58 of the Terrorism Act makes it an offence to ‘collect or make a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’. The librarian has a defence if he can prove that he has a ‘reasonable excuse’ for his action or possession. The maximum sentence for this offence is 10 years imprisonment.

The MLA advises that ‘Librarians and library authorities should take pre-emptive precautions to ensure that information that is likely to be useful to “terrorists” is not stocked.’ This is a green light for the culling of any material which might pose a potential risk. This could include classics such a Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence and Guerrilla Warfare by Che Guevara. The MLA guidance is that ‘historical accounts that could be interpreted as glorifying terrorism may be stocked if there is little to no possibility that a current reader would try and emulate the acts described.’ However, there is evidence that the works of Lawrence and Guevara are being used by combatants in Iraq and so they could fall foul of the Terrorism Act. And presumably any novels which contain detailed descriptions of ‘terrorist’ activities should be removed from library shelves as well.

Another important piece of legislation which has been qualified by the Terrorism Act is the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. Sections of these Acts indicate that by banning certain ‘extremist’ publications from libraries, Librarians and library authorities could be behaving in a racially discriminatory manner and / or operating a racially discriminatory practice. However, there is a critical overriding ‘disclaimer’ with regard to ‘safeguarding national security.’

The MLA guidance is that ‘Librarians and library authorities should not be unduly concerned with the provisions of race relations legislation, and focus on avoidance of commission of the offences created by the Terrorism Act.’ This is a particularly worrying element of the guidance because Librarians are effectively being asked to disregard the Race Relations Act to avoid falling foul of the Terrorism Act. In this respect the guidance does not achieve its aim of helping to promote community cohesion through the provision of a balanced range of information, learning and cultural resources.

The Public Order Act 1986 creates a number of offences in relation to conduct intended to stir up racial and religious hatred. This includes the display, distribution or possession of ‘threatening, abusive or insulting’ material if ‘racial hatred would be likely to be stirred up’. The stocking of ‘extremist’ literature within a library suggests that Librarians could be susceptible to this crime although there is a defence of innocent dissemination. The maximum penalty is 7 years imprisonment.

The MLA advice is that ‘Librarians and library authorities would be wise to take pre-emptive precautions to avoid having to rely on a defence.’ Once again the MLA is advising librarians to be cautious and risk averse and to remove from their shelves any materials which could fall into this category. This seems to be contrary to the first principles of the guidance that ‘Libraries operate within the law to provide free access to a diversity of information, opinion and ideas in a neutral and hospitable environment.’ In this regard the guidance does not help libraries to fulfil their role as access points to publicly available information.

Library authorities have an obligation to carry out their duties in accordance with the provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998. Article 10 (1) of this Act states that ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.’ Article 10 (2) qualifies this right by making it subject to a number of competing interests such as national security.

Once again, the MLA guidance urges caution and advises Librarians to comply with the Terrorism Act rather than the Human Rights Act. The guidance is that ‘A library itself is not under a duty to guarantee the expression of all ideas for all people.’ This appears to contradict the first principles of the guidance that ‘Free expression and open libraries remain essential to British democracy’.

If a publication contains references to ‘extremist’ beliefs, then excluding or banning it may be an offence under the European Convention on Human Rights which includes the right to ‘manifest’ one’s religion or belief. However, as with Article 10 this freedom is not absolute and can be qualified on a number of grounds, including compliance with the Terrorism Act.

The Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 requires local authorities to involve ‘local persons’ in the exercise of a particular function (such as stock selection) if it ‘considers it appropriate’ to do so. If local people are involved in stock selection the MLA guidance is that ‘it will depend on the circumstances of the particular case as to whether the legislation will apply to the particular individual or organisation.’ This statement is not equivocal or clear and further guidance or clarification is needed.

Overall the MLA guidance does not achieve its aim of meeting the needs of library managers and staff in the selection, presentation and promotion of material in the context of wider stock policy. It is far too cautious and risk averse and will have the effect of controlling and restricting the selection of stock that can be interpreted as ‘controversial’, ‘extremist’ or ‘inflammatory’. It is not possible to agree a common definition of these terms in the same way that ‘Obscenity’ could not be defined within the Obscene Publications Act, which has consequently fallen into disuse.

As well as posing a threat to stock selection, this guidance also challenges the professional ethics of the librarian. Rather than becoming an agent of the state’s security apparatus librarians, of all people, should be standing up for freedom of information and freedom of expression. The response of librarians to this guidance should be the same as that of students and lecturers who have warned that new government guidelines on tackling Muslim ‘extremism’ in universities must not become a ‘snoopers’ charter.’ And instead of culling our book stocks and censuring the internet we should be supporting the views of Mark Littlewood of Progressive Vision who commented that ‘The idea that terrorism can be thwarted by seeking to shut down extremist websites is absurd and dangerous.’

References

(1) Consultation on draft guidance on the management of controversial materials in public libraries, MLA, 2008

(2) ‘Smith seeking to close websites that promote jihad’, Daily Telegraph, 18 January 2008

(3) ‘Lecturers warn against college “spy” rules’, Morning Star, 23 January 2008

John Pateman

Information for Social Change

24 January 2008

By Esther Obachi

http://www.wsflibrary.org/index.php/User:Obachi

The December 2007 elections were carried out peacefully by Kenyans. There was a mood of of change in the air as giants from the previous government were felled. The Kibaki gorvernment had opened up the stage for openness and freedom of expression that gave Kenyan people encouragement for even a better Kenya. There was hope that Kenya was headed for a better democracy.

This encouraged more young people into the political arena. For the first time, Kenya saw many independent youths come to parliament, not because they came from rich backgrounds, like it is often the case, but because they were determined to bring change to the government. Many expected the election process to be carried out smoothly as it had been in the previous one.

Rumors of pre-marked stolen presidential votes were openly aired in the local media where vehicles were featured carrying ballot boxes to unknown destinations. Kenyans kept vigil and took nothing to chance as the election date approached.

The election day was the most peaceful of them all as people woke up early to vote and retired to their houses to watch or listen to the election process through different media.

No one expected the election process to turn out the way it did. Everyone thought that the Kenyan democracy had matured enough to stop any kind of rigging. This had been seen as true when every suspicious move by the would be riggers was thwarted by the media that kept vigil. No incident was reported on the election day. Kenyans were determined to have this process completed peacefully so as to give them a chance to move on with their usual activities. The International Observers were impressed by the calmness by which Kenyans voted. Everything was as expected.

Soon-after, provisional results started pouring into media houses and were aired live. The parliamentary results indicated shock as giants were felled by political non-starters. The first senior government official to go was the former Vice President and Minister for Home Affairs, who was defeated by a young lawyer who had never ventured into politics before. Many other bigwigs followed suite. There was excitement among the electorate as their five years wait had finally come to an end and they were now making their voices heard through the ballot box. The few who managed to survive the elections had prooved to the electorate that they could be trusted and that they valued them (electorate) and their views. The Presidential results were also being relayed into the media houses and Raila Odingo was leading by an average of 500,000 votes.

Then we started seeing unusual delays in the releasing of results from some areas. The Chairman of the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), Mr. Samuel Kivuitu expressed his fears that something was amiss because the returning officers from these areas were not reachable and that they had even switched off their cellphones. However, he assured Kenyans that all would be well. The electorates` anxiety turned into excitement and later into anger as the delay continued without any explanation. The electorate demanded that the results be availed. The ECK chairman joked about the delay saying that if the results were being delayed because they were being “cooked”, then he would not accept them.

Then the inevitable happened. The presidential provisional results that had been aired earlier started changing and the media started giving different presidential results. This is when all hell broke lose and the anxious electorate took to the streets even before the results were released.

Later, the ECK chairman was forced to release the presidential election results that he himself agrees were not properly tallied. President Kibaki had won the elections! The chairman, Mr. Kivuitu claims that he was under a lot of pressure from president Kibaki

OBITUARY: Ruth Frow, 1923 – 2008.

AFTER service in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, Ruth’s interest in labour politics led her in 1945 to join the CPGB, in which she found “enormous comradeship and warm-hearted generous people.”

She was involved with the British Peace Committee and became the secretary of the Teachers for Peace group. At a CPGB summer school, she met her future husband Eddie, finding that they had a common interest in books, particularly on labour history.

They saw their respective collections as complementary and so decided to merge them into a rudimentary history library.

Ruth moved to Manchester to eventually set up house with Eddie, who was then an Amalgamated Engineering Union official. Partly influenced by the Communist Party historian James Klugman, they spent their holidays scouring the country to buy books and memorabilia of the broad labour movement. On each trip, they filled their little 1937 Morris van, which was always driven cheerfully by Ruth.

As secretary of the Stretford Communist Party branch in the early 1960s, Ruth worked hard for the Daily Worker bazaars and was the branch delegate to the 26th congress of the party. She was also secretary of the Manchester Peace Committee and the first vice-chairman of Manchester CND.

Ruth was an active member of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and represented Manchester Teachers Association on the Manchester and Salford Trades Council. She was president of Altrincham NUT in 1970. In her professional career, she became deputy head at a large comprehensive.

As Ruth and Eddie’s collection grew, it filled more than just the walls of every room at 111 Kings Road. Many of the books that they had unearthed were irreplaceable gems. Apart from on open days and other events, the couple always welcomed visitors to see the collection.

In 1972, a charitable trust was set up and, in 1974, Ruth and Eddie gave the free use of their home to the North-West Labour History group to pursue its activities.

In 1987, Salford City Council generously decided to move the library at its expense into Jubilee House, a former nurses’ home.

A lottery award enabled the library to create its own website and put its catalogue online, allowing anybody could search its contents. Email enquiries poured in from many countries and the library gained an international reputation.

Visitors from home and abroad were always greeted with a really warm, personal welcome by Ruth. All felt the friendly hospitable environment she created, particularly the students who came to further their research. She was happy to conduct a tour of the library’s 40 rooms and draw on her detailed encyclopaedic knowledge of working-class history to answer any questions.

The Friends of the Library was started by Ruth and Salford MP Frank Allaun became its president. Ruth’s organisational skills were put to good use in mounting many exhibitions in the library and elsewhere and also events in the library annexe. She had a major input into all the books and pamphlets published jointly by her and Eddie.

Her research for her MEd at Manchester University on the half-time system of education was later published in a book, which is now a standard work on the subject. Both Ruth and Eddie were later awarded honorary degrees from the Central Lancashire and Salford Universities for their services to the labour movement.

When Salford Council reduced its support, Ruth played a large part in winning financial and other support from trade unions and friends, thus making possible the library’s continued independent existence.

Apart from her politics, Ruth specialised in English literature. She was passionately fond of poetry, particularly Shelley. She kept herself up to date with the latest developments in the theatre and film, regularly attended Hallé concerts and was an opera enthusiast.

Unsurprisingly, her wide circle of friends extended well beyond the labour movement. She made an indelible impression on all she met.

When Eddie died, she carried on undaunted working for the library. Never did she see herself as a leader, though many others did, but rather as the servant of the library – that was what mattered to her.

A month before her sudden, tragic death on January 11, she welcomed the news that the library had won a

John Pateman

The War on Terror poses three main threats to public libraries: (1) Government money is being diverted from UK public services, including libraries, to fund illegal invasions of sovereign nations; (2) the fear and scaremongering engendered by the War on Terror is allowing the government to erode the civil liberties and democratic values which underpin our library services. The freedoms of information and expression have been reduced and undermined; censorship and surveillance are on the increase; (3) The threat to our communities is that the War on Terror is creating tensions and divisions. The Muslim population has been alienated and many young Muslims radicalised. Asylum seekers, refugees and migrant workers (all lumped together by the tabloid press) are viewed with suspicion and hostility. The BNP has never been so strong. The threats to diversity and community cohesion are clear.

The Threat to Civil Liberties

The Police and Criminal Evidence Act has transformed the powers of the police, allowing them to make arrests for minor offences such as dropping litter, or for protesting against the government. Once held, they can fingerprint, photograph and take DNA evidence from you – by force, if necessary – and hold it in a national database for ever, whether or not you are charged. The Prevention of Terrorism Act gives the police the power to carry out searches which do not have to be founded on reasonable suspicion. Control orders are a form of house arrest under which the liberty of the recipient is severely restricted upon an order made by the Home Secretary. The Campaign Against Criminalising Communities has claimed this is a ‘grave warning that no one is safe from punishment without trial and the government is moving further towards a police state.’
Government scaremongering, assisted by the tabloid media, has resulted in a majority of people being willing to give up their civil liberties to combat terrorism. Nearly a quarter of the people surveyed for the British Social attitudes study believed that torturing terror suspects would be a ‘price worth paying’ to combat the threat. And a staggering 50% found it acceptable to deny them a jury trial. 70% backed compulsory identity cards for all adults, while an astonishing 80% said that they would accept phone tapping and the electronic tagging of terrorist subjects. 35% even backed a ban on peaceful protests.

In its 2007 World Report Human Rights Watch warned that the War on Terrorism poses a growing threat to free expression. ‘Counter terrorism has given new vigour to some old forms of censorship, and created new ones’. In 2004 only three European countries had laws criminalising the glorification of terrorism. By 2006, thirty six countries had passed such laws, including the UK. Another post 9/11 legacy took place on 30 March 2007 when the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution that violated international standards on freedom of expression. This resolution stated that freedom of expression may be restricted ‘to ensure respect for religions and convictions’.

The Threat To Community Cohesion The biggest British victims of The War on Terror have been the Muslim community which, prior to the hysteria created by 9/11, had lived relatively peacefully in the UK for many years. Our Muslim communities now live in fear – not of terrorism but of the state and its brands of state terrorism. The Archbishop of York has warned that Britain is in danger of ‘coming close to a police state’ in the wake of the arrest of suspected terrorists in Birmingham. He criticised 90 day detention, likening it to Uganda under the rule of Idi Amin. The Birmingham Central Mosque chairperson accused the government of ‘picking on’ Muslims in the wake of these ‘terror arrests’ He described the arrests as a ‘persecuting course of action’ which the government had taken to justify its terror laws. ‘They have invented this perception of a threat. To justify that, they have to maintain incidents to prove something is going on.’

An even more sinister suggestion is that university staff should snoop on students suspected of ‘extremism’. The government has described what it considers to be a serious threat posed by radical Muslims and has issued guidance to colleges and universities calling on them to monitor student activity. These plans were condemned by the University and Colleges Union (UCU) which backed a motion at its congress calling on members to ‘resist attempts by government to engage colleges and universities in activities which amount to increased surveillance of Muslim or other minority students and to the use of members of staff for such witch hunts.’ UCU general secretary Sally Hunt commented: ‘Delegates have made it clear that they will oppose government attempts to restrict academic freedom or free speech on campus. Universities must remain safe spaces for lecturers and students to discuss and debate all sorts of ideas, including those that some people may consider challenging, offensive and even extreme.’ The union expressed outrage at the ‘continuing demonisation of Muslim and other minority communities’.

The Threat to Libraries

These latest proposals to spy on students would include the reporting to police of student’s research activities, internet use and reading habits. If this sounds somewhat fanciful, we should remind ourselves of the current situation in the US, the home of the brave and the land of the free. The PATRIOT Act makes it illegal for librarians to refuse any police request to see what anyone is reading. Librarians can go to jail if they even contact a lawyer for advice. Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act allows the FBI to access records, including library records, without a warrant – or even telling anyone. There is no obligation on the authorities to show a reason to believe that the subject of the surveillance order is engaged in criminal activity. The FBI can obtain a user’s reading and web browsing documents without probable cause. There is a criminal ban on librarians revealing the use of Section 215 orders to their readers. In 2004 Congress voted not to amend the PATRIOT Act because the Justice Department claimed that ‘a suspected terrorist had used e-mail services at a public library.’

In November 2006 a student of Iranian origin, was working in the library at the University of California when security guards asked to see his university identity card. When he failed to produce his ID card they ordered him to leave the library, but he refused, arguing that he was studying and he had to continue his research. The guards called the LA police which sent a patrol squad, armed with Tasers. In a video broadcast on the internet, you can see and hear how the police fired their laser stun gun several times at the student, who is screaming in pain and vehemently protesting. ‘Here is your PATRIOT ACT, here is your abuse of power’ cried the student in front of several classmates, powerless witnesses to the aggression.

In April 2007 a US librarian claimed that the PATRIOT Act invades privacy. In prepared testimony for a Senate panel he said the government uses the Act and other laws to learn, without proper judicial oversight or any after the fact review, what citizens are researching in libraries. The American Library Association and some library services have also challenged the Act. If anyone thinks that such an infringement of civil liberties could not happen in the UK, cast your minds back to the Poll Tax when enabling legislation was passed allowing authorised access to library records to locate Poll Tax defaulters. The Poll Tax was defeated but the enabling legislation remains.

Also, next time you do a Google search, remember that a record is kept of your computer’s IP address and the browser that you used, along with details of the search itself. If you use Google Mail, then every message that you send and receive will have been automatically scanned in order to work out which adverts the website should show you. Google keeps data on that, along with records of which ads you clicked on and generic information such as how often and when you log in. Search data and email messages are kept on servers in the US where Google can be forced to hand them over to the government when it comes looking for personal data in the name of the War on Terror.

The money spent on destroying Iraqi infrastructure (including libraries) could have been spent on public services (including libraries) in the UK. We are constantly told that, despite being one of the world’s richest countries, we cannot afford to sustain our existing level of public services. At the same time that we are being asked to tighten our belts in the NHS and local government, the official cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have surged massively. Britain’s involvement in these conflicts cost

We never anticipated the interest in Evergreen, Elizabeth Garcia tells me
over a cup of coffee at the Peachtree Center in downtown Atlanta.
Elizabeth Garcia is a librarian who works with the state-wide public
information network for electronic services (PINES), a consortium which was
formed in 1999 by some 265 public libraries of Georgia. She is employed by
the Georgia Public Library Service, a state-agency.
In these days, librarians from all over the USA, but also from Canada,
Australia, Singapore and India (and soon probably from other parts of the
world as well) are flooding the PINES staff with inquiries about their new
technical system.
One of the reasons for the excitement is that Evergreen, as the system is
called, is an in-house production.
Librarians use vast and complicated computerized systems to manage all the
catalogs, collections, acquisitions, loans, networked activities (such as interlibrary
loans) etc., plus their own work and organization. In order to be able to
implement such an integrated library system (ILS), the libraries usually buy it
from a vendor of some particular commercial brand of ILS.
Elizabeth Garcia. Photo MB

However, at Georgia Public Library Service, the librarians got thoroughly fed
up with the costly system (Sirsi) they had bought, and this led them to the
decision to go for an own system, built by themselves. Thus Evergreen has
been developed by PINES under the leadership of Brad LaJeunesse, a young
software developer who has worked with GPLS since he finished his studies in
2001. Development on the challenging Evergreen project began in 2004.
Evergreen is written in Perl to run on the GNU-Linux platform. It uses
PostgreSQL database server. Yes, you guessed right: Evergreen is
completely free and open source software (FOSS). i
The intellectual freedom which goes with free software (which is licensed
under the General Public License, GPL) and the openness of its code give
librarians important reasons to prefer Evergreen. “The decision to use open
source software fits philosophically with that of the public library”, as
LaJeunesse summarized the issue in an interview for Library Journal 2005.ii
At that time, Evergreen had not yet passed the reality test.
Evergreen is still a Version 1.0 system, Elizabeth Garcia points out. In fact.
PINES migrated to the new ILS only in September 2006. Has Evergreen so far
lived up to the expectations?
From Garcia I definitively get the impression that it has. And, nota bene, she
is not a salesperson or even a software developer herself. She is a library and
information specialist (LIS), originally a medical librarian, who has been
involved in the testing of Evergreen, and in the design of the details of its user
interface. At this stage she knows the system well enough to support the
other LIS, who by now are using it over the Internet in their daily work.
Common sense among the LIS had somehow ruled out the possibility that a
fully-fledged ILS might be produced in-house and based on FOSS. Andrew K.
Pace says as much in his book about libraries, software vendors and the
information markets:
“One thing is certain, however, and that is that the full development of a
usable and sharable open-source integrated library system remains
highly unlikely.[...] open source as a wide-range solution is noble, but
not viable.” iii
Well, the Evergreen system gives the librarians ground to believe that the
contrary might be true. Which is a third reason for them to take an interest in
it.
A wave of inquiries about Evergreen came in February this year, after an
announcement from Ex Libris, the corporation which owns an ILS called
Endeavour. This widely used product would no longer be maintained and
updated, it was said.
We simply had to take some new decisions to meet the new demand, says
Elizabeth Garcia. After discussion , it was decided that the team of four
software developers who wrote the Evergreen code would set up a separate
business company to serve libraries which implement Evergreen and charge
them for their services.
Equinox, the new companyiv, announced its presence on the ILS market 30
June, just a couple of days before I met up with Elizabeth Garcia in Atlanta.
As a consequence, Georgia Public Library Service will henceforward pay
Equinox fees for Evergreen updates. And new staff must be hired at PINES to
do the system administration job of Brad LaJeunesse and the other guys, who
are now busy working for Equinox.
If each of our libraries purchased a vendor product independently, it would
cost well over 15 million per year. We are able to provide service to all of our
libraries for 1.6 million per year. That includes the provision of the ILS to our
libraries, support and training, processing of overdue notices and provision of
courier services. It is quite a deal, Garcia confirms.
How much or how little money Evergreen will in the end save the library ,
compared to proprietary systems, remains to be seen. This is not a simple
count. However, FOSS-based solutions generally tend to be economically
affordable, in addition to being freely modifiable and controllable by their
users. That, of course, is an additional reason for librarians to consider
them.
Mikael Böök is an international library activist and a founding member of the Helsinki-based
Internet service cooperative Katto-Meny.
Endnotes:
i “ Librarians stake their future on open source”, http://www.linux.com/articles/58836.
ii http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA510787.html .
iii Pace, Andrew K.: The Ultimate Digital Library. Where the New Information Players Meet.
American Library Association 2003, p 23.
iv About Equinox: http://esilibrary.com/esi/home.html

Save and Burn, a documentary by Julian Samuel

Cinéma Parallèle (Ex-Centris) 26 – 29 September, 2005 3536, boul. Saint-Laurent, Montréal, H2X 2V1

http://www.ex-centris.com/?s=piece&z=detail&i=4732

Rachad Antonius will introduce the documentary.

Rachad Antonius et professeur de sociologie l’UQAM. Mathématicien et sociologue, il est l’auteur de nombreux articles et rapports de recherche sur les sociétés arabes et sur les conflits dans la région, ainsi que de deux ouvrages de méthodologie quantitative.

SAVE AND BURN

JULIAN SAMUEL, CANADA, 2004, 81 MIN, V.O. ANGLAISE. DISTRIBUTION. : JULIAN SAMUEL.

Save and Burn replace l’institution de la bibliothèque dans un contexte politique percutant. Généralement considérée comme un élément de préservation de la culture, elle est aux prises avec les idéologies de son temps. Le film aborde des thèmes tels que l’aspect commercial des bibliothèques, la gestion irresponsable et la fermeture de bibliothèques, les dérives des droits de reproduction, mais, surtout, souligne le fait que l’Occident ne reconnaît pas l’Orient pour la valeur de son patrimoine culturel.

Save and Burn puts the institution of the library within a startling political context. Generally considered a preserver of culture, the documentary points out how libraries are subject to the ideologies of their time and place. The film assays the commercialization of libraries, the irresponsible weeding and closing of libraries, the excesses of copyright law, but most of all, the fact that the West has not recognized the Orient for much of its cultural heritage.

FILMOGRAPHIE : THE LIBRARY IN CRISIS (2002), CITY OF THE DEAD AND THE WORLD EXHIBITIONS (1995), INTO THE EUROPEAN MIRROR (1994)

26 AU 29 SEPTEMBRE 2005: 15H, 21H.

English and French reviews of Save and Burn, 2005

Save and Burn: 80:34 minutes, NTSC; 2004

Save and Burn builds from The Library in Crisis (2002) by deepening an understanding of the history of civilization through the phenomenon of the library. From ancient China, India, Islam, and the Graeco Roman world, we see how the library radiated knowledge and spiritual values, and facilitated the cross fertilization of ideas from one culture to another.

Save and Burn puts the institution of the library within a startling political context. Generally considered a preserver of culture, the documentary points out how libraries are subject to the ideologies of their time and place – and not above them, as may have been assumed. The film assays the commercialization of libraries, the irresponsible weeding and closing of libraries, the excesses of copyright law, but most of all, the fact that the West has not recognized the Orient for much of its cultural heritage.

The film is provocative. Historically, libraries have been used to promote or inhibit democratic debate, with a nod to the Patriot Act. The filmmaker, who was born in Pakistan, combines exquisite footage of the Alexandrian Library, the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, and Bromley House in Nottingham. Interviews include Tom Twiss, Government Information Librarian, University of Pittsburgh, who gives testimony on the destruction of Palestinian libraries by Israeli soldiers, accompanied with painful footage, as well as the fate of Iraqi libraries during the “liberation.”

List of people interviewed in Save and Burn:

Ross Shimmon, Secretary General, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions; Isam al Khafaji, ex-advisor to USA forces in Iraq; (Holland) Ambassador Taher Khalifa, Director, Bibliotheca Alexandria; Robin Adams, Librarian and College Archivist, Trinity College, Dublin; Bernard Meehan, Keeper of Manuscripts, Trinity College; Charles Benson, Keeper of Early Printed Books and Special Collections, Trinity College; Michael Ryan, Director, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin; Declan Kiberd, author, Inventing Ireland, University of Dublin; David Grattan, Manager, Canadian Conservation Institute, Ottawa; Paul Bégan, Conservation Scientist, Canadian Conservation Institute, Ottawa; John Feather, Professor of Library & Information Studies, Loughborough University, author of The Information Society, Royal Society of Arts, London; Alistair Black, Professor of Library History, Leeds Metropolitan University, London; Erling Bergan, Editor, Librarians Union of Norway, Olso; Peter Hoare, library historian and adviser on historic libraries, Bromley House Library, Nottingham; Tom Twiss, Government Information Librarian, University of Pittsburgh.

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Note: I transcribed these French reviews from the newspapers – you will notice errors.

Montreal Gazette Wednesday, September 21, 2005

By BERNARD PERUSSE

Books in the balance: Documentary looks at threats to libraries

We think of the library as a quasi-sacred institution – a shrine to the works of great thinkers, philosophers, writers and historians. As such, it offers comforting proof that knowledge and wisdom transcend politics and ideology. Or do they? In his latest documentary, Save and Burn, Montreal filmmaker Julian Samuel offers a sobering reflection on the baser forces that have threatened libraries over the years. An impressive group of experts – including Robin Adams, a librarian at Dublin’s Trinity College; Taher Khalifa, director of Egypt’s Bibliotheca Alexandrina; and Tom Twiss, a librarian at the University of Pittsburgh – face the camera. Together, they offer historical background and make the case that the beloved institution has been, and continues to be, jeopardized by commercialization, technology and the prejudices of global conflict and racism. The destruction of Palestinian libraries by Israeli soldiers and last year’s arson attack on the United Talmud Torahs school library in St. Laurent are but examples. The premise, which builds on Samuel’s 2002 film The Library in Crisis, is novel and provocative – although the focus gets lost at points with political commentary on such hot-button topics as Israeli policy in the Middle East and the American invasion of Iraq. While political issues are obviously crucial to the concept of “bibliocide” denounced by the film, we sometimes feel far from the initial premise. It all works, however, during an examination of how the U.S. Patriot Act changed the landscape after the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings by allowing the government to withold data about itself from library users while it gained greater powers to examine their personal records. In the end, Save and Burn makes its point most eloquently in scenes like one showing a young Arab man reading from James Joyce’s Dubliners in his native language. That’s when you realize how crucial it is to protect the unifying power of books from the forces of darkness.

Save and Burn opens Monday at Ex-Centris. For details, go to www.ex-centris.com Save and Burn Rating 3 Playing at: Ex-Centris cinema from Monday to Sept. 29. Parents’ guide: for all.

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La presse, 24 Septembre, 2005, “Save and Burn Documentaire de Julian Samuel,” par Aleksi K. Lepage

Julian Samuel conviendra sans doute avec nous que son documentaire “Save and Burn,” par ailleurs fascinant, n’est pas des plus accessible et ne s’adresse pas au plus vaste public, qui préfère généralement apprendre en s’amusant (ou l’inverse, plutot). Vite dit: “Save and Burn” est un film pour professeurs, pour universitaires et pour tous ceux qui ont frolé de près ou de loin les classes d’histoire, de littérature ou de sciences politiques. Samuel ne nous prend pas pour des nuls (et pourtant, s il savait!).

Très mal informé, après une lecture trop rapid du communiqué de presse, nous nous attendions

Saying Goodbye to God By Steve Fesenmaier Sept. 25, 2006

Atheism – 2006. 71 minutes by Julian Samuel

The world premiere of this film will take place in Montreal at the Festival of New Cinema and New Media between Oct. 18-28th. Visit their website at – http://www.nouveaucinema.ca/EN/index.php?img=accueil_hover

Congratulations to Julian Samuel, a Canadian with a long career as a filmmaker, novelist, critic, artist and social activist, on producing this studied and sensitive film about the place of religion in our age. Indeed, it is without a doubt the most thought-provoking film that I have seen on the subject

I am familiar with Samuel’s work mainly through two previous films on the subject of libraries in our age. I screened “The Library in Crisis” at The Greenbrier Resort several years ago at the annual fall West Virginia Library Association conference. Last spring I presented his feature film on contemporary libraries, “Save and Burn”, at the spring library conference. I have written published reviews of both films and have provided Mr. Samuel with some information while he produced “Save and Burn”, originally was planned to be a sequel to “The Library in Crisis.” That was before 9/11.

Julian Samuel’s film shows the viewer that at least one person from the Muslim world has the courage to stand up against religious fundamentalists. He dares to present something that shows that all non-believers everywhere share a common ground in their opposition to religious obsession. Few Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, etc., filmmakers have shown the same level of courage as of late.

I believe that recent books on Spinoza including Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, by Rebecca Goldstein; The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World by Matthew Stewart and Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain show that the widespread intolerance of his era is still very much alive now despite the widespread belief that “religion is dead,” at least for non-fanatics.

Samuel uses various artistic techniques to break the boredom of the many talking heads in his film. As we all know, in many documentaries, talking heads can get quite boring, both to listen to and to watch. “Atheism” is non-linear as have been his previous films, but is even more so. The film has no beginning or ending, but is more like a film loop that continues endlessly, like a Mobius strip.

He begins the film with a startling image – painting in black paint ink letters spelling “atheism” over pages of the Bible. Throughout the film the painted bible keeps on reappearing, reminding one of images used by the German painter Anselm Kiefer. Using this image of the Bible symbolistically, he immediately prods the viewer’s attitudes about holy books.

As the film closes, the painted Bible again appears, this time with clay animation characters, some with penises. A plastic gorilla is also shown. (More on that later) The finale shows the clay figures’ being smashed to pieces, allegorizing the forces of control in our world. The representations are powerful and unique. Seldom have I seen such a perfect combination of image and thought in a film. The sheer horror of what religion has done to humanitarianism is evoked by this childish but effective image.

Another artistic technique that he uses is to show satellite images of various sites – The Vatican, the Pentagon, and other locations. I enjoyed these images, often used during American television coverage of wars in Iraq and elsewhere. Samuel frequently uses images that reinforce his exploration of humanity from a distance that will allow more careful observations. I think that he has been influenced by James Joyce who likewise combined experimental writing with restructured plotlines to create “Ulysses” and “Finnegan’sWake.” Samuel wants to create a gestalt, throwing all of the images and sounds on the screen to create feelings of disequilibrium that will, hopefully, open the viewer’s mind.

In between the opening and closing are lots of interviews, lots of talking heads. Many hilarious cutaways show religious art objects and what they would cost in unusual foreign currencies, showing rather than saying that religion is a business, an industry that has economic values. Samuel is a visual artist creating paintings as these cutaways expressively confront religion. Unfortunately, I fear that many viewers will not be familiar with many great experimental films by filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage who likewise composed every frame as an artistic creation.

Samuel frequently uses a moving image of asphalt repair lines on a highway with superimposed strokes of paint and other images. Several times in the film he uses this to convey the idea that we are all on a trip, a voyage, looking for the truth. He uses layers of images of painted calligraphy, illustrating that the world is really just a set of symbols that our society creates for us, to control us.

Another image he uses several times is that of a monkey or gorilla, showing its eyes in closeup, and showing it laying and moving. It is almost like the apes in “2001: A Space Odyssey” – a symbol of humanity’s basic animal nature that needs to be controlled. Several of the interviewees address modern science illustrating mankind no longer has to rely on religion to understand the world. The eyes of the gorilla are very poignant, especially those of the rational-looking ones that will linger in your mind long after the film is over.

”Atheism” begins with Christine Overall, Professor of Philosophy, Queen’s University, who asks “What is all of this about?” Then we see Alison MacLeod, author of “The Wave Theory of Angels,”who presents some new ideas on “quantum entanglement.” She reads a paragraph from her book on her belief that this phenomenon can have implications for our ordinary world. The Wikipedia has an entry on this subject and there are more than 2.5 million webpages that mention it. As a reader of Scientific American, I have been reading about developments in this area and they are intriguing. However, even though she states that there have been some macroscopic examples of this strange link between particles, I believe that the metaphor is weakly developed by Samuel.

Films like “What the Bleep Do We Know?” take ideas from the quantumworld and incorrectly apply them to our macro world. Few artists have ever understood enough science and mathematics to create an artwork that clearly illustrates a cutting-edge scientific theory. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has lately attempted to bring clear understanding of science to filmmaking with minimal results, e.g.,”Dopamine.”

Samuel’s “Atheism” recalls the personal films by Ross McElwee, best known for “Sherman’s March” and his recent, “Bright Leaves.” Samuelshows images of himself both when he was young and now, showing that he has himself been on this road looking for the truth just as all of the experts he has interviewed. One scene shows him on a crude radio station setup, telling the world that he is an atheist. Another image shows him walking up a pyramid with tourists. He also shows himself commenting on the “terrifying” religious music being played in a church. Many filmmakers, most notably Michael Moore, insert themselves into their documentaries. I know that Samuel is not a fan of Michael Moore (http:// www.counterpunch.org/samuel1126.html), believing like many filmmakers and viewers alike that he uses his films to promote himself as a “celebrity.” Samuel does not want to make the film an autobiograph; but, he also doesn’t want to pretend that he is outside the film, an abstractionist, pretending to be objective.

Christine Overall gives the viewer some background to contemporary atheism. Thankfully, she doesn’t mention Nietzsche, but rather comments on Feurbach who was more important than Nietzsche on other 19th century thinkers including Marx.

Tariq Ali, a well-known Muslim writer in the Western world, appears to be Samuel’s hero. During his many statements in the film, he presents a liberal world of non-theistic thinkers including himself, and presents a Muslim view of religion as a negative force.

Fadi Hammoud, a journalist and Middle East specialist, and Noomane Raboudi, a specialist on Islam, present many interesting facts about the history of Islam and politics. One points out a cruel connection between America and the most rabid form of Islam, Wahaabism in Saudi Arabia. I believe that the speaker is not unique in believing that the ultimate irony in our current situation goes back to U.S. support for the religious fanatics including Ariel Sharon and Osama bin Laden, the latter fighting “atheists” in Afghanistan with US support.

The most powerful speaker in the film is Bishop Spong, the former Episcopal bishop of Newark, New Jersey. Discussing Christianity with lucidity, he quotes one of his heroes, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, about the need for “religionless Christianity.” The interviews with this man make this film important just for his statements by a truly-believing Christian

Everyone needs to see a thoughtful Christian talk about his deep religious feelings without spouting the dogmas that control our society.

Physicist, Jean-Claude Pecker, too, is thoughtful; he juxtaposes religious ideas with current astrophysics. Much of the world can now be explained by contemporary science, allowing humanity freedom from religion. He also has doubts about the Big Bang which might startle some viewers. If there is any theory in cosmology that seems to be confirmed, it is the Big Bang.

Pecker and all of the interviewees in the film tell us that science is the correct way to see the world. Bishop Spong even says at one point, “I don’t have time to debate Darwin. Darwin is correct, and if you want to argue about him, don’t waste my time.” He also notes that there is no real possibility of debate between religious fundamentalists and modern science.

I hope that millions of people all over the world have a chance to see “Atheism”. However, I am afraid, of course, that only the convinced will show any interest. If the average person in any society receives good, scientific education during their early years, they will definitely tend NOT to become a fundamentalist. Hopefully ”Atheism” will help some people learn about the world of non-fundamentalist Muslims and the broad world of infidels that indeed, may be the majority.

Julian Samuel’s two previous films on libraries are – “The Library in Crisis,”( 2002, 46 mins.) and “Save and Burn”(2005, 80 mins.) both available from Filmakers Library at - http://www.filmakers.com/

His films on orientalism can be found at – Arab Film Distribution – http://www.arabfilm.com/

Distribution: juliansamuel@videotron.ca

Interviewees:

Tariq Ali, author, The Clash of Fundamentalism

Fadi Hammoud Journalist and Middle East specialist

Alison MacLeod, author The Wave Theory of Angels

Christine Overall Professor of Philosophy, Queen’s University

Jean-Claude Pecker, astrophysicist Collège de France and Académie des Sciences, Paris (retired)

Noomane Raboudi Specialist on Islam

John Shelby Spong former Episcopal Bishop of Newark, NJ

ATHEISM

72 minutes, 2006 – a talking-heads documentary by Julian Samuel

Official selection: La 35e édition du Festival du nouveau cinéma: 2006

http://www.nouveaucinema.ca/EN/ http://www.nouveaucinema.ca/2006/fiche_film.php?id=06-9251

QUOTATIONS FROM REVIEWS:

This film by Julian Samuel has to be the most intellectually dishonest documentary ever produced. Samuel has produced a subjective and biased reflection on religion and the question of whether a Supreme Being organized the Universe… …an example of this bias is when Professor Samuel has his interviewees discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Bush administration’s foreign policy in a clearly anti-Israeli and anti- American way. What this has to do with atheism, spirituality or even a theological reflection on the meaning of life is anyone’s guess.

Frederic Eger: Atheism by Julian Samuel http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-11-7/47843.html 29 November 2006

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Like Richard Dawkins’ much-discussed recent book The God Delusion, Atheism makes not the slightest attempt to win over anyone who might feel that there’s any validity to spiritual beliefs.

Montreal Mirror, 30 November 2006: God be damned MALCOLM FRASER

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Samuel is either unfamiliar with film language or unwilling to engage with it, and it’s a shame, because this non-professionalism compromises his film. Some of his on-camera shock techniques – including the opening credits, which depict a hand tarring a Bible with the film’s title (and Samuel’s own name, one letter at a time) – are laughable and tedious.

HOUR: 30 November 2006; God day afternoon, The anarchy of atheism Melora Koepke

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* 1/2 – Atheism, documentaire de Julian Samuel. Quelle place occupe Dieu dans le monde, la philosophie, la politique? L’athéisme est-il une religion?

Un documentaire prétentieux et vain. On est loin de la révolution copernicienne.

Ce qui rend ce film méprisable n’est pas tant que l’on n’y apprend rien de neuf, mais plutôt la façon dont ce rien de neuf est emballé: c’est pédagogiquement nul et cinématographiquement pédant. Tant mieux si le réalisateur s’est amusé, car nous, on s’est plutôt mortellement emmerdés.

La Presse, 2 December 2006; Atheism : quand le spirituel déprime Anabelle Nicoud, Collaboration spéciale

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Julian Samuel explique pourtant que son film entend poser un regard sur la manière dont un athée comme lui est devenu une personne religieuse. Atheism un prouve en fait rien de tel. Il soulève des questions, met bout

Book and Film Review “The Case Against Israel” and “Munich” by Julian Samuel http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Apr06/Samuel04.htm

“The Case Against Israel” and “Munich”

a book and film review by

Julian Samuel

The Case Against Israel by Michael Neumann, Counterpunch and AK Press, 2005, 220 pages, $17.40

Munich, directed by Steven Spielberg Rated R for strong graphic violence, some sexual content, nudity and language. Runtime: 164 min, 2005

Spielberg’s film “Munich” is about Israeli agents who cloak-and- dagger around Europe murdering dark, hooked-nosed Palestinians thought to have conducted the 1972 Munch attack on Israeli Olympic athletes. Is Munich a morally complex film which shows us how and why Israel has to use terrorism to stop terrorism? If one’s source of history and international understanding and compassion is, somehow, taken from news media such as CNN, the BBC then the film offers a deep experience on morality and politics. However, if one looks at Munich through Michael Neumann’s book, “The Case Against Israel,” the film becomes a transparent work in the tradition of American film- maker D. W. Griffith.

Spielberg is trying to feed us a view of Arabs, and the Islamic world which stokes Western governments into legislating repressive laws. This is happening not only in the home of the Magna Carta but also on this side of the Atlantic. For example, the Patriot Acts enable agents of the FBI to inspect lists of books that American borrowers, with names like Ibn Sînâ, Abu’l-Walid Ibn Rushd, or Andrew Said, may have taken out.

The key Mossad Jihadist is played by an actor who Spielberg dramaturgically develops fully by showing him to have an evolving relationship with his wife who gives birth to a child; we are introduced to his mother, and he remains, until the end, a loveable Jewish assassin in blue jeans with a crotch bulge equal to Benito Del Torres’. Golda Meir is made to look like an angel of mercy shedding a Sufi effulgence on her secret agents while offering them tea with milk and honey. She is a bed of roses: not chief director of land expropriations.

The Palestinians are never developed to the same extent. We get the impression that their resistance is irrational and unfounded; they’ve never faced the same psychic misery that Israeli Jews have. How might a boy-soldier from Brooklyn treat a pregnant Palestinian woman at a checkpoint? The Arabs are only given enough screen time to say a few black and white lines. Moreover, to trick the naive into seeing Israeli Jews as morally superior, Spielberg has inserted a cardboard Palestinian poet who is a supposed terrorist. He is killed before he can explain why it might have been necessary for him to use terror. Are we to think that terrorism resides in the Arab genetic code and not in the fact that they were subjected to the venture of Zionism?

Palestinians were large enough to have caused the events of Munch, 1972 but not important enough to be integrated in his film. The very fact that he allows a few gutturally voiced lines to fall from their mouths shows that he knows about their ordeal but, mysteriously, does not consider it worthy of screen time. How one-sided can an American film-maker get?

Spielberg’s Munich is embedded in the belief that Palestinians are naturally terrorists. Generally speaking, for Americans, the film’s lethal propaganda use-value will become apparent when they are given an alternative to Zionist history. Otherwise, they will be embedded. “The Case Against Israel,” a succinct book on Israel and Zionism written by Michael Neumann, an American Jew whose “German Jewish stepfather suffered greatly under the Nazis” gives us a solid alternative to Zionism. Zionism is the engine that drives Spielberg’s Munich. And, it is by understanding what Zionism is that we can appreciate the sheer violence that this film encourages. Instead of giving her secret agents tea, imagine Golda Meir ruefully looking into Spielberg’s camera saying the following:

“Zionism has never been a movement for the defense of the Jewish religion; on the contrary many of the most religious Jews abhor it. It was never even a movement in defense of some cultural entity: when the Zionist movement began, Jews had no common language and their traditions were in many cases wildly dissimilar or simply abandoned altogether. Zionism was a movement which advocated, not so much the defense of an ethnic group, as the formation of such a group in Palestine, where those thought to fit a certain semi-racial category were to find refuge. It was a lovely dream where all Jews would live happily together and, with typical Wilsonian obliviousness, no one seemed to notice that those who did not pass ethnic muster had no place in this fantasy. If they were to be tolerated, welcomed, even loved, it was to be at the good pleasure of ‘the Jews’. p. 18

If Spielberg could see the critical validity of the follow statement on Israel he would have made the complex film that many tactically pretend he made:

“Israel is the illegitimate child of ethnic nationalism. The inhabitants of Palestine had every reason to oppose its establishment by any means necessary…Given the life-and-death powers of the proposed state and the intention of its proponents to maintain ethnic supremacy within its borders, the Palestinians were justified in taking the project as a mortal threat, and therefore to resist it by any means necessary.” p. 187-188

Spielberg is fluent in using historical documents to make films such as Amistad, a shallow yet multifaceted film about the slave trade. Africans emerge as people with past and present lives. For Arabs, Spielberg’s Munich resembles the American film-maker D. W Griffith, who in 1915 made a racist classic “The Birth of a Nation”. For Spielberg, the Palestinians have become what blacks were for Griffith: Dark, threatening creatures to be eliminated with extreme prejudice.

What was the average age of the Palestinians who conducted the Munich attack? What happened twenty-four years before Munich 1972? What happened on April 9, 1948 at Dier Yassin? And on 29 October 1956 at Kafar Qasem? Anything? Something? Nothing? Spielberg knows about Dier Yassin and Kafar Qasem. Does Zionism take us to the murders at Munich 1972?

The issues that Spielberg hides are the ones that Neumann lights in a scholastically stark and unique manner. Thankfully, his views don’t resemble the rampant anti-Americanism that one sees everywhere; nor is he anti-Jewish as his detractors will undoubtedly inform us; nor is his historical analysis anti-Israeli.

Here are some examples of potentially cinematically charged scenes that Spielberg could have dramatized but didn’t:

“Finally, no one should be deterred from vigorous anti-Israeli action by the horrors of the Jewish past. On the contrary: Israel’s current policies are themselves an insult and a threat to Jews and to Israelis everywhere.” p 190-191

Spielberg wants a one-sided victory in which Israeli Jews rest morally high above the Arabs. What is preventing Spielberg from traveling on the same carpet as Neumann?

“Let no one throw up the Nazi era as some excuse for Israel, or wax sentimental about the Zionist dream. This has not been some exercise in moral reasoning whose object is simply to find fault. The situation is urgent, and dangerous to all involved. The lies, obfuscations and self-deceiving nonsense that sustain Israel’s occupation – something it could end tomorrow – cost Jewish as well as Palestinian blood.” p.190-191

Neumann has looked at what causes terrorism. Spielberg hasn’t: he thinks that the world will automatically sympathize with the American War on Terrorism. Consider the 1972 athletes:

“ ‘Terrorism’, on this account, can be defined as random violence against non-combatants. “Non-combatants” need not be civilians, but must designate those not involved in hostilities against the attackers: workers in defense industries are one of many borderline cases. “Random” means only that the victims are selected, not because of their importance as individuals, but because they are representative of some larger population. p. 158

Ben Gurion, unlike Golda Meir, did look in the mirror:

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs… There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only know but one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” p.151-152.

Which influential Americans know the same history as Neumann? In light of the full-blown apartheid in Palestine would these Americans initiate a full boycott against Israel? Would Noam Chomsky? (Neumann calls Chomsky a Zionist on page 23). Would Woody Allen? Neumann has tried to start a boycott, but didn’t get support.

Munich is a cinematic Nuremberg in which Spielberg, along with his producers, actors and all his crew tell us a hideous fib about Israel. In God-fearing America such fibs can only be checked, not corrected. Neumann’s “The Case Against Israel,” renders Spielberg’s “Munich” irrational hate propaganda.

Julian Samuel, is a Montreal film-maker and writer juliansamuel@videotron.ca

(Michael Neumann has written extensively on the Middle East: http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann09232004.html http://members.tripod.com/~mneumann/mnisrael.htm)

Fallen Angel: The Political Cartoons of the Daily Worker Cartoonist Gabriel – by John Pateman

I can thoroughly recommend this exhibition of cartoons by Jimmy Friel which is on display at the Political Cartoon Gallery in Store Street, London, until 28 April 2007. The gallery is directly opposite the London HQ of CILIP. But there any similarities end. Jimmy Friell was the talented cartoonist who defined an era of the Daily Worker under the name Gabriel. The following review – ‘An Angel with a poison pen’ – by Michal Bonzca was first published in the Morning Star on 3 April 2007.

‘Looking from a worm’s perspective, a tank looms large and threatening like an authoritarian edifice. Its menacing gun barrel is aimed at a distant target.

In the foreground, Harold Macmillan, 1951 minister of housing and later defence, addresses a homeless family spinning the yarn that their concerns are being adequately addressed by this design.

Indeed, on closer inspection of the cartoon, the gun turret resembles a shoddy terraced house.

If you replaced the tank with a Trident submarine, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was 2007.

In fact, it was Britain after World War II and the sharp, uncompromising drawing was penned by James Friell.
Last month marked the 95th anniversary of the birth of James “Jimmy” Friell, who was, once upon a time, memorably heralded as “Fleet Street’s greatest discovery since David Low.”

But who was he? Jimmy Friell was born in Glasgow on March 13 1912, the fifth of seven children, in the working-class tenements of Maryhill.

His youngest brother Charlie, former USDAW convener, now a chirpy octogenarian, recalls how poverty forced “Jim” to abandon hope of university and seek employment at the age of 14.

In his spare time, he would amuse himself and others by drawing gag cartoons. His father was the straight man in a comedy duo eking out a meagre living touring Scottish music halls. Gags would have been part of the air that he breathed at home.

And some home it was. Under the guidance of communist eldest brother Jack, they weren’t going to be denied education or culture by their circumstance and tucked into Marcel Proust, James Joyce and others with energetic purpose.

Initially just an entertainer, Friell quickly developed a keen interest in politics. At the time, only he and his eldest sister Cissie worked, providing for all the others.

“I still can’t understand anyone who grew up anywhere in the 1930s not being political,” he would remark years later.

At 15, he drew a crucified worker surrounded by leering capitalists. He showed it to the Glasgow Forward, who encouraged him to continue. Two years later, a cartoon of his was printed for the first time.

He became a regular contributor to the Glasgow Evening Times and, in 1931, won a scholarship to the Glasgow School of Art, where he completed the three-year commercial art diploma course in just one year.

Dispatched to London by his employers Kodak in February 1936, Friell sent some political cartoons to the predecessor of the Morning Star, the Daily Worker. It was a moment that was remembered well by its legendary editor William Rust.

“In him was immediately recognised an artist with a sure political understanding. Both his artistic and political line were just what we were waiting for,” Rust once said.

He adopted the name Gabriel as his nom de plume because, back then, “in one way or another, it looked like the last trumpet was being sounded for existing society, so I took the pen name of Gabriel, the Archangel – he’s in charge of blowing for the annunciation of Judgement Day – and settled down to helping the process along.

“My value lay in supplying the humour that the paper rather desperately needed,” Friell was known to comment.

His impact was instant and such that, in his first year, he had three offers from other Fleet Street papers to jump ship. But Friell’s principles kept him at the Daily Worker.

“I never produced a cartoon in consultation with anybody. I never found any trouble. Apart from ‘[technicalities’ – was it Trotsky or was it Stalin, was it this or that – my views coincided with them. It was straightforward,” he would state emphatically.

The moral bankruptcy and political incompetence of the ruling elites ushered in the economic depression of the 1930s, which supplied a tragic abundance of subjects. His ink was never dry.

While the ruling classes courted fascists to keep themselves in power, Gabriel lampooned the murderous trio of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco with venomous gusto matched only by his merciless contempt for the hapless dilettante and dupe Chamberlain.

Memorably, he drew him at his desk announcing his pathetically pompous and naive analysis of the nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, which is shown looming large behind his back.

Gabriel had experienced at first hand the waste and misery that the ruling class visited upon millions in Britain and, true to his class, he wasn’t about to give it any quarter.

He took particular issue with its political dishonesty, evidenced daily by the manipulative management of news. Spin to you and me.

His first judgement day came unexpectedly, as they do, with the announcement of the 1939 nazi-soviet pact.

He confessed to being shocked, but admitted: “If you examined it, you could see why it was necessary to Russia.”

Friell was called up in September 1940, but returned to the Daily Worker in 1946. Heady days followed and, in 1954, under the inspirational guidance of Allen Hutt, the paper won The Newspaper of the Year Award jointly with The Times.

Amid all of this, Gabriel again took up his quixotic pictorial quest with the gusto of old and with the fine political savvy and anticipation that was first noted by Rust.

In a reworking of a classic idea, Gabriel has a US soldier straddling the globe tying it up with a never-ending chain of war debt.

Here, the oft-used concept is reinvigorated by a dynamic diagonal composition and sparse but delightful detail, including the chain made up of dollar signs. Britain, it is worth noting, only paid back the last instalment of this debt last year.

The world had, indeed, changed dramatically with US imperialism in ascendancy in the aftermath of World War II.

Gabriel captures this unmistakenly on US Independence Day with a forlorn figure of a bruised, rapidly aging, Churchill-faced bulldog trotting behind two patronising US government figures.

This is not only a delightfully sharp epitaph for the empire but also a witty and perceptive intuition of the shape of things to come.

Britain’s political class, like Faust, was selling its soul to the devil in exchange for the ignominious role of the new empire’s servile mascot.

The next generation of cartoonists, having had that future thrust upon them, are sarcastically and contemptuously depicting the Prime Minister of today simply as a poodle. Or, worst still, the mere lap dog of a witless ape.

Then, all of a sudden, came Gabriel’s second judgement day. The Soviet Union invaded Hungary in November 1956.
Gabriel blew the horn loud and clear, comparing the Russian tanks in Budapest to the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt.

When the Daily Worker rejected the cartoon, Gabriel, in a decision that he came to regret in later years, walked out along with several other journalists.

He was bluntly honest about this. “I couldn’t conceive carrying on cartooning about the evils of capitalism and imperialism and ignoring the acknowledged evils of Russian communism.” And so, sadly, Gabriel was no more.

Socialism’s judgement day was, at the time, somehow postponed, only to return with bitter vengeance 30 odd years later. History, tragically, has since proven Gabriel right.

After six months unemployment, Friell accepted Lord Beaverbrook’s offer, first extended in the late 1930s, to cartoon under his own name for the Evening Standard, with assurances of “complete political freedom.”

Still, executives at Express Newspapers, uncomfortable with his political views, eventually decided to replace him with Vicky, who loyally objected and forced them to retain Friell. By 1962, he was reduced to drawing pocket cartoons.

When politicians whom he had mercilessly satirised over the years repeatedly bought his work, he became despondent and dismissive of the task that he had set himself some 30-odd years earlier, in frustration comparing it to “banging your head against a foam rubber wall.”

But he continued to keep a keen eye on all things political, cryptically commenting that “not to be able to say anything about the political situation in the last 10 years is purgatory.”

Friell’s masterly grasp of anatomy allows his distorted characters to roam the frames and gesture with dynamic equilibrium and comic ease.

Assured and energetic pen and brush strokes reveal intricate emotions and detail the unfolding dramas, whereas an exquisite use of swathes of texture or solid black provides melodramatic supporting contrast.

Gabriel’s compositional sense, often using acute, almost cinematic angles, draws the eye into a richly rewarding viewing.

No political cartoonist can, however, survive without the elementary skill of imaginative characterisation and Gabriel’s was second to none.

Most significantly, he was one of the very few – among them were Will Dyson at the Daily Herald and his successor the communist Will Hope – who nobly put their talent at the disposal of the working class and its struggle for social justice.

And thus Gabriel’s legacy, apart from having secured him a place in the pantheon of great British cartoonists, will be forever an intrinsic part of the British left’s cultural heritage.

James “Jimmy” Friell, who is tenderly described by his brother Charlie as “a private man of immensely beguiling humour,” died in his home in west London on February 4 1997.’

John Pateman

This Was England: a Skinhead exhibition from the 1980s – by John Pateman

I was 13 years old in 1969 and I remember the first wave of Skinheads who associated themselves more with Trojan label reggae music rather than right wing politics. I remember wearing my first Ben Sherman shirt, Levi jeans (with braces) and Doctor Marten boots. And I recall going to football matches all over London and witnessing gangs of skinheads beating each other up in the name of tribal loyalty. The second wave of skinheads in the 1980s was more sinister and more aligned with fascist parties such as the National Front, British Movement and British National Party. This wave of skinheads was well documented by photographers such as Gavin Watson who took hundreds of photos of the skins who he ran with in High Wycombe.

Some of these photos are on display at the PYMCA Gallery at 41 Clerkenwell Road, London, until 20 April 2007. To coincide with the release of the film ‘This is England’ by Shane Meadows, this is an exhibition of skinhead culture from the early 1980’s upon which the film is based. Containing the unique collection of Gavin Watson from the book ‘Skins’, this exhibition offers a unique insight into the lives of young members of this subculture in this turbulent era. Featured photographers include: Gavin Watson, John G Byrne, Jannette Beckman, Toni Tye, Peter Anderson, Ted Polhemus, Richard Braine and Paul Hartnett.

Gavin Watson started photographing the life around him at 14, and by 19 was travelling the world photographing bands for Sounds music newspaper. It was during these years his early teens too his early twenties – that Gavin consolidated the majority of the pictures that formed the body of his critically acclaimed book SKINS, first published in 1994. Now on its 5th edition, Skins is a record of Gavins life in High Wycombe, London and Brighton in the 80s, a microcosm of teenage life which has since found resonance with people worldwide. The iconic imagery of the book has made it a cult classic, important both in terms of its artistry and as a cultural reference: Gavin Watson’s critical photography of the late 70′s and early 80′s skinheads perfectly captures a snapshot of this unique youth culture – his work contains some of the finest documentary photography of modern times, said Ted Polhemus. Throughout the 90s, Watson turned his attention to the rave scene which was exploding across Britain: he was the first photographer to have a collection of images of this new youth culture published (though Camera Press). The defining element though in Watsons work is that although he is regarded by many as a cultural commentator, he is never an outside observer but is always part of his subject, which makes his view a unique one. Having achieved an impressive collection of work, Watson is still working primarily in the music industry, still shunning the shiny and the obvious for the real and the relevant. Reviews for Skins: “A cult classic.” THE SUNDAY TIMES “Not forgetting why this book is important: Gavin Watson is a damn good photographer.” TED POLHEMUS. The following extracts are from a book by Gavin Watson, ‘Oh What Fun We Had.’

‘The influence of SKINHEADS has spread a lot wider than just small groups of people wearing big boots and shaving their heads, their neighbours, family, the community, the people that hated us etc. The stories are the most important thing. The stories, the myths, the memories, that’s what all this is about really, memories of the time when you were young and didn’t give a fuck or a least pretended you didn’t. I feel it is important to explain the amount of transformations I went through in the years of growing up. Being a skinhead always seemed to be there whether I was losing my virginity or standing in a field nearly ten years later with thousands of ravers.

Anyway there were about twenty of us, (all mongrel dogs from a pretty grim estate called Micklefield in a town called High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire,) causing mischief and mayhem round town on a dark October evening. Being only fourteen I had to be in for school by about seven thirty. Little did I know that this evening something was to happen that would change my life for good. I came in as usual took my shoes off at the back door (one of mum’s iron rules ), came into the front room, my mum was in her favourite chair, dad in his.

Top of the Pops was just finishing and there was a band playing, a group of young guys jumping around to a tune the likes I had never heard before. I was transfixed, blown away, the affect this band had on me was incredible. Who are they? What’s their name? I must have that record now. I must have it. The band I found out was called Madness.

The next day I think I nicked a pound from somewhere in the house before going to school. At school all my friends were talking about Madness, rumours of who they were abounded, were they Yanks, Mods, Punks? Nobody knew. I went down town after school straight into Woolworth’s and brought the single that was to change my way of life totally and set me on a unbelievable journey. I played that record to death until there was a hole in it and I was on the verge of being hung drawn and quartered by my family. The Record was THE PRINCE by Madness, the year was 1979.

I became a Skinhead because of the Music, and the attention I received especially from girls. I loved dancing, music and girls, and the Two Tone scene seemed to have it all. It totally spoke to me and about my environment one which was the new generation of the multi-cultural kids that were coming of age, Jamaicans, Irish, etc.. It was also being a Skinhead that drew me to Oi! music because it was directly geared towards skinheads. Legends of the East End of London passed down through bands like the Cockney Rejects. I remember being terrified of the East End for years thinking you were bound to get your head kicked in if you just as much got off the bus in Bethnal Green. We were carrot crunchers from the countryside, we believed that the Skins in London were the Hardest Mother fuckers ever to walk the Earth. It became a disappointment to my friends and me that at the time Madness denied their skinhead roots out of fear of bad publicity. In fact the East End was the Skinheads spiritual home. I remember going to the Last Resort, London’s only pure skinhead shop at the time, with my mum, dad and NEVILLE. The sight of all those Monsters coupled with the Last Resorts’ sales methods (buy something, as you may not walk out of this shop Alive, Vibe) will stay with me for the rest off my life. My brother and I being tourists brought Skinhead T shirts and were ecstatic at visiting a Skinhead Mecca.The real East End kids were the ones that were in Nicks Nights book “SKINHEAD” a book I never really liked because I felt I had taken better photos even though I was only fifteen and also he wasn’t a real skin and jumping on the band wagon, sour grapes from my part really.

At the Royal Wedding I met some older London ex skinheads and I asked them why they were not skins any more. They said they had been skins in 78 and it was all over now for them, old hat in there eyes. I was shocked, being a skinhead was so new to my friends and me it seemed to me to be for life. I was so intense about being a skinhead, to me it was final. Any body who grew their hair for work or their girlfriend was severely mentally impaired. I would be down town and would see an older skin who was growing his hair for some reason or another. I would feel very disappointed I could not understand how one could ever not be a skinhead once the step had been taken. I truly believed that it was a way of life and that being a skinhead was not just about clothes and style but something that went so deep, a connection. Even to this day after spending years trying to understand my self, and my actions and the meaning of life, I still have not got a clue. Sociology, anthropology, psychology, all have had some answers but I still believe there is a spiritual and mystical part of being a skinhead that is unfathomable. It’s like being in love you just can’t explain it or put into a nice neat little explanation so one can feel more in control of yourself.

I always felt like a misfit, even as a skinhead there was always a nagging feeling I did not fit in. That’s what this whole thing is about not fitting in to others expectations. When I was in the middle of doing interviews about my book and expo I was always asked about racism even though my pictures and life show a definite cultural mix. Never was I asked about racism from a black or Asian, it always seemed to be a middle class ex college student with luke warm Marxist ideals. It occurred to me that working class blacks and Asians could relate to white niggers and had no need to get on their high horse about the question of race.

I’ve never really seen colour and this is not because I give a fuck about political correctness. If I was a racist I would hold my head up high and admit it, I think I am captured on film somewhere with a load of mad skinheads smashing up an ANGELIC UPSTARTS gig and throwing in a few Sieg Heils for good measure there’s something oddly satisfying about throwing the odd Sieg Heil now and again, mine are reserved for traffic wardens these days.

One of the most upsetting times in my life is when we all went from primary school to secondary and there seemed to be an instant split between the blacks and whites. I realize now this was part of nature as we had to try and find our place in the world as young adults, but at the time I could not understand why people that I had loved dearly as a small child were now difficult to communicate with. There seemed to be an unsaid rule that blacks and whites could not get along at this age. We used to wear our Union Jack patches and the black guys would wear their Jah back to Africa badges. The teachers were horrified at this, thinking we were the second coming of the Third Reich.

Its all in the dynamics and nature of gang politics that you end up acting the same regardless of colour. My mother when she first came to England from Ireland would have to put up with signs in house windows saying “NO BLACKS, IRISH, OR DOGS” what right did I have to be a racist? I always felt uncomfortable trying to explain Skinheads and racism, as it really was never an issue in my life as a skinhead. If I ever really needed physical assistance nowadays there are only three people I know in my heart would be there for me. One is White and the other two are Black. One thing I knew when I was growing up is the Black kids were tough, strong, good fighters and if you messed with them you mess with there infinite number of cousins as well. They usually run the borstals and I never viewed the West Indians as a bunch of weeds.’

To read more visit Gavin Watson’s Myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/gavinwatsonskins

John Pateman

DVD Documentary Review by John Pateman

Released 26 March on DVD, Freemantle Home Entertainment, 17.99, English, 90minutes running time, plus 71 minutes extras, Colour / B&W / PAL.

The many attempts on Fidel Castro, one of the most important world leaders of modern times, are well known. Some of them – such as efforts to make his beard fall out – would be funny if it were not for the fact that Castro offers real hope to the world’s oppressed people. Whether it is the poor of Latin America, Asia or Africa, they all look to one man, Castro, and one country, Cuba, for solidarity and suport. They do not look to Bush, who is the latest in a long line of US Presidents to try and remove Castro from power. US presidents come and go but Castro marches on, safe in the knowledge that he has the support of his people and millions of fellow travelers around the world.

This fascinating and entertaining documentary takes us through the early years of Castro’s rule, when there was a chance that Cuba and the US could peacefully co-exist. Through its aggressive actions this chance was blownand the US and Cuba came to epitomize the worst of Cold War paranoia. WithCastro quite literally in their sights, the US government sanctioned an increasingly bizarre series of operations against the head of a sovereign nation, breaking many internationally recognized agreements and protocols.The more outlandish attempts on Castro’s life included poison pens, lethal gas, deadly model aircraft, toxic cigars, baseball grenades and exploding molluscs.

This documentary also exposes the dark under belly of some of the Cuban exiles living in Miami. Their hatred of Castro knows no bounds and they are inextricably linked with the CIA operations which have also killed and wounded many innocent Cuban civilians. By their own admission, the alleged terrorists Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, talk about their involvement in these plots. Even more sinister is the outburst by US Congresswoman Ilean Ros-Lehtinen when she calls for Castro’s demise. The Miami connection is all the more significant when we remember that George W Bush attained his controversial first term in office by ‘winning’ Florida which was governed by his brother Jeb.

This tangled web of connections is explored in the documentary through candid interviews with former US President Jimmy Carter and ex CIA agent Tom Parrott. But the man we have most to thank for exposing all these plots and for keeping Castro alive is Fabian Escalante, the former head of Cuban Intelligence. It is people like Escalante, and the Five Cuban Heroes currently jailed in the US for ‘terrorism’, that are helping to keep Castro, Cuba and the world safe. This documentary also exposes the political hypocrisy of the current US lead ‘War on Terror’. It is clear that the likes of Bush and Blair are the real terrorists and war criminals.

This documentary is essential viewing for all regular visitors to the Information for Social Change website at www.libr.org/ISC/. The makers ofthe DVD have kindly donated some free copies which are available from me on request at johnpateman9@hotmail.com

Video Clips:

Castro shot?

http://onlinemoviepromo.com/player.php?id=1601

CIA cleared to hit Castro… through his beard:

http://onlinemoviepromo.com/player.php?id=1603

The bomb plot:

http://onlinemoviepromo.com/player.php?id=1605

George Bush the terrorist?

http://onlinemoviepromo.com/player.php?id=1607

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen – Member of US Congress with THAT STATEMENT! Her call for Fidel to be assassinated was widely covered in US media but not here – why?

http://onlinemoviepromo.com/player.php?id=1609

The Kennedy Connection:

http://onlinemoviepromo.com/player.php?id=1611

Paul Catherall

This talk was part of the International Development seminar series at Manchester University and discussed the changing ways in which information and communication technologies have been viewed within dominant paradigms of socio-economic development. The seminar described pervasive socio-economic models from an historical perspective, including structured economic approaches (the controlled economy) and the trend toward neoliberal and neoconservative approaches in recent decades. The seminar particularly mapped theories of personal freedom and ICTs, with reference to the work of Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, whose recent work on development-as-freedom presents a model for conceptualising the role of ICTs in international development.

Sen’s works have involved the development a theory of social choice which illustrates the conflict between the results of democracy, personal freedom and welfare issues, this is illustrated in Sen’s advocacy for ICT in developing economies but accompanying plea for caution to ensure ICT benefits society rather than simply benefiting particular industries or sectors of the economy. Sen’s publication Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1981) demonstrated that famine occurs not only from a lack of food, but also due to the inequalities of the economic system which is responsible for distributing food (i.e. through the market), this was partly inspired by Sen’s personal experience of the Bengal famine of 1943, resulting in three million deaths. Sen has also contributed (through his writings on social freedom and poverty) to the ‘Human Development Report’ (UN Development Programme) which ranks countries on the basis of social and economic factors.

Similarly, Sen has also developed his concept of ‘capability’ in terms of civic rights and freedoms and the material or social factors involved in realising these civil rights, for example the right to education may be reduced by cultural, social and material inequalities whilst the right to vote may be hindered by lack of access to polling facilities or lack of education regarding the process; his article More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing particularly focused on the inequalities of women in the developing world, including inequalities of health care and wellbeing derived from social systems which favour men over women in these developing countries. In addition to theoretical works in economics, Sen has influenced the development of self-help programmes to provide alternative work following loss of industries and food production in India and African countries.

References

• More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing (Sen, A. in New York Review of Books, Volume 37, Number 20

By John Pateman

Success story or terminal decline, inclusive or exclusive – any of these labels can be attached to public libraries in the UK, depending on which set of statistics you use. On the positive side, UK residents made 340 million visits to public libraries in 2004/05, which is equivalent to 5.7 visits per person. That’s more people than go to football matches each year, or than visit the UK’s top 20 tourist attractions put together. After a period of decline, visits to libraries are on the up. They hosted 22 million more visits in 2004/05 than they did in 2001/02, an increase of 7%. Around 47% of the UK adult population are registered with their library, which is down on the previous high of 60%. Also, only 20% of people are active library users – members who have a library ticket and use it on a regular basis.

Over 330 million books were borrowed from UK libraries in 2004/05 – an average of 5.52 books per person. Children’s book borrowing rose from 86.8 million in 2003/04 to 88.6 million in 2004/05. But adult book borrowing has declined by more than 40% in the last decade, from 442.5 million in 1994/95 to 241.6 million in 2004/05. Libraries spent

By John Pateman

Unlike Bob Usherwood (Update Jan/Feb 2005) I am able to fully empathise with the white working class as described by Michael Collins in his brilliant biography The Likes of Us. Collins argues that white working class culture is intimately linked to a landscape and a concept of home – in his case, Southwark, where his family lived for generations. Collins traces the history of this family and, with it, the history of that long neglected part of south London bordered by the Thames to the north and Walworth to the south. In between can be found Borough, Bermondsey and Newington, as well as the world famous Elephant and Castle and Old Kent Road. This is the home of the Pearly King and Queen , the coster monger and the chirpy cockney.

Collins does not seek to defend – in Usherwood’s words – racism, but to explain it. In doing so he points out that the white working class is much more tolerant and able to absorb other cultures than it is given credit for. As Collins delves into his family’s history he discovers that “missionaries” from other classes have always descended to study, influence, patronise and politicise the white working class, long before the contemporary intelligentsia began to demonise them. But there have been few attempts to understand the white working class – which is what Collins sets out to do. In the process he robustly defends their culture and identity.

After setting the opening scene of The Likes of Us in a library, Collins does not mention libraries again in the 270 pages that follow – which suggests how irrelevant they are to many working class people – other than right at the end when he returns to the same library where elderly working class residents are discussing the “good old days”. As Collins points out, they were never really that “good”, but at least there was a sense of class solidarity and community before the old houses were pulled down and replaced by three huge estates with aerial walkways which became an escape route for street criminals and drug dealers.

Ferdinand Mount has suggested in his thoughtful essay, Mind the Gap, that the working class (the “downers”) have suffered the ultimate deprivation – a consequence of all their other deprivations – which is the deprivation of respect. Collins makes the same point : once they were known as the salt of the earth, now they are portrayed by the media as xenophobes and exhibitionists. Their tastes and attitudes are mocked and “white trash are the only people left to insult.” Whole pages and programs are devoted by the media to denigrating the “chavs” (interestingly this word is derived from “Chavvies”, which is what Gypsies – another much maligned community – call their children.)

It is easy for the middle class (the “uppers”) – with their affluence and education – to be enthusiastic about multiculturalism. If it doesn’t work for them they can afford to move out of the area or send their kids to another good school. The white working class does not have these choices. They often end up living most of their impoverished lives in the same area – and it this area, with its familiar people and familiar landscape which gives their lives meaning, stability and comfort. Any changes to this landscape – a sudden shift in demographics or architecture – can be profoundly unsettling, even threatening.

These fears need to be understood. As Stuart Hall has said: “If you’re serious about a multicultural society, you would address the sense of alienation of white working class people, who have to be won over to a new conception of themselves”. This sense of loss and alienation is palpable in areas like Southwark where the white working class have literally been air brushed out of history. The benefits of a multicultural community are touted in municipal promotions but the bed rock of that community – the white working class – is completely ignored. No wonder that local people get angry, seek others to blame and fall prey to groups such as the BNP.

Valentine and MacDonald, in their report Understanding Prejudice: attitudes towards minorities (Stonewall, 2004) found that: “There is a strong perception that the white majority is being unfairly treated, and that minority groups are receiving preferential treatment – on an economic level, a threat is felt from asylum seekers, Travellers and Black people. Marginalised young, white heterosexual men tend to be the least socially integrated.”

Usherwood suggests that the solution to this problem is “education, education, education”. But this is not as simple as it sounds. Middle class people have some real choice over where they send their children to be educated. Working class people do not have the same choices. Many poor working class areas are served by low achieving state schools with big classes and stressed staff. In this environment many working class children fail to achieve their full potential and leave school with little or no qualifications. Some leave school without even the essential skills of literacy and numeracy.

Tessa Stone, director of the Sutton Trust education charity, has said: “We see it time and time again that there are self-reinforcing pockets of areas where it is very difficult to have an impact. Partly, it is because of the enormous difficulties being faced by some schools. When schools are dealing with issues of severe under achievement as well as deprivation, the extra scope for stretching the brightest children is very limited. They are really fire fighting.”

Even if they get over this significant hurdle of a good secondary education, working class children face the next class divide – according to a report by the Higher Education Funding Council for England “pupils from the wealthiest areas are six times more likely to enter higher education than those from the poorest”. In areas such as Kensington and Chelsea and Sheffield’s suburban south-west, 70 per cent of young people went on to university. But in 40 wards in places such as southern Bristol and inner city Leeds, fewer than 5 per cent of pupils entered higher education.

Mark Corver, the report’s author, wrote: “There is a high degree of inequality in the chance of young people entering higher education depending on the neighbourhood where they live”. Although the study was not intended to explain the gap, it said that poorer families were likely to live in cramped conditions and attend low-attaining schools, with parents in manual jobs who had no experience of university. This typifies many of the white working class families in Southwark described by Collins.

Debates about developing multicultural communities have been dominated and lead by the white middle class, who have no understanding of the working class. Putting the focus purely on the needs of ethnic minorities is unfair and divisive and likely to lead to angry reactions and a backlash from the host community. Failing to address the needs of local people can lead to violence and disturbances in the least likely places: the biggest race riot in 2004 was not in Brixton ( London), Toxteth (Liverpool) or St Pauls ( Bristol) but in Boston ( Lincolnshire). Simmering grievances between local people and migrant workers – stirred up by the BNP – flared into full scale riots when England lost a football match against France.

Building community cohesion is a long term process which must be fully inclusive and transparent. As Gurbux Singh, one time chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, has said: “Our way of thinking has changed. Tackling the perceptions and poverty levels of poor white communities is almost as important as tackling ethnic minority deprivation.” Tackling social exclusion requires a focus on the excluded – the working class, ethnic minorities and others – and their needs. Promoting social inclusion can start to add the middle class into the mix. Community cohesion enables different groups to understand each others needs. Each of these stages – exclusion, inclusion, cohesion – may take 10 years or more.

In responding to this challenge, public libraries must have appropriate strategies, structures and cultures which enable them to identify, prioritise and meet community needs. Libraries must take a needs based approach and reach out to excluded communities. This must be done by library staff who have the right skills and a real empathy and understanding of community needs. This is best achieved by employing staff from those communities – in Lincolnshire, for example, we have library staff from our migrant worker communities. Failure to do this will result in what Collins describes as adopting “the missionary position”.

Working class people do not want to be lectured to or treated like children by the middle classes – at school, in the media or by libraries. The outcome of taking this missionary approach can be counter productive – like most of Collins’ neighbours “we lived in a home where no one bothered with books.” Usherwood accuses Collins of “restricting the horizons of the working class, dismissing their potential and the role of critical friends”. The working class are rightly suspicious of such “friends” who, without consulting them, tore down their neighbourhoods and replaced them with concrete monstrosities. They were also not consulted about changes to their demographics and were expected to naturally absorb and integrate new communities without having any say or control over these changes.

The cultural missionaries dismissed by Collins and supported by Usherwood have not taken the time or effort to understand the white working class. Paternalism is just a kinder term for the cultural elitism imposed on the working class by the powers that be. Some working class people like myself and Usherwood have succeeded despite, rather than because of, the system. We took what opportunities we could to develop ourselves in the tradition of the nineteenth century autodidacts. But we are a tiny minority. Most of my class remain “downcast, confused and apparently redundant”, robbed even of their self respect by those who should know better, the educated and powerful “uppers”.

Only 30 per cent of the population are active library users. Two thirds of these active users are middle class. Public libraries are an alien institution to the great majority of “downers”. There are many good examples of library services reaching out to their multicultural communities. The Libraries Change Lives Award has been won for services to asylum seekers, refugees and Travellers. I know of no similar efforts being made to target the white working class.

Librarians can learn from a fellow professional, Professor Lola Young, project director at the Archives and Museum of Black Heritage, who is currently archiving a Black presence in Britain that can be traced back 500 years. Professor Young described how her work involves “all our histories, not just those of Black peoples. It’s a strategy to raise awareness, and disseminate information about the rich texture of British history”. In the process we may learn to understand that working class people can be proud of being British and white without them necessarily being the enemy.

References

Michael Collins, The Likes of Us, (Granta, 2004)

Joseph Lee, A nation riven by class and privilege, (Times Education Supplement, 21 January 2005)

Ferdinand Mount, Mind the Gap, (Short Books, 2004)

Gill Valentine and Ian McDonald, Understanding Prejudice: attitudes towards minorities (Stonewall, 2004)

By John Pateman

The title of this article was inspired by a real situation which happened recently in a UK public library. It is the story of a man who started sleeping in the doorway of a public library and the reaction to this by library staff, the police and other agencies. It is a metaphor for a needs based library service – or not, as the case may be. The context is social exclusion and how this is being tackled by national and local government. That it still needs to be tackled is clear from some recent news stories, research and reports. The Morning Star ( 25 February 2006) noted that the government has a penchant for using ‘dodgy euphemisms’:

‘A minister responsible for the fight against social exclusion is a case in point, since the very phrase “social exclusion” is a classic piece of ducking and diving. For social exclusion, read poverty. The poverty of pensioners, 20% of them living below the official poverty line. The poverty of those who have lost their occupational pensions. The poverty of the 1.5 million elderly households in homes without adequate heating and insulation. The poverty of children growing up in bad housing. The poverty of the 1.54 million unemployed in this country. That is what Mr Blair calls social exclusion.’

There is a close link between social exclusion and poverty. Tony Blair pledged in 1999 that New Labour would reduce the number of children in poverty from 4.1m to 3.1m by April 2005. This was an ambitious target and the government missed it by 300,000. The government was accused on not doing enough to tackle the problem. Save the Children said the failure to meet the target was ‘devastating for the future of the poorest children’, while Barnardo’s said there was no justification for child poverty in the fourth richest country in the industrialised world. The government remains committed to eradicating child poverty by 2020. Sustained reductions in poverty and income inequality are central to the goal of improving social mobility.

There is a close link between social exclusion and class. A recent report by the Institute for Public Policy Research notes that ‘social mobility and equal opportunities have replaced social class in discourse on the route towards a fairer society.’ The chances of an individual moving to a different income group from the one they were born into are significantly lower in Britain and the USA than in more equal societies such as Canada and the Nordic countries. British people born into a manual worker family in 1970 had less chance of moving into a higher occupation than people born in similar circumstances in 1958. Social class matters because your position within the social hierarchy strongly influences the kind of life you can lead and how far you can go. Levelling the playing field in terms of social inheritance will also help to equalise life chances.

There is a close link between social exclusion and inequality. The government commissioned Equalities Review warned that persistent inequalities are costing Britain’s economy billions of pounds in lost income. Mothers, for example, were ‘by far’ the least likely to get a job – even less than the disabled and people from ethnic minorities. While women face an employment penalty of around 15% compared with men, mothers were a shocking 40% less likely to be in the labour market. At the present rate of progress, the gender pay gap would not be closed until 2085 and the employment gap between disabled and able bodied would never be closed. The review also noted ‘the lack of women’s voices in politics.’

There is a close link between social exclusion and power. The Electoral Commission has revealed a disturbing increase in political apathy across Britain. The third annual audit of political engagement by the Commission and the Hansard Society revealed that almost one in five people do not want any say in how the country is run. The study found that 17% of the British population do not want a say in politics. Some 12% said that they would not be willing to do anything to influence a decision by local or national government. The report also found that poor people are far less engaged in politics than those who are wealthy. But it stressed that merely creating more opportunities for people to get involved will make little difference.

There are close relationships, therefore, between social exclusion and poverty, class, inequality and power. If you are socially excluded you are most likely to be poor, working class, treated unequally and have no power. The ground breaking Open to All? report made it clear that ‘Social exclusion relates not simply to a lack of material resources, but also to matters like inadequate social participation, lack of culture and educational capital, inadequate access to services, and lack of power. In other words, the idea of social exclusion attempts to capture the complexity of powerlessness in modern society rather than simply focusing on one of its outcomes.’

Powerlessness, then, is at the heart of social exclusion. If people have no power in their own lives they are likely to be or to feel socially excluded. Having power is about being able to make choices. The case study I am about to describe is about a man who was completely powerless. His only choice was to sleep in a library door way at night, and seek shelter in the library during the day. This case study is also about those who do have power – the library service, police, councillors – but who did not choose to use this power to help this man. I call this story, The Man in the Doorway. The narrative is paraphrased from a staff incident report. I have kept the details anonymous because telling this story is not about criticism or blame but about learning from what happened.

The Man in the Doorway

‘On Monday staff began to voice their concerns about a man who was sitting next to the photocopier in the Library. He had his hood up and a cap pulled over his face which was barely visible. He was sitting cross legged and appeared to be asleep and was drooling. His chair was blocking access to the copier. I asked him to move and he awoke and became agitated. He began to jab his pen at the table constantly. He moved his chair to give access to the copier. I was preparing to contact the police when he left. He returned to the library on Tuesday and sat in the junior library for much of the day. I did not want him in the junior library but was unsure about approaching him after what had happened on Monday so I contacted the police for advice. My call was not reported as an incident because he was not causing a disturbance. We did not feel the man was a particular nuisance and had no reason to ask him to leave that day.

When staff arrived on Thursday he was asleep in the library doorway. He left a great deal of rubbish which staff had to clear up. A local councillor observed this and said that ‘staff should not be expected to have to deal with such things.’ She contacted the police who visited the library on Friday, along with a library manager. The police said that they had spoken to the man and offered help from Social Services or a phone call to family but he had declined. He came into the library and was no trouble. We were concerned about him sleeping in our doorway because the weather was exceptionally cold during the week. He continued to sleep in the doorway until Tuesday when I rang the police. I felt we had been tolerant for long enough but we were no longer prepared for him to sleep in our doorway. On Wednesday he spent much of the day in the library as it was raining. He slept in the doorway on Wednesday night.

On Thursday I phoned the police and explained that we could not carry on like this. On Friday I again contacted the police as he was in the doorway when I arrived for work. On Saturday he was in the doorway again and I rang the police to report he was still causing problems. It was not logged as an incident. On Monday the doorway was blocked again so I rang the police. They explained that vagrancy is not against the law but if there was a continuing nuisance then an ASBO (Anti Social Behaviour Order) could be imposed. The police also suggested that the library service should take steps to bar the man from the library. I told the police that we knew the local council were already aware of the problem. A library manager visited and sent a report to the area manager. The cleaner said she thought the man was not causing any harm and felt sorry for him, but she had seen some displays of temper and was becoming concerned for her own safety.

By this time staff were becoming very frustrated and feeling unsupported. We had a discussion and decided to make sure the doorway was very wet with soapy water when we went home that night. We did this again on Wednesday night and the man did not sleep in our doorway either night. We close at 12.30 on Thursday and had no chance to soak the doorway. The man was in front of the doors on Friday morning. Earlier in the week I had contacted the council’s Health and Safety officer. He was on a course all week but contacted me on Friday to discuss the problem. He was not able to offer any solution or support. He suggested that the library could employ a security guard. The local councillor informed me she had contacted the senior councillor for libraries and the ASBO team at South Holland. I told the councillor that I felt unsupported and that having to wake the man in the doorway was a risk to us all.

The man was in the doorway again on Monday morning. I sent the head of libraries a full report. Another local councillor also contacted the head of libraries and suggested that a security grille be put on the front of the library. On Wednesday the man was back in the doorway. On Thursday I left a call with the local council ASBO officer. My call was not returned. On Friday I was informed by the head of libraries that he had spoken with the area manager and that a multi agency approach should be taken to solve the problem. On Saturday the man was asleep in the doorway. A member of staff called the police. When the police arrived the man became very aggressive. Another three police officers arrived, the road was blocked off and the man was arrested on public order offences.’

So, what can we learn from The Man in the Doorway? How could the situation have been dealt with differently? Was the councillor right when she said that staff should not be expected to deal with this situation? Many different agencies became involved (library service, police, councillors, Health and Safety officer, ASBO officer) – how could better multi agency working have improved the scenario? Should staff have prevented the man from sleeping in the doorway by making it wet? What different roles could councillors and managers have played? What policies and procedures could staff have used in helping them to deal with this situation?

As I said at the beginning, the aim of telling this story is not to criticise or blame staff but to learn from it. This learning can take place at both an individual and organisational level. In other words, there should be a whole service response to the Man in the Doorway. The responsibility should not be placed solely on those front line staff and managers who had to directly deal with the situation. Front line library staff have a very challenging job and come into contact with all kinds of people and situations. As public spaces, libraries attract a wide variety of people, some of whom have multiple or urgent needs. Staff can be trained to deal with these situations and need the support of their managers. Staff should be aware of any policies and procedures which can assist and guide them in carrying out their duties. For example, there should be clear policies on Violence at Work, Working Alone, and Health and Safety for frontline staff. Safety of Staff public notices should be posted in every library making it clear that threatening behaviour is not acceptable. Staff should be clear what unacceptable behaviour is – for example, behaviour which causes staff to feel upset, threatened, frightened or physically at risk. Staff can be trained in how to minimise the likelihood of incidents by: listening to people; demonstrating empathy and understanding; showing a willingness to help without promising too much; finding appropriate ways to say no and demonstrate respect whilst being firm and understanding. Measures can also be taken to avoid the risk of incidents at work and minimising the consequences such as: design and layout of library; organisational arrangements; training of staff; provision of security staff; personal security devices.

Staff should also be aware of the values of the organisation, such as focusing on the needs of the library user and community. A needs based library service puts the needs of the individual library user and the needs of the community at the centre of all strategies, structures, systems and culture. Being able to identify, prioritise and meet needs becomes ‘the way that we do things around here.’ A needs based library service actively involves and engages the whole of the local community in the planning, design, delivery and evaluation of library services. As well as providing core services from library buildings and taking services out into the community via outreach programs, a community development approach is also required. As Brian Campbell has explained ‘The community development approach begins from the position of the individual and from the perspective of the community. It helps individuals or communities to articulate their needs and then investigates ways and means to work collaboratively to respond to those needs. Outreach begins by providing programs, while community development begins by building relationships.’

A community development approach to the Man in the Doorway could have lead to a completely different set of outcomes: for the man himself, for the library service, and for the other organisations involved. Until we transform our library services and make them more needs based we are likely to continue to respond in a similar way to that described by John Gehner: ‘When poverty routinely confronts us at our workplace – sometimes subtly, sometimes directly – the best we can respond with is indifference or, in some quarters, hostility. We continually overstate the way that a minority of homeless (and housed) people purportedly disrupt us in the library. Yet we underestimate the larger political and economic decisions that have created a ‘truly brutal public sphere’ for the poor – which among other things means a shortage of mental health services for the patron arguing with his shoe.’

By John Pateman

The ability to manage change is a core competence in many public sector job descriptions these days, certainly at middle and senior manager levels. A whole industry has developed around Change Management and top consultants and gurus can command huge sums to attend their seminars and courses. There is also a vast array of change management text books ranging from the heavily academic to the more popular ‘do it yourself’ variety. Any student of change management will tell you that there are fads and new waves of ideas which come and go with confusing rapidity. One moment we are told that ‘small is beautiful’ and the next minute we are advised that ‘bigger is better’. Anyone who follows any of these gurus does so at the peril of having to completely reverse their strategy when the next big idea comes along. Change management can be a risky and fickle business.

My approach to change management is not based on business gurus, although I do have an MBA and I have read an awful lot of relevant textbooks. While I have some time for people like Charles Handy Peter Senge (who I particularly like), I look to the worlds of history and politics to find my true change champions. My role models are those people who have not merely re-engineered a business or restructured a company, but who have changed whole countries and the course of world history. An analysis of the strategies, structures, systems and cultures employed by these transformational leaders can give us tools and techniques for making changes within our library services. These are people who not only achieved that very difficult task of starting a Revolution, but also managed to maintain the momentum of that Revolution and sustain it over a long period of time. They are the experts in initiating, embedding and sustaining change and continuous improvement. This then, is your guide to organisational change, according to Chairman Mao..

Chairman Mao led the great Chinese Revolution of 1949. Before this date China was a vast, poor, divided country run by war lords and bandits. In less than a generation Mao transformed this backward feudal country of millions into a world super power. Today the Chinese economy is the envy of the world. Economic growth is running at record levels and China has overtaken the UK as the world’s fourth largest economy. The benefits of this extraordinary economic growth have gone to the people, whose living standards have increased exponentially in relative terms. State management of the commanding heights of the economy has ensured that China’s wealth remains the property of the Chinese people. How was this transformation achieved and what can we learn from it in terms of changing our library services? The starting point of the Chinese Revolution was that everything had to change – there was no point in just changing one part of society and not changing the rest. The same applies to public libraries who must take a holistic approach to change by adopting new strategies, structures, systems and cultures if they are to be transformed, modernised and able to meet the diverse needs of their communities.

Let a hundred flowers bloom

Before the Revolution China did not have a national strategy for development and growth. Each region of China did its own thing in its own way and the whole country did not pull together to achieve common objectives. The same can be said of some library services. Mao’s solution to this was to launch a campaign in 1956 under the slogan ‘let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools contend’. In other words, Mao invited the Chinese people to discuss and put forward ideas for the national development of China. This was a massive brainstorming exercise where any ideas could be suggested, no matter how big, how small or how implausible. All ideas were valid and accepted. This not only created a national debate but opened the flood gates for ordinary Chinese people to have their say – something which they had been denied for literally thousands of years. The Hundred Flowers Movement was designed to mobilise the people for a program of rapid industrialisation. This would require the co-operation and contribution of the entire population – academics, managerial and technical experts, peasants and farmers.

Developing a new strategy for public library services requires a similar approach – a mechanism which allows all sections of the workforce to debate the future direction and priorities of the service. In Lincolnshire we achieved this by setting up Strategy Development Groups (SDGs). There were three of these, one each for the strategic objectives of Inclusion, Learning and Regeneration. These objectives were based on the Framework for the Future key themes of Books and Learning, E-Government and Community Cohesion. Staff were asked to volunteer to join a SDG and contribute to the debate of what Inclusion, Learning and Regeneration actually mean for Lincolnshire Libraries and the communities which they serve. Other Council services and partners were asked to join in this debate. The outcome was an integrated strategy for the development of Lincolnshire Libraries. This was used to inform the next stages of the transformation process: structures, systems and culture.

The process of letting one hundred flowers bloom had the effect of ‘unfreezing’ Chinese society which had been frozen in the grip of feudalism for so long. At the end of the debate it was necessary to ‘refreeze’ society around the new set of common objectives which had emerged from the discussion process. These objectives were summarised in Chairman Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’ – this was his strategy for the development of socialism in China. Every member of Chinese society had a copy of this ‘Little Red Book’ and studied it to understand it. It produced a common language and platform which enabled everyone in China to communicate with each other on the new agreed goals. I have found the ‘Little Red Book’ more enlightening, inspiring and educative than any management text book. Chairman Mao reminds us, for example, that once we have decided our strategy and policies, we must be focused on delivering our objectives, and not be sidetracked or distracted:

‘Our Party has laid down the general line and general policy of the Chinese revolution as well as various specific lines for work and more specific policies. However, while many comrades remember our Party’s specific lines for work and specific policies, they often forget its general line and general policy. If we actually forget the Party’s general line and general policy, then we shall be blind, half baked, muddle headed revolutionaries, and when we carry out a specific line for work and a specific policy, we shall lose our bearings and vacillate now to the left and now to the right, and the work will suffer.’

The Great Leap Forward

Having agreed a strategy, Mao’s next task was to restructure Chinese society to enable that strategy to be delivered. Mao’s vehicle for achieving this was The Great Leap Forward of 1958. Mao recognised that the way that society and the economy were structured would not enable sudden and sustained economic growth. Great Leap policies affected every aspect of economic life. The overriding objective was to substitute China’s plentiful labour for scarce capital in an all out assault on the backward economy. All peasants were reorganised into huge People’s Communes, super co-operatives each with many thousands of members. The communes practised extremely egalitarian policies and the massive labour forces were directed to carry out huge projects. Local self sufficiency was promoted and many new rural industries were set up. The Great Leap was also associated with a bias against experts or specialists. To be ‘red’ was better than to be ‘expert’. The effects of the Great Leap were closely monitored and fed back into the process to inform further changes.

The parallels here for library services are that, having developed new strategies, we need to create new staffing and service structures to deliver those strategies. This requires wholesale change and not just tinkering with structures and job descriptions. The workforce needs to be transformed so that it can focus on the new priorities of Inclusion, Learning and Regeneration. In Lincolnshire we developed a new staffing structure which flowed naturally from our new strategy. We fine tuned the structure and tested it at a series of staff road shows. The feedback from these road shows was used to further improve the structure. The outcome was a staffing structure which was fit for purpose with new job titles, person specifications and competencies. A greater emphasis was put on outreach work. There were less ‘specialist’ or ‘expert’ posts and more generic posts. The previous hierarchy was replaced by a flatter structure with fewer levels of management and more power devolved to the front line. Silo based working was replaced by matrix management, enabling staff across the service to be pulled together into working groups and teams. Performance measures and success criteria were developed to measure progress.

The Chinese Revolution was not a smooth process and was interrupted by Bigger Picture developments, particularly the geo politics relating to China’s relations with the United States and the Soviet Union. Similarly, the process of staff restructuring in Lincolnshire has been stalled while the Big Picture with regard to an organisational review of the County Council is carried out. This has given us time to look at the changes which we need to make to our service structure (for example, opening hours) and to our systems and procedures (such as proof of address and self issue). We are also continuing our process of workforce development, to prepare staff for change, and benchmarking of performance with other library services. These are all necessary steps as part of the revolutionary or transformation process. And they all contribute to the biggest challenge of all – culture change.

The Cultural Revolution

Chairman Mao recognised that a new strategy, structures and systems were necessary if China was to be transformed from a backward feudal society into a modern competitive economy. He also recognised that without fundamental cultural change, nothing would truly change in China. His mechanism for achieving this change was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which started in 1965. Mao was concerned that efforts had been made to reverse the agreed policies of the Revolution. He was aware of resistance to change from middle and senior managers. There was a retreat from collectivisation in agriculture and the reintroduction of material incentives. Education and medicine were increasingly elitist in their development. Literature and the arts were controlled by intellectuals. All these issues would be struggled over in the Cultural Revolution. The longest and fiercest of the great movements that Mao had set in motion since the founding of the People’s Republic, the Cultural Revolution was an attempt to change hearts and minds, attitudes and behaviour, beliefs and values, or what Mao called the ‘four olds’ – old thought, old culture, old customs and old habits.

Culture change is also the biggest challenge facing attempts to transform public libraries. New strategies can be developed in weeks, and new structures in months – but developing new cultures can take years. Cultures of comfort build up in most organisations and it can take some time and effort to change these. The approach we are using in Lincolnshire involves a combination of workforce development, service planning and performance management. The very act of involving staff in the development of new strategies and structures helps to change the culture. Staff are engaged in the change process and feel that their views are important and will have a say in the future shape and direction of the service. To reinforce this approach we have invested heavily in workforce development and change management training, including a highly successful course, ‘Step into your power’, run by Harriet Karsh. Service planning has been realigned to meet the new service objectives and performance management is used to demonstrate the contributions that individuals and teams can make to service and corporate objectives. We have been assisted in this by the development of new corporate objectives (LEADS) and values (PERFORMS). We are also keen to align our efforts with Local Area Agreement shared priorities and Every Child Matters outcomes.

Resistance to change is inevitable and should be managed. Change Champions (similar to China’s Red Guards) can lead the way in challenging old thought, old culture, old customs and old habits. As most cultures are based on language, a new common language is required as well. There should be less talk of Lending, Reference and Children’s libraries and more talk of Inclusion, Learning and Regeneration activities, for example. Cultural change takes time and you need to stay with it for the long haul, as Chairman Mao did. There are no short cuts to cultural change. If change is not embedded things will very quickly go back to how they were. The culture of comfort will reassert itself. For change to be sustained it needs leaders and managers who are both persistent and consistent. There are basically two types of change managers or transformational leaders – those, like Che Guevara, who are very good at starting revolutions, but who then become restless and go on to start new revolutions elsewhere; and those, like Fidel Castro, who take on the even more challenging role of keeping a revolution going over a sustained period of time. What kind of change manager are you – a Che or a Fidel?

Chairman Mao led the Chinese Revolution from 1949 until his death in 1976. This Revolution modernised the economy and made the country a power to be reckoned with. It also brought enormous improvements to the lives of many, raising life expectancy, and standards of living, and of health and education. Similar achievements are possible if we can transform our public libraries into needs based services. As Mao said, ‘Our duty is to hold ourselves responsible to the people. Every word, every act and every policy must conform to the people’s interests, and if mistakes occur, they must be corrected – that is what being responsible to the people means.’

Martn Lowe

By way of an introduction.
Before stating anything else I should point out that I am not a cataloguer. I am however an Library Information worker, & have had a lot of first hand contact with many small or radical publishers.
So instead of looking at what could or might be done to improve Library cataloguing, I wish to raise some questions & make some points about just how pre-publication cataloguing is & will effect the provision of small, radical, or campaigning publishers works within public libraries.
Current development in publishing, & how pre-publication cataloguing effects library end users.
The publishing explosion means that there are many more books which need to be catalogued. Given just how long it takes to produce a full catalogue record, and the expense of doing so, then many national libraries view pre-publication cataloguing as a way in which their costs might be cut.
One can easily see the advantages which come with this. For libraries there is also the added advantage that a full catalogue record is available well in advance of the publication date.
Yet pre-publication cataloguing does make for some interesting issues, & can create as many problems as it solves.
A nice little earner.
All in all pre-publication cataloguing makes money, saves costs, & for the library suppliers is what we might all refer to as a ‘nice little earner’.
The important thing to keep in mind is that any pre-publication cataloguing which any publisher produces will in turn be used or sold on by the various library supplies.
By publishers making pre-publication available via any National Library or National Bibliography, they are also contributing towards the privatisation ( outsoaring ) of library services. In other words, here we have yet another fine example of information being just another commodity to make a profit upon.
A how to do, & what not to do set of guide lines, or Webpage help.
It is not my intention to give any tips or advice about how to set about producing pre-publication catalogue information for any would be publisher. I’ll just give you a webpage reference which might be of some use.
Cataloguing in Publication From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataloging_in_Public ation
This webpage also gives webpage links to the ‘Cataloguing in Publication Programs’ of the LOC (Library of Congress ), British Library , & Library and Archives Canada .
Here take note: a quote from the British Library website, which also says something about just how our various national libraries have developed over the last few years:
‘The British Library contracts the administration of the CIP ( Cataloguing-in-Publication ) Programme and the creation of records to Bibliographic Data Services Limited (BDS). BDS is an independent, privately-owned company specialising in the creation of high-quality bibliographic data for use by libraries, booksellers and publishers.’
It might also be noted from the above webpages, that there are some restrictions upon these programs, which also means that they work in favour of the big capitalist publishers.
For example: The British Library requires that any pre-publication information is sent to them at least 4 months in advance of publication. I doubt if most small, radical, or campaigning publishers are ever going to be able to achieve anything like that !
Quality control, or wrong Dewy number means a wrong book placement upon the shelves.
There is also another set of problems which come from pre-publication cataloguing, as it might come with very little or poor quality control.
A lot of the work which is involved in processing books within public libraries is done by library workers who may never of had any training upon just how to read a Dewy number, never mind all that much cataloguing training.
If the pre-publication cataloguing is in any way wrong, library workers might just accept what they are given, & so in turn the books might be placed upon the wrong library shelves.
There are also another factors which should be taken into account here.
With a greater enthuses being given to IT issues within library schools, & less time available for lessons about cataloguing, then it must in turn make for an attitudinal effect within the Library workroom.
The attitude from front line librarians & library workers being that any cataloguing work should be left to the ‘specialist’ cataloguer, which in turn means a greater acceptance or reliance upon the electronic catalogue.
I could write more upon this issue, but lets just say it is not an issue about de-skilling. It is more to do with a greater issue about how libraries are changing, & how there are more skills which librarians & Library workers have to acquire.
The challenge to small & radical publisher at present.
The introduction of more pre-publication cataloguing is going to leave small, radical, & campaigning publishers at the major disadvantage in terms of promoting there works.
Pre-publication cataloguing is as much to do with publicising ones works & ideas, as it is about getting them into bookshops & libraries.
ISBN OK, but Dewy – What’s that ?
Perhaps the most illuminating replies one can receive from small campaigning organisations relates to just how much they know about both how to obtain an ISBN, & Dewy numbers.
For many small campaigning organisations how to obtain an ISBN is already an issue which is a difficult one to resolve. For many of these organisations it is left to the admin worker to obtain or work out any ISBN which they may of been allocated. Many of these organisations might of already been allocated a range of ISBN numbers , but they may still need to work out the check digit which needs to be added to them. For even those who are both able & used to working out this check digit, they will have to learn how to do it once again with the introduction of the new 13 digit ISBN number,
So when it comes to the allocation of Dewy numbers to these publication, there is an even greater set of problems which they face.
Most admin workers would never be able to appreciate the subtleties of cataloguing rules or conventions. Just to ask them which edition of Dewy they might be using to achieve any pre publication cataloguing would have most of them feeling like they were about to undertake a very uphill task.
No admin worker can or should be expected to allocate any dewey number to pre-publication data, as it will inevitably be wrong.
That is why most small publishers will come up with the text upon there publications such as:
‘A catalogue record for this book is available from ……..( insert your national library here ).’
In other words: ‘ leave it to the experts’.
In Conclusion – Some helpful ideas.
While no one can deny that the introduction is pre-publication cataloguing is useful, we do also need to address the many issues which it raises.
Clearly there are problems here which need to be addressed within the library world, & for which there is no easy solution.
What ever solutions one might have to these issues, most of them will cost a lot in terms of either time or money.
It would be very silly to try & resolve any of these issues by establishing a new alternative pre-publication bibliography, as that would only duplicate what is being done already.
By the same token, any webpage aimed at giving pre-publication help to publishers would only duplicate what is also currently available elsewhere.
What might work is the establishment of new network of radical librarians & cataloguers who would be willing & able to do the pre-publication cataloguing work for radical or campaigning publishers.
This could be a web-based network which the publisher contacts. Some of the people within this network might just wish to help organisations which specialise upon specific types of campaigning, while others might only wish to work with publishers that promote a very specific political line. The actual details about who does what & how such a network might be organised would have to evolve with those who might be interested in setting up such a body.
If such a network was linked within the present global network of radical librarians, then it could function in a very effective manner.
The next question is whether anyone wants to take up these ideas & then work upon them?
Martyn Lowe

• Watchdog Brands Profits on PFI Scheme ‘Unacceptable’ (Nicolas Timmings).
• Spain Warns Bolivia over Nationalisation and related articles (by FT journalists).
• Out on a limb: why Americans see their future as precarious (Edward Luce).

Watchdog Brands Profits on PFI Scheme ‘Unacceptable’ (Nicolas Timmings).

This article reveals how Britain’s biggest investors in the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) have been described by the parliamentary spending watchdog as ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’, including companies such as John Laing, Serco and 3i who have been accused of abusing government deals in an attempt to generate enormous profit. One example described how the Octagon consortium had made gains of

Martyn Lowe

A as in Introduction.
Mention about Dyslexia and you can get a very predicable set of observations upon the subject. Suggest that I have spent almost 34 years working in libraries, that I’m Dyslexic, & then just you enjoy the reaction of others to this idea. I’ve always wanted to put up a website, or edit an periodical entitled ‘The Dyslexic Librarian’. Well – Now you’ve had your fun – Here comes the truth. I have spent just over 34 years working in libraries, and I am Dyslexic. This is not to say that my Dyslexia is in any way sever, but it does show in the way I spell, & in the way that I view the world. My Uncle was Dyslexic too. He would sometimes write numbers back to front, & yet he could work out percentages from the top of his head. He was also a self made multi-millionaire. So I guess that must prove something or other….. Now a lot of people would seem to regard Dyslexia as akin to being a functional illiterate, but this is not the case for me. You just have to see the large number of articles & reports which I had published over the years. However, like many many other Dyslexics I will switch letters around in the works which I write. For example: I’ll write taht instead of that, etc. It’s not just in my spelling that this shows up. I’ve sometimes caught myself trying to write the odd word backwards as I put pen to paper. It’s not a problem for me as I know that I do it, & have learnt to compensate for it all. So why do I mention this ? Because there are very few functional Dyslexics that really realise that they are Dyslexic, although they might state that they are ‘poor spellers’. While very few people who work in Libraries realise that far from being a disadvantage in the work, that it is in reality a very great asset which everyone can benefit from.
B as in A Book.
Here is a book which I would recommend all Dyslexics to read, as it explains just how the Dyslexic mind works, & the kind of difficulties which some dyslexics experience.
‘The Gift of Dyslexia: Why Some of the Smartest People Can’t Read and How They Can Learn.’ By Ronald D. Davis with Eldon M.Braun.
Perigee Books – Revised Edition, 1997
As the author also points out some of the most famous Dyslexic Inventors, Artists, engineers, and Scientists include:

by David Nderitu

When the Greeks went to war with Troy, the great Greek general, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenea so that the gods could grant victory to the Greeks; after a gruesome war, the Trojans lost and the god Nike of victory proved that he could keep his promise. In my struggle for knowledge, I have sacrificed my pleasure to the gods of time and now I am fighting a pitched battle with Ignorance-Trojan but soon, I hope to be enlightened on many issues. When I do, my campaign will have been won and like the Greeks, my sacrifice will not have been in vain and the god of Time will keep my achievements in his custody. If my quest seems like Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, I hope to be equally rewarded and to learn from where Jason failed to keep his allies at the end of the mission.

In my frustrations to express my vision, I have realised that knowledge is arming where ignorance is disarming. If ignorance is languid, knowledge is awakening. Where knowledge is power, ignorance is enslaving. My quest has taken me to disparate islands of wisdom and edification and if the will is the power of continental drift, I intend to try and pull those isles together in an attempt to delineate that vision that is currently stilled in the slide-camera of my mind and to fit a jigsaw-land of enlightenment. I anticipate to deliver a message in a language so that the deaf shall hear, the blind shall read and the disabled shall reach the fountain…that, without neglecting able-bodied people whose moral disability may not be all too obvious. It occurs to me that where knowledge is a good physician, ignorance is the sadistic, malicious and evil pet-dentist who nefariously and needlessly makes a hungry dog toothless, only to throw some meat to a hounding pack and to watch the toothless dog starve to death while the hounds eat.

I have studied and I am still studying some European, African and World History in general, in an attempt to spot some form of congruency, no matter how remote. It is striking how events, even over two hundred years ago in one remote part of the world, could effect some action in a distant land. This reminds me of the mythical butterfly whose fluttering wings could have caused Hurricane Katrina or Elizabeth. But while the weather is a creation of nature, it is good to observe that sexism is a creation of man, making Katrina and Elizabeth a contingent of irrationality and ranging women, whose causes man least understands but whose effects are all too devastating, with an occasional Hugo…but rarely. It is a ‘credit’ in today’s political-correctness world for those men doing the naming to have gotten away with such slander. Politics of winds aside but if the name Hugo is French, there are others things that have emanated from France, which have had more profound effect on the world besides the French Cuisine and the Metre-length hidden somewhere is Paris.

It was ironical that the French Revolution of 1790 brought about the very demise of imperialism, which the French and their European rivals had created and wanted to perpetuate. When the revolution occurred and the Jacobites promulgated the Declaration of Rights of Man (liberté, egalité, fraternité) it also granted the rights for local Assemblies in the French Colonies, which the blacks in St Domingue ( Haiti) exploited, leading to an Independent Island within the ocean of colonialism. The situation became a euphemism: the fluttering wings of a black butterfly of liberty in Haiti under Toussaint L’Oeverture that brought the storm of independence to Africa, emancipation and some sort of movement towards equality for blacks in America and Europe. But it was not a wind whose storm gathered without being fed by many Black luminaries of the time e.g. Toussaint, C.L.R. James, E.B.W. Dubious, Marcus Garvey, George Padmore and many more just to mention but few. Isn’t it ironical that the French had started a full circle of event, which only later, or too late even, their Social Scientists could only observe through the mirror of time? In the “Concept of Irony”, Kierkegaard says: Irony is the distancing device that folds immediate experience back onto itself to create a space of self-reflection. How true!

My writing is not meant as a Historical Review, but it is also supposed to create a challenge, to reveal the irony that Independent Africa created in its wake. There is neither blaming those who worked hard to achieve that independence nor wishes of going back to slavery and colonialism where some have been heard to whisper that the master ere emancipation ensured a full measure of a bushel and a pound of meat, where now they die under their own rule; no! no! no! Some even ask: What good is Liberty to a dead man? Cynicism has its own place. Nothing is good to a dead man, but to others, there are lessons to be learnt.

In trying to go back to history, one should look at it in its own context, hoping to awaken some spirit that is presently dormant and which can be stirred to start a flaming fire and to alight Africans to greatness and to enlighten those, who like me are searching for that African Golden Fleece which went missing centuries back. It may be a Golden Fleece, It may be the Tree of Knowledge, it may be the Light of the Earth but its benefits are the driving force of man’s civilisation since he realised his vulnerability and decided to fortify his position within this hideously competitive world. It is a force that engenders different reactions. Some are predisposed to ask a question: Why? Some are swayed to ask why not, while most just call it a state of nature and silently accept it. It is the few who ask why and how who go on to be knighted as the Light of the World. Toussaint et el did ask why and how when the cloud of slavery and colonialism came. They fought and brought liberty, an apogee and a crown of glory to their travails. However, when their time was done and the cloud went away, most Africans sank into that euphoria. They revelled in the glory of their Independence and omitted to see another cloud coming, failing to realise that the end of yesterday’s season of harvest was the beginning of today’s season of planting. My generation went to school in a reaping mood and parroted some meaningless words to pass time. The system failed to plant new seeds into the ground in us and where it may have done, we failed to sprout.

When we became of age, we went to school because we had reached school-going age and when we left school, it was because we had reached school-leaving age but in between, we played an imaginary children’s farm game. When the reality hit home that we were the matured crop to be harvested, it was a rude awakening that there was no crop in us. We too were looking to eat the fruits of our labour for the years spent at school, but if there were any fruits for our picking, they were bitter fruits of frustration and wasted time. We hungered, we thirsted we slept rough. We blamed our fathers instead of realising the mistakes our brothers, who had slightly gone before us had made, failing to know that the farm needed continuous planting, and that the sooner we got on with it the better. We were yet another generation that was building a pyramid of hopelessness…a path to nowhere. For those whom luck smiled on their faces and came across some succulent orchards, they ate the tree to the roots. Desertification in Africa became an ecological and an enlightenment phenomenal nightmare …a disaster so to speak. Where any planting had been done, it was in shallow sandy infertile soils while the oases drained away to some far off land, where past masters had retreated…some fresh water steams flowing into the ocean. The so much-required light of luminaries faded away like a receding star. Africa slowly started to sink into the darkness of technology, economy and good education, the yellow golden light sunk almost literally and financially to the west and Africa became a debt-ridden farmer who could not feed his children…a sharecropper in his own land. It became a hopeless dream to many. Some fled, some died, most stayed…like all human beings over the ages when disaster strikes, the angel and wind of dispersion to the for corners of the world. But if there is irony in its own failure, it is the irony of the dark cloud in Africa starting to reveal the inextinguishable red ember preserved and buried in the ashes after the fire has died down to light yet another fire. Yes, Africa could be starting another age of enlightenment but between the roaring flame and now, there will be a lot of ashes to blow and fuel to gather!

It is one thing to accept that there is hope, it is yet another to define and to formulate how that hope will be crystallised to bring about changes and to reverse knowledge desertification. To Africans or to anyone else in that state of affairs, it is a much bigger challenge than reversing global warming. Nevertheless, it something that needs doing and once dreamt, the vision must translate either into reality or into hopelessness. How can this dream become a reality?

In the world today, the mention of ‘Philosophy’ makes one look as if he were a Greek reincarnated ghost or at best a phantom from the Renaissance or simply a quixotic dreamer. Even though that may be derogatorily applied, that is what philosophers are: Dreamers. Philosophy seems to be the mother of all fields of inquiries and if not, at least it is the mid-wife who delivers the babies. Philosophy is derived from the Greek, meaning love of wisdom. A.C. Grayling says that philosophy is an inquiry and a reflection to include the widest features and thoughts of the world and of human experience. Before one can rush to prescribe an overdose of African Philosophy to the malaria-prone continent, it very important to go back and understand the healthy and unhealthy history of the continent to enable the Philosopher to develop the curative methods to heal and to restore that which has been lost. As it is, African Philosophy is a poorly defined term and the reality of the African world today may not place it in a friendly corner of word definitions. So New African Philosophy needs to be developed which, while taking into account the history, it must be written to provide the mode and direction which Africa must move in order to make a bright future. If yesterday’s African Philosophy is dead, it is not because it was wrong, it had simply outlived it useful life in congruence to what Philosophy is supposed to do. A.C. Grayling says: Philosophy tries to bring itself to an end, either by solving its problems or by finding ways of transforming them into special inquiries. In other words, philosophy brings its own demise once a problem has been solved but it does not stop there, it searches for new frontiers to be explored; Africa should be a Philosophical Explorer’s dream. But first, African History!

In the African Origin of Civilisation, Cheickh Anta Diop states that the African History will remain suspended in the air unless it is connected to the Egyptian History. Cheickh Anta Diop did not make a vacuous claim; he made solid connections that need to be reinforced by others in order to be widely accepted. Today he is a lonely voice crying in the wilderness. Why is it so important to connect African history to Egyptian History? One must realise that history is not just a frivolous and an asinine repertoire of the past, it provides both the moral guidance to its future generations as well as the strength, pride and respect to those it is bequeathed. Rich history is the economy that makes a rich man richer while poorly documented history is the tool that makes a poor man poorer. In agreement with Cheickh Anta Diop, Africa must reclaim its own to enable them to define a philosophy that will offer clear and lasting directions. But history must not be warped to claim what is someone else’s; it must be factual if connectivity is to take place and to if it will provide the beam of light that Africa so much needs as it gropes for itself in the dark past.

Over and above a people discovering themselves in the mummies of history, history in itself lights the fire of a culture forgotten, giving birth to the fraternal twins of art and literature, the fuel to the popular culture. In other words, art and literature give the history of a people but in a different popular way. Where demanded, they alter history effectively, making appropriate and suiting dichotomy, without being accused of a cruel surgery. After all, are they not just arts, subject to various interpretations? They adjust the past to suit the philosophy of the period, directing whole nations without using force. Popular culture spurs hope, respect and admiration and is the substratum of domination. Whereas Africans should not aspire to dominate anyone, they should seek to lift themselves from obscurity and hectoring long endured. Africans should realise that their future almost literally lies buried in the cemetery of the past and that they should seek to resurrect what they can and build their future on from there.

However studying specific cases of history may help in understanding where things for Africa started to go wrong. But one must also realise that History and Destiny are extremely long, almost unbounded, and that events that seem real and paramount to us today may be written off by the scribe of Time as inconsequential; their importance lying only in the provision of a continuous line of human existence. Whether that existence was ensured by war or peace, freedom or slavery, communism or capitalism, frugality or waste, sharing or the winner-takes-it-all, may not be that important; making man a mere means to a future held in the mysteries of time.

Today, echoes of grumbling departing colonialists reverberates across the whole of the African Continent. And like a standing wave in a laboratory or a cavernous ocean-cliff, the grumbling has refused to die down, the energy to ensure continuity of the unsettling wave provided by the capitalism. Nothing illustrates the bitterness felt by the departing colonialist from Africa more than the troubles that ensued once Belgian Congo gained independence. Within three months of Patrice Lumumba becoming the Prime Minister of the baby republic, the CIA and the Belgians had groomed a Prime Moster…Colonel Mobutu Seseko together with his allies Moise Tshombe and Kasavubu and installed him to take care of their interest. They told him: You are different. You are cultured. You are one of us. And as if to confirm their assertion, they offered him a napkin and dined with him, watching him so gluttonously eat, dropping food on the table, but they complimented him. In Congo, they had installed a despot, but a despot sanctified by his subservience to his former Colonial Masters. Ruling by proxy acquired its true meaning in Congo and in Mobutu’s ruthless, his Masters characters were reflected in full spectrum. If Congo was a cursed nation, this was a double whammy but its real curse came from the generosity of nature underground. Congo has the World’s largest deposits of dreaded Uranium, large deposits of the precious diamonds, copper, gold, tin and several other minerals. Some of these, like diamonds and gold, caused the trouble being valuable because they are desired, but the real curse for the Democratic Republic of Congo as it has been called today, lies in the Uranium, which is desired because it is valuable. If the imperialists had enticed Mobutu with an ideology, it is doubtful if Mobutu could understand the dangers posed by Communism or the benefits of Capitalism. But if Capitalism could offer the gun and the power, well, it must be the better ideology! Lumumba had relied on the UN to deliver justice but ironically, it ensured his capture. The UN facilitated the death of a great Pan-Africanist. It would not be the last time that the UN would play the music to the liking of the American ears. Money Talks!

Mobutu plundered his country’s wealth with impunity, sharing the spoils with his handlers while helping to paint an image of a continent that cannot manage itself…a lacerated and a disfigured image made in the western studios. But it was not that Africa could not manage; the painters were fake and Mobutu was not an African; he was a white man’s carving in a black mask whose image became the epitome and a sample of the African rule to the west. But those who made the harlot slept with her because she gave them pleasure. To correct that distorted painting so much fronted to the western world, making the African children a laughing stock at the school playgrounds, African Historians and artist must repaint that picture to provide Mobutu with his true shade. But if they expect the white artist to lift the mask, they can as well join in the mockery of their own descendants at the playgrounds.

Sadly, capitalism and more so globalisation, as it seeks to take what it failed earlier to acquire, has found new and eager players to amplify the derision to the African children. It is the Scene Two of the Scramble for Africa. The recruitment drive for the actors has just started; the cogs are in motion as the masters at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund snap their fingers for the mirth machines to start. Some Africans are laughing out loud, trying to outshine each other, falling over themselves in order to prove their worth to their Masters and handlers, but behind the Bank’s closed doors where no African is entertained, the real laughter begins…the Masters clink their tumblers…What Idiots to sell their motherland! The bankers shake their heads in disbelieve but celebrate, having struck uranium, gold and copper in the idiots. It is Congo all over again and all over Africa, as crude democratisation and unfair trading terms dabbed as free trade, which is not free decimates what little pride that the African had in him. But the actors are told that they are different and they believe it. They must be, to take pride in being told that they are different from their own.

In order for the Africans to learn where their fathers failed, History must be taught in its proper perspective and the actors derided for selling their own to other nations for their selfish ends and pittance benefits. Failure to do so will perpetuate the Mobutu Dynasty for generations to come.

However even as we censure those who act against the interest of their own citizens, it is important to realise that political leadership has been the football field for demagogues over the ages with the masses cheering on the winning team. And like their counterparts in the football field, they take all the gate collections to lead flamboyant and sometimes careless life styles. Why has it been that political science seems to have provided man with insurmountable problems while man has always come up with right solutions in other situations? The political demagogy that spews out of those with aspirations is a careful psychological analysis of people’s thoughts and expectations. People feel so much relieved that someone can psychoanalyse them without applying hypnosis. But if the mass response is anything to go by, it is the masses that are unaware of being hypnotised. The demagogue provides the people with the so much required psychotherapy while the people provide the politician with support. The whole scenario is a marriage between the demagogues who may be genuine in promising to deliver specific goals to the people, but has to employ the whole spectrum of people’s wishes to garner support, which would otherwise be denied and the current hindrance would then remain in place, but the failure by the political leadership to qualify their statement is a great misnomer. They should not promise to deliver one of the inalienable rights, that is pursuit of unlimited happiness which people so much want, without making it clear to them that while the government will ensure that that right is maintained, it is upon each and every individual to pursue what makes his life tick. For the government to deliver bespoke raiment of happiness to everyone, it is trim all down to one size. This would severely contradict the very principal of the pursuit of happiness.

Further, in order to foster trust in people, political leaderships have to learn that once a specific goal has been achieved, especially ones with huge implication on the societies, they have to yield power to someone else who will define his own goals acceptable to the people and the process repeated. This will make the people feel responsible for their mistakes if the government does not deliver while offering them hope that a change is coming without having to result to mass action. Democratically elected governments will always ensure that that hope remains. Education plays an important role in eliminating peoples illusionary hopes, while promoting a few with the right ideas in life to lay the carpet on the future national pathways. But while education works, poverty is the enemy that de-educates those who swim on the education’s shallow waters. They forget the ideals of education while retaining the cutting edge of evil. They become the dangerous sword that cuts it owner, instead of aiding him into the battle. The direction that a nation takes cannot be defined at a people’s court, but the political leadership has the mandate to define it. Institutions of learning should be temples where the natural course of a nation shall lie, while the politician should ensure that the nation remain on course. As Aristotle said, man is a political animal by nature and no matter how we may wish to run away from politics, the social rules of existence when a community comes into being is politics and anyone who does not want to play those rules, to quote Aristotle, is either a god or a beast. While attaining divine status is something we all so much want, it is important to realise that we lead a human life within orderly societies, otherwise and ironically, nothing will stop us from becoming beasts.

On the question of democracy in Africa today, it is something that was delivered in a demagogic American way. It was meant to be the panacea and a quick fix to the African problem. Those in power did not want the pill for they rightly saw the demise of their own dynasties. For others, it was a dirty divorce in a western court with their ex-partners but for those who descended on the people like doves offering hope, they had more in common with the doves naivety of the dangers ahead than with the withered fig leaves on their lips. Today, African tinsels towns are scenes of people demonstrating like school children clamouring for sweets. They have abandoned their farm implements waiting for the sweets of democracy. Whereas those sweets will finally arrive, after adjusting their own taste over a long period of time, the bitterness of the present may not be easily masked by the desirable taste. Yes, democracy is good but it has rules to it…that’s how it works and that how it has always worked. Democracy without rules has an ugly head if not insane…and wobbly feet; it just collapses on itself. The west told the African to throw away the old distorted rulebook but it never made it clear that it meant expunging unfair and undemocratic clauses. Now people are moving en-mass almost leaderless if not rudderless and where they exist, they lead from behind. It is the old African situation repeated. When will Africa come up with its true solution to its own problem? African will have to come up with institutions of people with special skills. Universities should be starting points but children who show special skills should be helped to realise their potentials to the full. They should be helped and equipped with the citadel of ideology to protect their true talents and as the first generation, to train others. Everyone should be properly equipped with the ultimate morality and a categorical imperative philosophy of life. To paraphrase Immanuel Kant: Always act in such a way that you can also will that the maxim of your action should become universal law. If the Kantian rule sounds complicated, it can be rephrased to read: Do unto others the way you would like them do unto you.

Copyright – David Nderitu, Sunday, 19 February 2006

References

1. Soren Kierkegaard , On the Concept of Irony
2. Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood, Pan-African History
3. Chieckh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilisation: Myth or Reality? (1974)
4. AC Grayling, Philosophy 1, A guide through the subject (1995)
5. Aristotle on Politics
6. Immanuel Kant, The Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)

by David Nderitu

Foreign aid, on which many African countries have largely come to depend on erringly believing it is pure aid at all times has a commercial element, which is paid with interest. Grants are the philanthropy element of any good businessman. Now popular but misinforming journalism in the west has produced the notion that all money is grant, free money to some corrupt Africans at their (west’s) own taxpayer’s expense. This has produced some political heat within the lending countries while portraying the receivers as a bunch of good-for-nothing lots…nincompoops. It may do some good to the citizens of the west to know that most African countries pay much more in annual interest on the so-called aid than on the principal they received. What aid in the world has interest? They are commercial loans lent on commercial terms. Those shouting calling loans aids are either ignorant or malicious.

However, while it is honourable to accept that the real African problem may be more complex than one may allow, it is also important to realise that western societies are largely defined along the survival for the fittest theory which fits very well with Adam Smiths economic theory, the boon for capitalism for nearly three hundred years. It cannot therefore be that the west is giving loans to work against the very foundation upon which its entire economic edifice lies, but the motive must be to promote and pile the very same principles. This element is never pronounced for the fear of being seen as an exploiter of the already exploited while the Africans, who never seem to be good at keeping records are never bothered to try and come up with the economic cost/benefit analysis of such loans/aids. Those who have tried, because my senses tell me there are, try to do so in a half-hearted and withering-spirited way, superficially scratching the surface and proclaiming to have entered the earths core. In the face of surmounting problems, a parody is sung in the bar politics: It is not our fault; it is the west’s. The west will do whatever it will take to survive and rightly so and as Soren Kierkegaard says, ‘we are thrown into this hostile and contradicting world’ without help and where survival becomes the main focus. The African therefore must rise, pulling himself by the bootstraps or be buried in the sarcophagus of poverty, shame and suffering whose effect and pathos are reflected in the visage of their children. How sad to make poverty an inheritance to anyone! We as a black people must remove the wax from our ears to hear the truth in Kierkegaard statement.

To enable the African to rise, it is essential for African scholars to investigate, pore over and to inquire into the foundation upon which progress is laid, realising that if religion will redeem them from sin, education will redeem them from ignorance, poverty and susceptibility and only then will they be able to shout amen full volume. As a people, we as Africans need to enter into this illimitable ocean of knowledge, where height, breadth and length are lost and where time has no meaning; an ocean inviting immersion and obsession whose shallow end is almost irresistibly tantalising; but we must not swim at its shallow end; we must strip and dive deep as much as we can. For Africa to advance, deep philosophical thinking based on selflessness will be a prerequisite while personal suffering will not be too big a price to pay. African scholars need to ponder on the destiny of the continent, realising that the phantom of the past ignorance must be exorcised now to avoid visiting it onto the future, asking the same question that has been asked since man lifted his eyes to heaven and marvelled at the celestial bodies: What is my purpose? They may not answer that question which has made casualties out of those who have tried to make careers out of it, but it is a mill that has been grinding food for thought and feeding the western advancement in art, science, technology and even their psych for hundreds of years. If asked, it is a question that will stir the still waters of their souls to ripple some gentle waves of clear understanding across the continent and Love Brewed in the African Pot could acquire a new meaning as Africans learn to give their lives and love to their own land.

As starting point, the responsibility to bring change and progress lies with those who may have seen the light, no matter how dim. They will need to lead their lot into the correct direction without putting their self-interest first, as if the existence of mankind solely depends on their own individual opulent existence. It is this understanding that differentiates the truly and rationally educated from the ignorant masses who must be shown the benefits of rising up every morning or in the dark of night to do what needs doing. But if the educated have only learnt how to fleece the very masses they are supposed to lead into the light, they will effectively have eclipsed the light of education. The final result is a society living in the umbra of ignorance and a slow, painful death of the shoots of civilisation will be a matter of time. The song of three blind mice will resonate whenever that situation will be. Africa must found its progress onto some suitable grounds.

But what foundation do the Africans wish to lay their advancement on? On a crumbling stone of blind religious faith or on a solid rock of faith in education, believing that they can do it? Africa must hear the cries of its own off-springs and remove the future from the hands of demagogues and the innumerable faith healers cum religious entrepreneurs in order to charter a clear course defined by those who have got the true light in education. But if they allow themselves to be led by people holding a flickering candle light, it will be a matter of time before the flame is snuffed out by the storm. There are those who claim, in their unwise wisdom, to have cracked the Delphic oracular message, placing Africa in the no-hoper basket case, but Africans have the choice and ability to defy the prophecy and define their own course according to their desires and wishes and even if the Delphic message may not be favourable, well, their own Osirian God still reigns supreme in the Orion. He will bring the petals of their wishes to ‘fruitition’ if they ask. But for those wishes to mature, light must shine in violent and inextinguishable flashes of rational truth as academics wrestle with the past, present and future. African: the great explorer for Africa.

Logically, one wonders why Africa has remained for forty years and more in the dark wilderness? Why are the African people unable to sing to their own God: Lead me into the light, even though they are generally gifted with a lilting yodel? Or are they singing and has their God liked the ballad so much that the only way keep them singing is to maintain them in the dark? Has anyone else as a people been in the same situation? Has another people been enslaved for over four hundred years and yet no hope? Africa must come out of the rut. It may be essential for African scholars to closely study, analyse and examine the lives of those who made the west into what it is today even as they grapple with their own situation. One will find that the glittering and shimmering economic picture of the west is literally painted with blood and missing bodies of those who sprung forward to understand man and civilisation. It was not an easy road; it was a slippery, winding and perilous trail, often lined with danger, demanding sacrifice at every corner, and more often than not, the evil would win, but the repeated fight with the difficulties resulted in the fatigue failure of those hindrances and finally the good was realised. Africa must wake up from the stupor of looking into the western horizon for material help and hope; if anything, the sun sets in the west; those who do so face the wrong direction. Religion has conquered the minds of the African masses with its mystiques and myths, offering illusionary hopes where reality is required while failing to raise them up from sedentary lifestyles, presenting serendipity and mercy from God as the panacea for all ailments of the continent. But if God is the answer to their prayers, he will never answer those who wait for the answer lying down. He armed humanity with arms as a tool to go out and gather. If he had seen no use for the arms, then I postulate that he would not have placed them there. In the film “Oh God” the fictional creator told man: Now you have everything here on Earth that you need to make life good. Now it is up to you to make it work. And he left. African child, use your arms, arms, arms. Go Gather, gather, gather but thou shalt not steal!

In trying to understand the concept of his predicament, the African may have to analyse the riddle of existence. As said earlier, it is equivalent to seeking a solution to a mathematical equation that has no solution but whose exploration leads to various revelations along the way for the world is composed of chaos and madness upon which we must haggle and struggle to improve the human condition. As stated by the famous French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, “We are born into unfathomable existence that has no cosmic or divine purpose,” and in agreement, without necessarily being an existentialist, with his conclusion, “The only valid values are the ones we create for ourselves.” What values do the African wish to create, societal or purely personal based on survival for the fittest? Quoting further from Jean-Paul Sartre, “Human behaviour is a bizarre jumble of affection and hostility, greed and generosity, violence and gentleness” The Chinese concept of yin and yang…good and evil mixed in each personality…correctly describes human psych. It may be that evil is the energy that has to be expended in order to climb up the hill of good; meaning that good and evil are inextricably entwined. In that case, the question remains: How much evil is the African man willing to shed in order to satisfy the longing of his heart and the need of his body?

This answer requires clear and focused thinking without turning to religion. I assert that the final solution to man lies within human and not within some deterministic external system. If it were not, whither gone the free will? Education must answer those questions by ‘culturalizing’ self-determination, not just as a political tool to achieve political independence, but as an economic mechanism for personal liberation, emancipation and self-realisation. The African educationist has a huge role to play in this game, but unfortunately, he is fettered and shackled by inability to freely decide the mode and direction of his thinking as a result of religious believes which have been intensely battering, blowing and sweeping across the continent with the vehemence and chaos of a desert storm. Religion must not be allowed to keep Africa in the dark as it did to Europe for a millennium and half. But it is the Africans who will have to say no. Like the Greeks, Africa must create its own heroes as a baseline to be emulated, to shake off the primitive superstitions and taboos by showing that the African can do amazing things by his nature, with strengths scarcely known and understood. The African solution lies within the human in him. I argue that it is better to be human than to be religious for while humanism seeks to promote all that is good and whole amid the said chaos, religion seeks only to forgive ones mistakes without bothering to correct the errors…hence the perfection of sin. Religion is man seeking to remain in sin and to escape and avoid punishment. In away, religion is the outward expression of human failure to accept his role together with the consequent desperation and acceptance of a destiny which is not determined but which he must define.

It is a huge responsibility to define oneself but it is one that none can escape even if the choice is refusing to define oneself; the refusal to do so becomes one’s definition. There are innumerable paths to follow for man to realise who he is and religion is one of them and the most popular. It could therefore mean that it is the least human-energy expending path among all other choices available…in other words, among the recipe of free will ala-carté menu, it is the most easily prepared. No wonder Sartre was French! Who else could have seen through the kitchen of humanism to realise that the only cooks within the kitchen of our existence is our existence that must create our essence?

Africans are capable of creating their own coherent essence but the plaintive African song of help and expectation on others to perform must cease. It needlessly goes without saying that it will take Africans to nudge each other on the road to progress, as only them can understand each others’ limitations but still grasp and comprehend the danger of remaining stagnant. The African culture is rich in its own way, but it has failed to blend and compete in today’s stringent and technologically oriented world. Often in the trading pyramid, the African man is at the bottom and literally bears the weight of the world above. He is left to collect the dross and detritus from the river of wealth, which goes to reduce his health and ability to work; some very good foundation to remain at the bottom of the pyramid is entrenched. But as has been said before, the answer to the African problem will come from within; so much from within that it lies within each and every individual; may that person be a peasant farmer, a clerk in the office, a messenger, a teacher, a politician and a host of all other occupations that goes to define a society. Obviously there are many factors that need to be evaluated to bring the problem to the forefront, at times making brutal surgical operations on behaviours that have come to be regarded as normal but which in reality need to be ruthlessly uprooted to enable the society to move on and for it to rendezvous with its expectations. Among those are unfavourable family values, promoted by lose sexual proclivity, almost leaning towards satyriasis, alcoholism and outward showmanship in consumption without having to work for it. The doctrine of capitalism and survival must invite community at its centre where every person is now their won centre. But first there are expectations: of others and of self.

The culture of expectation on others in the African societies is shocking, yet no one seems to expect the other to expect of them. They expect changes to happen without the changes changing them. Like the famous Mahatma Gandhi said, “Become the change you want the world to be”. When everyone expects himself to perform, only then will a permanent and lasting solution to the almost redundant African problem will have been solved. There is whole phenomenon needing to be laid bare on a mosaic of social behaviours and disparity within different ethnic groupings. It may become almost impossible to understand for even within a single piece of the mosaic, changes are taking place with time and without any discernible pattern. But we must not throw in the towel on hope and wait for the ‘end of times’…there will be no end to misery if waiting becomes the means. Even though the river of hope seems to have run dry, with millions needlessly suffering, dying of thirst and starvation, while plenty abide within and without, Africa must survive and learn to quench the thirst on dew as it digs the wells of wealth and knowledge from its people. But the question still remains: How can the African man lift himself from Hades? A superfluous question? No it is not. It is a question running to the core of African behavioural science, intrinsically tied to the economic development and sustenance. The question of morality, truly in philosophical terms needs to be answered and not from a narrow subjective view to fit and to allow oneself to survive, but reasoning must permit the society to come in as mode of cooperation for better survivability.

The ordinary African person must bring a cultural change within the leadership while the leadership must initiate, enhance and festoon good cultural practices to the common man by denouncing every act of wrong doing, not just one of monetary corruption, but anything that goes to undo the moral fabric of the nation. Self-purification is something of a culture and it must be condemned. Lose sexual tendencies abound everywhere. They are allowed to proliferate with some kind of acclaim even; leaders together with their followers need not worry about their behaviours…the credibility to exert political leadership has nothing to do with their libido; be they man or woman. It is permitted yet the expenses that go along to maintain this kind of lifestyles runs into the very heart of economic imprudence of the individual when in and out of the office. It leads to careless living and money management becomes some sort of rocket science. The booster fuel therefore is locked somewhere either in the coffers of a public office or in a private company within which the individual happens to be having access. Consequently, skimming falls into the scheme of work. Instant wealth and heroism become the budge of wining; General McCarthy would have been hard put to command the following of an African hero-looter. National imprudence is not only conceived by individual imprudence, it is natured by the same.

If this sounds like a tragedy, tragedies are the corrective measures that nature applies in his ruthlessness and impatience to reach his end. Currently there are emerging democracies which have brought along with them some miserly; in itself not and end; an effect which the African must painfully bear in order to precipitate the right reaction. But presently, these political vehicles running the length and breadth of the continent spewing dust in their wake resemble a mob-rule more than democracies, where everyone is shouting in deafening tones to everyone else. But still, these vehicles have a crucial role to play in allowing the gringo’s to jostle each other in and out of the echelons of power, each subsequent replacement a unit clearer in turbidity of the opaque waters; a little progress but a progress nevertheless. It is a process that will take time but time in the state of nature is only a concept in human mind; meaning that a hundred, a thousand or even a million years is nothing to a natural process. Even though the song of transparency in Africa may at the moment sound like a dirge to a dead hero, it is a song that will finally resurrect the mummies from the dark sarcophagus that Africa seems to have prepared for itself. The western world must not be allowed to spoil the song with their rock guitars in a rock concert style lacking in tune with the Africans in order to rock the existing system to perpetuate Africa and Africans exploitation.

David Nderitu, Davidkn1yahoo.co.uk, 4 January 2006

1) Michael Grant, Myths of Greeks and Romans

2) Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

3) James A Haught, http://www.classic.about.com

By Paul Catherall

This event was a mini-conference held at Swansea University and was jointly organised by the Career Development Group Wales and the activist e-journal Information for Social Change.

The conference was introduced by Neil Smyth (CDG Wales). Two speakers gave presentations at the event. Firstly, Ruth Rikowski (Visiting Lecturer at London South Bank University, Co-editor of the e-journal Information for Social Change and author of many articles and several books dealing with Globalisation). Secondly, Anneliese Dodds, who is currently completing a PhD concerning ‘Liberalization and the public sector’ at the Department of Government at the London School of Economics, and the Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation.

The day began with an introduction by Ruth on the political background to Globalisation, including the role of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as a mediator of international financial policy intended to ‘liberalise’ or open up many service industries to private sector competition.

Ruth emphasised that the WTO, as an organisation, is engaged in establishing mechanisms and agreements to promote trade on a global basis, and that it now has some 150 members. There are many agreements being developed at the WTO in regard to this, and in her published works, Ruth focuses on two of these agreements in particular – the GATS and TRIPS, as these are the agreements that are likely to have significant implications for libraries and information.

Ruth introduced one of the WTO’s key agreements, the GATs (General Agreement on Trade in Services) which includes many services traditionally associated with the Public Sector, including health, education, libraries and social services.

All the different services in the agreement are listed in the GATS Schedule of Commitments, and members have to decide which of their services they want to commit to this schedule. The UK is a member of the WTO under the EU – i.e. it is not a member in its own right. There are currently 18 countries that have committed their Library Services to the GATS (and this includes the United States of America and Japan), but the EU has not, as yet, committed its Library Service to the GATS. However, Ruth makes clear that this is no reason for complacency, because developments that have been taking place in the UK and Europe in general over the last few years will make it easier to introduce the GATS in these European countries. Indeed, she argues that these changes are paving the way for the GATS, as the commercialisation and privatisation agenda increasingly starts to take a hold.

In particular, Ruth indicated how the UK government is driving an agenda of competition and privatisation within public services – e.g. via the ‘Best Value’ report encouraging local authorities to further open their services to the private sector. Examples of how the private sector is already involved in running public services were also cited, including outsourcing for IT facilities and other support services, and the financing of building works (e.g. the PFI – Private Finance Initiative running in Bournemouth, Brighton and Kent libraries).

Ruth asked the audience to consider the ethics and motives of private companies running public services such as schools and libraries, suggesting how companies would almost certainly be required to run services at lower cost than the price they were contracted, to ensure that a profit is made. Ruth suggested that these privately run services would be vulnerable to reduced expenditure on actual service provision and increased cost for the public.

Ruth also discussed another aspect of globalisation, the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), a WTO agreement intended to reduce current restrictions on intellectual property by corporations and to promote, in general, further trading of intellectual property rights. The implications for libraries were discussed, including the impact of corporate use of copyrighted material and patents, particularly in regard to the patenting of traditional knowledge in the developing world.

Ruth concluded her discussion with an Open Marxist theoretical perspective on Globalisation, including ethical objections to the transformation of public services as tradable commodities. She said that, in essence, the GATS and TRIPS were about transforming services and intellectual property rights into international tradable commodities. This extension of the commodification process becomes necessary in order to ensure the continued success of global capitalism and Ruth asked participants to consider whether they were happy about living in such a world. Her aim, she emphasised, was to alert people to the likely implications of these agreements and how they could threaten our way of life

Ruth’s discussion was followed by a presentation by Anneliese Dodds; Anneliese began by providing various definitions of the term ‘Globalisation’, including the concept of services in the international setting as tradable commodities, the development of shared international policy on services, the increasing political power of international organisations such as the WTO and the impact of these issues within the Higher Education sector.

Annelise compared the concepts of Globalisation and Internationalisation, including the perspective that Internationalisation is often considered a form of cooperation between states, whilst Globalisation represents international competition.

The impact of Globalisation on Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) was particularly discussed, including increased competition between HEIs, growth in research and teaching specialisation of institutions and the emergence of international university consortia. Anneliese also drew attention to increased pressures on HEIs as trainers and facilitators of industry and science in the context of the global economy.

Anneliese concluded her discussion with some recommendations for Higher Education staff, these included maintaining attention to core roles of teaching, learning and research and debating the consequences of globalisation.

The conference also included a period of debate where delegates (including staff from private companies and public bodies) were able to discuss the presentations. Aspects included:

• The ethics of private sector involvement in public services.
• The possible benefits and dangers of outsourcing staff and services.
• The potential impact on staffing issues under corporate control, such as pay and union rights.
• The potential benefits or risks of Public-Private Partnerships.
• The vulnerability of standards and quality issues for libraries and Information Services as a consequence of poor national regulation by statutory bodies.

To sum up, the event provided a highly informative introduction to an increasing trend in public services, an issue which deserves attention and critical reflection by all those who work in, support or otherwise value public services as they exist today.

Further information on the issues discussed in this article is provided in the references below.

Paul Catherall

CDG Wales; Advisory Board Member Information for Social Change

Author of Delivering E-Learning for Information Services in Higher Education, Chandos Publishing, ISBN: 1843340887 .

http://www.chandospublishing.com/catalogue/record_detail.php?recordID=48

References and URLs

Key Web Sites

Information for Social Change activist Web site and e-journal.

The Flow of Ideas – Web site of Ruth and Glenn Rikowski: includes information about the Rikowskis’ various publications and talks and the events that they have been involved with. Available at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/

The GATS and Libraries (Portal to GATs information on libr.org). Available at: http://libr.org/gats/

Progressive Librarians Guild and their journal, Progressive Librarian based in the USA but an international organization for librarians on the left. Available at: http://libr.org/PLG/

Website of Anneliese Dodds. Available at: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/dodds/

References

Department of Trade and Industry, EU Directive on Services – Overview. Available at: http://www.dti.gov.uk/ewt/services_directive.htm

Dodds, Anneliese (2002), GATS: Higher Education and Libraries, Information for Social Change, Issue 14, Winter 2001/02.

Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Best Value. Available at: http://www.odpm.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1153899

The Politicisation Of Trade In Health And Education Services: Black And White Divisions Over A ‘Grey Area’, Scottish Affairs, Issue No.46, Winter 2004.

Rikowski, Ruth (2001) GATS: private affluence and public squalor? Implications for libraries and information, Managing Information, Vol. 8, No 10, Dec, pp.8-10. Also available at:

Library Juice 4:46 – December 19, 2001, http://libr.org/juice/issues/vol4/LJ_4.46.html

Rikowski, Ruth (2002) The capitalisation of libraries (2002), The Commoner, a left-academic activist e-journal, May, No. 14. Available at: http://www.commoner.org.uk/04rikowski.pdf

Rikowski, Ruth (2003a) Globalisation, Libraries and Information, Information for Social Change, No. 17, Summer 2003.

Rikowski, Ruth (2003b) Library privatization: fact or fiction?, Information for Social Change, No. 17, Summer 2003.

Rikowski, Ruth (2003c) (Compiled by) Still at your service? GATS, privatization and public services in the UK: an ATTAC event held at the London School of Economics, Information for Social Change, No. 17, Summer 2003.

Rikowski, Ruth (2005a) Globalisation, Information and Libraries: the implications of the World Trade Organisation’s GATS and TRIPS Agreements, Chandos publishing: Oxford

http://www.chandospublishing.com/catalogue/record_detail.php?recordID=35

Rikowski, Ruth (2005b) Global trading of libraries and intellectual property rights, The Hobgoblin. Available at: http://www.thehobgoblin.co.uk/books/rrikowski.htm

This was a one-day conference organised through the Career Development Group, Wales of the UK Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) Held at Swansea University, on Friday 2nd December 2005. You can see the flyer for the event below.

The speakers: Anneliese Dodds and Ruth Rikowski .

Flyer for: GLOBALISATION, LIBRARIES, INFORMATION AND EDUCATION

One-day conference organised through the Career Development Group, Wales of the UK Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) To be held at: Swansea University, on Friday 2nd December 2005, in the Library and Information Centre, Level 7 10.30 am – 3.30 pm Map Fee

When universities get into bed with industry, can academic independence be guaranteed? asks Michael North

Michael Northm from The Times Higher Education Supplement quoted from an article by Glenn Rikowski about the Further Education White Paper, that is on The Volumizer, Glenn Rikowski’s web-log
Michael North says: “Glenn Rikowski, Senior Lecturer in Education Studies at Northampton University, says, for example, that the further education White Paper could lead to “struggles over the heart and soul of the FE sector”. Only a simpleton would expect this White Paper, or the schools White Paper of October 2005 or indeed any White Paper, to blurt out that ‘companies will take over failing colleges or schools’”, he says, “but the White Paper does seem to offer such openings for the private sector”. Rikowski suggests that the White Paper makes it possible for failing colleges – thought to represent about 2 per cent of the sector – and a potentially larger number of “coasting colleges” to be taken over by private companies if their provision does not improve within a year. He adds that if views such as Jackson’s prevail in Government, private companies could be invited to bid for contracts to run higher education departments, faculties or whole institutions.”
In The Times Higher Education Supplement, 7th April 2006, p.17

‘Contestability’ : buzzword that could open academy’s doors to private interest.

Overview of an article in the Times Higher Education Supplement, April 28 th 2006 citing Dr. Glenn Rikowski, Senior Lecturer in Education Studies, Northampton University.

By Paul Catherall.

This article, by Nic Parton outlines the emergence of ‘contestability’ in education and other public sectors, this is essentially the opening-up of state-run organisations and services such as FE colleges, Hospitals and Universities to private sector competition.

Examples of outsourcing within public sector organisations included the transfer of English language courses to the private company, Study Group International at the University of Northampton and the remodelling of some FE colleges as training providers for the private sector.

Di McEvoy-Robinson, a former FE college principal and director of Carter and Carter, a private training company comments:

“You could have an employee from age 16 following a straight line from apprenticeship to Further Education and on to a first degree, all the time working with the same commercial training provider.”

The new Government White Paper for Further Education raises the possibility that FE colleges will be scrutinised for performance, with underachieving colleges facing corporate competition to manage or deliver their services; analogies to this situation included private treatment centres in the NHS.

Dr. Glenn Rikowski observed that private sector involvement in FE colleges could potentially ‘spill over’ to Higher Education, with ‘ex-polytechnics …most likely to be ripe for change in that direction”.

It is clear from this article that there is a growing momentum in the language and policies of the present Government to facilitate private sector competition in UK public services, albeit under surrogate terms such as ‘contestability’.

Discussion of the UK Government’s Education White Paper, Higher Standards, Better Schools for All – More choice for parents and schools

On

The World Tonight

BBC Radio 4

Tuesday 25 th October 2005, at 10.00pm

(Tape Transcription)

Participants :

Robin Lustig: Presenter, The World Tonight

Dr. Ian Gibson: Labour Party MP

Jacqui Smith: Schools Minister

Jonathan Shepherd: General Secretary,Independent Schools Council

Dr. Glenn Rikowski: School of Education, University of Northampton

Introduction

It’s 10 o’clock. This is The World Tonight, with Robin Lustig. The government has published its long awaited Education White Paper, setting out its plans for sweeping reforms in secondary education. It wants independent schools to get more involved in state education, but why should they do something that might well lessen the demand for their services?

“There are Independent Schools as we have proved in the way in which we have developed partnerships anyway, who want to contribute. And if they can contribute to ensuring excellence for all our children, well they have a role to play.” (Unattributed quote: probably Jacqui Smith – Schools Minister)

[… Intervening news items …]

Robin Lustig : Yesterday, from the Prime Minister, the vision. Today, from the Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, the detail. The Government’s Education White Paper sets out an ambitious programme of reform. Weak schools will make way for strong ones, the best schools will be able to expand, new providers will be encouraged to enter the state system to give all parents the kind of choices which until now only the well off have been able to afford. Independent schools will find it easier to convert into state schools, says a briefing paper, if they operate a fair admissions policy and if they give up charging fees. But will private schools want to get involved in the state sector? Is that, in fact, what the Education Secretary means, when she talks about diversity of school providers? The back bench Labour MP, Ian Gibson.

Ian Gibson : Well, I think she means certain schools which will charge ahead, get their money, have parents controlling them, and, er, decide on their own curriculum, and I think she means there will be other schools who are somewhat behind who may or may not reach that same level of excellence. Now, I don’t think it naturally follows that because you make some schools, er, charge ahead that these other schools will follow. They will just sink. And that is the problem that, hopefully Ruth Kelly will eradicate. But, it’s not guaranteed. The mechanism: how that’s going to happen.

Robin Lustig: Suppose there is a good private school just up the road from a less good state school and that private school says we are prepared to play our part in improving the standards in the state school through some kind of trust set-up, would you not be happy to see that given a go?

Ian Gibson: Well, I’d be surprised if they did say that, but if they did say that, it would be quite interesting, because they would start to worry, you know, if they are helping the state schools out, you know, what efforts should they be making to establish higher levels in their own school? So, who knows how they will think. I can’t see Eton, you know, teachers are teaching, and the pupils they are teaching, charging around that area, helping the other schools; not to say that they are bad schools, but, but you know, they will be in an environment of what was said today in the debate, ‘not competition, but contestability’. Very hard to see what that might mean.

Robin Lustig: The Labour MP, Ian Gibson. So, who then are these new education providers that the government wants to get involved in running state schools? Well, the White Paper refers to educational charities, faith groups and parental community groups. But what about commercial providers? The so-called Edu-Business companies, which already run some local education authorities and have responsibility for education infrastructure. Could they soon be running state schools as a commercial venture? Jacqui Smith is the Minister for Schools.

Jacqui Smith : What is made clear with the trust model is that we think there are lessons to be learnt from Academies, from specialist schools about the contribution that external partners can make to helping to drive improvements in schools. We are thinking about charitable trusts set up, perhaps, with educational foundations, with successful schools setting up trusts so that they can share good practice with others. Community organisations, universities, trusts linked to business but strictly not for profit, and with the intention of actually driving improvements in the education system.

Robin Lustig: So, strictly not for profit. So, those companies which are in the field that is now known as Edu-Business, the people who build schools, manage education services and so on, as a commercial venture. They’re not included?

Jacqui Smith : This is not about private sector involvement in education. This is about schools being able to gain external support to improve standards. That is what it is about.

Robin Lustig: What about an independent school which is run by a trust or a charity of some kind and it says, we are rather good at running schools, we’ll set up a couple more, but we will put them in the state system?

Jacqui Smith: Well, what we might want to see there is that independent schools, as they are with some schools already, helping to contribute their expertise, helping to drive management and improvements in maintained schools. That’s the sort of model that we’ve got in mind. We’re learning from experience here. What we see from Academies, from specialist schools, is that where schools are actually able to enlist the support of external partners, it can help to drive standards for every child. And that’s what we are concerned about with these reforms.

Robin Lustig: What do you say, though, to those who might suspect that independent schools would be most reluctant to cut off their noses to spit their faces in this way, because the better the state sector, the less demand there will be for their private services?

Jacqui Smith: Well, Robin if you are asking me, is it an intention to make sure that the state sector is excellent, that parents feel able to choose places in the state sector, that parents don’t think they’ve got to go private in order to get good quality, well that is a fundamental objective of this White Paper. But I think that there are independent schools as we have proved in the way in which we have developed partnerships anyway, who want to contribute to that and if they can contribute to ensuring excellence for all our children, well they have a role to play.

Robin Lustig: As you know, there are those who suspect that what this is really all about is the beginning of a process which ends with the privatisation of secondary education.

Jacqui Smith: Well, they are wrong Robin. What it is about is making sure that every young person in school gets the tailored approach to their learning that’s necessary to enable them to make progress. That each school gets the support, the flexibility where necessary in order to continue driving up standards, that local authorities have a new but key role in actually ensuring quality across the system, and that we get the sort of excellence that we begin to see developing in our school system, worked through to every child and every school. That’s what it’s about.

Robin Lustig: The Schools Minister, Jacqui Smith. Well, with me here now in the studio is Glenn Rikowski, who lectures on education at the University of Northampton, and we are joined from Tunbridge Wells by Jonathan Shepherd, who is the General Secretary of the Independent Schools Council, which represents more than 1200 independent schools. Ehm, Jonathan Shepherd, Chapter 2 of the White Paper contains the words that the aim is to ‘create a school system shaped by parents, who will encourage existing schools to expand and federate to meet demand and make it easier for independent schools to enter the state system’. Independent schools don’t want to enter the state system, do they?

Jonathan Shepherd: I think we are talking about a very small number of schools, particularly newly established independent faith schools. I think if the whole of the independent sector entered the state system, the country could not afford it, because we save more than 2 billion pounds a year for the Treasury.

Robin Lustig: It also wouldn’t be in the interest of independent schools, would it, because the better the state schools become, the less demand there will be for them?

Jonathan Shepherd: I think that we are all very concerned about some things in the state sector, because in maths and sciences and languages the state sector is not producing enough suitably qualified applicants and we have a strong social purpose. I do represent 1200 schools, as you’ve said, and more than 1000 of those are charities. We are working in partnership with the maintained sector already. I think the trust model gives our schools a chance to get more involved, to make more of a contribution and I am very sure that a lot of schools would want to do that.

Robin Lustig: Glenn Rikowski, do you think that this approach will lead to better opportunities for more children, in English secondary education?

Glenn Rikowski: I think that is hard to say. What I think the approach will lead to, or is paving the way for, is what I would call the business takeover of schools. I think that’s clear in what it says about federations. And if you put that on top of say, the 2002 Education Act, when that enabled, the legislation enabled, schools to set themselves up as companies, to trade with other companies, to trade on the stock exchange, and so on, one can see the general drift in terms of how the system…

Robin Lustig: But you just heard Jacquie Smith deny categorically that anything other than non-for-profit companies would be included in this kind of system.

Glenn Rikowski: Well, in the White Paper, they do say, it is said that, the trusts that are going to be set up will be non-profit making. However, one might want to make a distinction between the trusts and the individual schools making profits, and the companies that are running them for profit.

Robin Lustig: Because some companies might set up trusts?

Glenn Rikowski: They might set up trusts, but that’s not the key point. The key point is that there are some local education authorities being run by companies, and some individual schools being run by companies on contract, and profits are made by providing the service at less than contract price, which impinges on staff pay, conditions, the type of labour that is used. You know, can you bring in cheaper labour and so on. It is those kinds of things that I would be concerned about.

Robin Lustig: Alright. Let me go back to Jonathan Shepherd then. Do you believe that what seems to be part of the thrust here in the White Paper, the idea that the boundaries between independent schools and state schools can be blurred, that there can be a greater mix of the system, so that somehow you get them coming together in some way. Is that a realistic vision?

Jonathan Shepherd: Very much so. The boundaries have been becoming increasingly blurred over the past few years, and there is much more cooperation, there is much more realisation on both sides, that we are all in the same business of trying to educate children. I think the government needs to get quite a lot further. It talks a lot in the White Paper about parental choice – that all parents should have the chance to put their child in the school that they want. What we do know, what is absolutely clear, is that a huge majority of parents would like to include independent schools in the choices available to them. You are not going to get genuine parental choice, unless you bring independent schools into the mix. We would be delighted to get children from the disadvantaged areas, who are in the worst position, into our schools. And if it was only 20 into each of our schools, that is 24,000 children who are saved, in fact, from what might be a very bad education.

Robin Lustig: OK – so Glenn Rikowski. If there is, then, an opportunity, once these kinds of ideas are put into practice, for parents to have more of a choice as to where their children go and perhaps if there is a particularly good independent school up the road, at least to partake in some of what that school offers, to everybody’s benefit?

Glenn Rikowski: Well, just to respond to the previous speaker. First of all it seems to me that the government has got the independent school sector over a barrel, in so far as it’s more or less saying to them – you form partnerships with state schools or you will lose your charitable status.

Jonathan Shepherd: I think that is not true at all, if I can come in there. We have no, I mean, I talk to the government very often, we have no indication at all, that there is anything like that, we are very confident about our charitable status. We have a social purpose that has existed for more than 100 years, in many cases much more than that. We want to be part of the solution to the problems in the educational sector.

Robin Lustig: But you, Glenn Rikowski, think that there is an implied threat, do you?

Glenn Rikowski: Yes, yes I do. It comes from a number of directions. One is the General Agreement on Trade in Services, which is a World Trade Organisation agreement. Two years ago I had a conversation with Stephen Timms, who was then, I believe, the School Minister, and he was saying, Glenn you need not worry about the General Agreement on Trade in Services, it does not apply to state schools. Now, if you have a situation where state schools and private schools are intermingling, however you want to put it, and working with each other, that opens the whole of the state system more fully to the General Agreement on Trade in Services, which is about transforming educational services into internationally tradable commodities.

Robin Lustig: Let me come back to you then, Jonathan Shepherd, coming back to where we started, where the White Paper says that one of the aims is to make it easier for independent schools to enter the state system, you think this will only apply in a very small minority of cases, you do not see this as the beginning of the end of a separate, independent education sector?

Jonathan Shepherd: Certainly I don’t. And one our strengths is being independent. We can actually get some independent ethos into some of the main schools.

Robin Lustig: But the government keeps talking about independent state schools now.

Jonathan Shepherd: Well, they are trying to make, they are trying to give them more independence, with one hand. I welcome that. I think one has to look quite carefully at the small print, because the local authorities are going to be changing admissions and funding. They have to abide by the National Curriculum and teachers pay, unless they negotiate their way out of that. There are these parents’ councils, where there will be a lot of regulation. So, I think the government needs to be a bit bolder, if it wants schools to be independent that’s fine. It can’t tie them back at the same time. And I think it is in danger of doing that.

Robin Lustig: Alright. Jonathan Shepherd from the Independent Schools Council. Glenn Rikowski from the University of Northampton. Thank you both very much.

And educational reform is the subject of our online listeners’ debate. We have already had several interesting contributions from you. But if you would like to share your ideas with your fellow World Tonight listeners, then go to the website at bbc.co.uk/worldtonight. Click on – join the debate.

END.

Further information:

Schools White Paper: Highlights – links to documents relating to the White Paper:

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/highlights/article06.shtml

The White Paper – PDF and Word downloads from:

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/schoolswhitepaper/

Press Release on the White Paper:

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2005_0124

The Prime Minister’s Presentation on reforming the school system:

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page8333.asp

Parliamentary Speech: Secretary of State for Education, Ruth Kelly, presents the White Paper to Parliament:

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm051025/debtext/51025-05.htm#51025-05_spmin3

The World Tonight

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/worldtonight/

A biography of the presenter – Robin Lustig:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/presenters/lustig_biog.shtml

Ruth Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski

London , 29 th October 2005

The Flow of Ideas , the web site of Ruth and Glenn Rikowski, is at:

http://www.flowideas.co.uk

The Volumizer , the web log of Glenn Rikowski, is at:

http://journals.aol.co.uk/rikowskigr/Volumizer

Contact : Rikowskigr@aol.com

Transcribed by Ruth and Glenn Rikowski, 28-29 th October 2005

In Toni’s words:

CJSR radio interviewed me about Freedom to Read Week. The interview was an opportunity to talk about librarians as part of the Freedom to Read initiatives – but about librarianship in general. I was interviewed for aprox. 40 minutes…

The station got my name from U of A MLIS student James Reimer… who does volunteer work on behalf of the U of A School of Library and Information Studies’ “Future Librarians for Intellectual Freedom (FLIF)” student group.

The station was also aware of my role with CLA.

I spoke to such topics as: Freedom to Read Week; library associations,
such as CLA, ALA, and IFLA; the dilemma about what constitutes library
work and questions around so-called library issues vs. so-called
non-library issues; Internet access; Internet governance and censorship;
filters; family values and community standards; poverty and library policy
around the homelessness, living on fixed income, & no fixed address;
commercialization of public space and the library as part of public sphere; social exclusion; the power of publishers and then open access and library publishing; preservation of cultural record, the destruction of libraries (e.g., in Bosnia and Iraq) and obliterated memory; limited access to government information (Arar), technological capacity for mass registration and surveillance; academic freedom; Patriot Act and libraries; heightened legalistic atmosphere; .. and more.

The cartoons came up only briefly. But I had time to make points from
various angles including the democratic right to view and inform oneself,
tolerance, expressed questions around the motivations of the Danish editor; big picture context, incitement of extremism, hate, rights AND responsibilities, and high magnitude issues of peace and sustainable development.

About CJSR: “CJSR’s programming is a diverse mixture of news, current
affairs, and – of course – music. Since broadcasting its first minute of
music to the general public on January 7, 1984, CJSR’s programing offered
an alternative to mainstream radio. CJSR features the most eclectic
selection of music on Edmonton’s airwaves: folk, jazz, blues, rock,
reggae, hip-hop, techno, classical, ethnic, gospel and everything in
between. CJSR’s programming also focuses on issues that are either ignored
or marginalized by mainstream media. CJSR also broadcasts University of
Alberta Pandas and Golden Bears Sports. Our mission is to enlighten and
entertain our audience through high quality and diverse programming that
constantly challenges the status quo.”

Toni Samek (Convenor, CLA Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom

Transcript from You and Yours, BBC Radio 4, 12.04 – 1.00pm, Wednesday 17th October 2001

Participants: Liz Barclay (You and Yours) Winifred Robinson (You and Yours) William Yates (You and Yours) Barry Coates (World Development Movement) Nick Cohen (journalist on The Observer, and author of ‘Cruel Britannia’) Lord Newby (Liberal Democrat peer and Treasury spokesperson) Alex Nunn (Manchester University, and Association of University Teachers researcher) Ruth Rikowski (South Bank University, and Information for Social Change) Christopher Roberts (Chairman of the Committee on Liberalisation of Trade in Services, London)

You and Yours: Basic services like health care and education could be privatised and run by foreign multi-national firms, under a revised trade agreement being negotiated by the members of the World Trade Organisation. At least, that’s what anti-globalisation campaigners and public sector workers would have us believe. Free trade across borders has been seen by many as a key strategy in promoting economic prosperity. Historically, it has been products and goods which have been the focus of those determined to put an end to tariff and trade barriers. But now the so-called GATS agreement aims to do the same for the service sector. Some claim essential services could be forced to liberalise. If they did so, regulation of those services would effectively transfer from the British government to the World Trade Organisation, as Will Yates reports.

“I commit myself to be the Director General of all the contracting parties.” (Voiceover)

William Yates: When Renato Ruggiero became the first Director General of the World Trade Organisation 6 years ago, its brief, in the WTO’s own words, was to “help trade flow, smoothly, freely, fairly and predictably.” To that end, the WTO has two key tools at its disposable. The General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (or GATT), and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). But neither has met with universal approval.

(Shouts from a recording of a demonstration/protest in the background)

“On the second day running there was mayhem on the streets of Seattle. Riot police fought a series of running battles with demonstrators.” (Voiceover by news reader)

William Yates: The riots at the WTO’s ministerial meeting in Seattle 2 years ago, and subsequent protests have given graphic evidence of the depth of feeling against what critics see as the organisations blind devotion to free trade. The focus of those protests has been the effect trade agreements have on the economies of Third World countries. Suggestion being that free and fair trade are effectively incompatible. But according to Barry Coates from the World Development Movement the effects of GATS will strike much closer to home.

Barry Coates: Services cover this incredibly broad range of things that we all depend on, for our health care, education, water supply, through to transport and communications, through to tourism and entertainment. And these services are going to be governed in future by a set of rules that are now being negotiated at the World Trade Organisation. And the kind of rules that, that they are developing are not well known to members of the public, or parliamentarians or others, but they could have sweeping impacts on the way that these services are organised and delivered. And particularly on the power of governments to be able to regulate those services in the public interest.

William Yates: Under GATS, governments are required to ensure that regulations on foreign companies are no more burdensome than necessary. The definition of what is ‘necessary’ will be defined and determined by the WTO.

Barry Coates: Services tend to be very highly regulated by governments because there are often issues of public interest. What this agreement does, it imposes a model of a kind of liberalisation which is hugely contentious not only in Britain as we see with the regulation of governance over the railways, over water supplies, over the underground in London. Em – and over air traffic controls. These kind of services are enormously contentious and what this GATS agreement does is, it locks in a certain kind of delivery of these that is primarily governed according to the unregulated rules of the market. And that’s not necessarily in the public interest.

William Yates: Concern about the effect GATS will have on public services in this country is growing. Earlier this year, 260 MPs signed an early day motion, calling on the government:

“To ensure that there is an independent and thorough assessment of the likely impact of the extension of GATS on the provision of key services both in the UK and internationally.” (Voiceover)

William Yates: A number of local authorities and public service unions have expressed similar fears:

“We look to the creation of the WTO, okay? Now, there are a variety of legal frameworks, developed within the WTO…” (Voiceover – anonymous)

William Yates: Alex Nunn lectures in politics at Manchester University and he is also a Consultant Researcher for the Association of University Teachers.

Alex Nunn: The problem is that the GATS agreement redefines public services – higher education, as one of those, as a product which is then to be bought and sold on a world market, rather than a public service which is for the benefit of the public. And the problem with that is that it offers the possibility of higher education according to the ability to pay. There are problems associated with academic freedom, with commercial sponsors controlling research, and that is already happening. For instance, there is a high profile case in Canada with an academic whose had a job offer withdrawn because a piece of research he did offended the department’s commercial sponsor.

William Yates: Many also fear for the future of our libraries, which this government has identified as vital to its ideal of easy access to lifelong learning. Ruth Rikowski lectures in knowledge management at South Bank University, in London. She is worried that big business will be given free reign to run our libraries as profit-making enterprises. And she believes that would harm the very people the library service was set up to help.

Ruth Rikowski: At the end of the day, a few years down the line, people will probably be paying to go into their public library service, or there will be a subscription. Maybe they will go into their library free but then they will have to pay to do searches on the Internet for information, or perhaps it will be both. I suspect it will be both in the end, because private companies are out to make, need to make money. So they need to maximise their profits, and poor people, unemployed, pensioners, children are going to be the ones that suffer particularly.

William Yates: And Barry Coates from the World Development Movement believes that scenario would be mirrored across the service sector. The market will dictate the level of service and the current providers will be unable to intervene on the publics’ behalf.

Barry Coates: What we’ll see is local authorities and others who are afraid of putting in place proper regulation in the public interest; because they think they might get challenged under GATS and get taken to the World Trade Organisation. And essentially lead to a situation as the American economist J.K. Galbraith has said, of ‘private affluence existing alongside public squalor’.

Liz Barclay: Barry Coates from the World Development Movement, ending that report. Lord Newby is a Liberal Democrat peer and Treasury spokesperson, Nick Cohen writes for The Observer and Christopher Roberts is Chairman of the Committee on Liberalisation of Trade in Services, in the City of London. Private affluence existing alongside public squalor. Public services are run for the benefit of the open market, rather than for the safeguard of the public interest. Is that a realistic view of the future of our public services, or overly pessimistic? Christopher Roberts.

Christopher Roberts: It’s certainly not only overly pessimistic, but actually untrue. Er, the General Agreement on Trade in Services, er, should help to strengthen services around the world, give governments and public authorities the opportunity to use all the latest skills and methods in developing public services. And I think we all stand to gain, by liberalising trade in services, just as over many years we have all gained by liberalising trade in goods.

Liz Barclay: Nick Cohen, your response?

Nick Cohen: Well, we already have our private affluence and public squalor. What this is going to do is just remove yet further our, our democratic rights, and once you’ve signed up to GATS and once you’ve said a service. And they define services incredibly broadly. Food, water, hospitals, education, the necessities of life, suddenly somehow become services, like er, you know, restaurants or hairdressing – you can’t get out of it. And then the World Trade Organisation, which is unelected, which meets in secret, which only listens to big business, will decide what regulations are, are too burdensome for business. And you will have no democratic choice to get rid of it. So if Wal-Mart wants to open massive stores on the green belt, er, it is quite conceivable that no elected politician will be able to stop them.

Liz Barclay: So, there is basic disagreement right from the start. Lord Newby.

Lord Newby: I think Nick’s being a bit pessimistic. I don’t think the existing GATS would allow you to do all of those things at all. Em, I do have concerns about GATS, er, and the way it might develop for a number of reasons. But they are not to do with the existing degree of private affluence and public squalor. That’s happened for a whole raft of reasons that are nothing to do with GATS. The problem in my view with GATS, is that, em, it is very heavily weighted towards an American-style legalistic system of regulation. And once you do that, you open the possibility of unintended consequences. This has already happened in my own experience, in trade, on the banana issue, and I think that that’s the real fear. Not that there is anything currently in GATS or anything that’s currently happened, that justifies some of the wilder accusations.

Liz Barclay: But we have the…

Nick Cohen: [Interrupting]… Okay, I’ve been accused of being ‘wild’ and over pessimistic. I’ll give you a concrete example, very quickly. Er, the California State government decided to ban a petrol addictive which it thought was dangerous. The Canadian company that made it sued under GATS: said it was ‘a burdensome regulation’. And so it forced the Californians, instead of just banning an additive, to require all petrol stations in California to dig up their storage tanks and re-seal at enormous costs to small businesses and the taxpayer, but of course was of benefit to the company. You know, these things are already happening.
Liz Barclay: Christopher Roberts, can I just bring you in here. ‘Unintended consequences’, I mean, we’ve rather signed up to an agreement and are now beholden to those lawyers that are now arguing legal definitions, rather than the elected representatives arguing public interest.

Christopher Roberts: Yes, well, first of all the GATS agreement is about liberalising trade. It’s not about regulation at all. That is a different question and the GATS agreement does not prevent governments from carrying on with regulation as they wish, under the normal democratic process. As to the question of democracy; I mean, the GATS agreement, like the wider World Trade Organisation, has set up a range of rules which governments have freely entered into, and when disputes arise they are disputes about whether those rules are being adhered to. And that is like the sort of case which arises in a court of law and not surprisingly is a quasi-judicial procedure. It’s democratic.

Nick Cohen: Well, it’s not democratic. Courts of law, for a start, meet in public. The World Trade Organisation GATS panels don’t.

Christopher Roberts: I would actually, I would personally accept the view that it would be better for greater transparency in the process of dispute settlement in the WTO. The, the opponents for that, curiously, are the developing countries.

Nick Cohen: But once your service has been opened up to GATS, and of course in Britain there is already private health and private schools, you then come back to the question of regulation, which er, er, my friend from the City tried to dodge. The GATS rules say very clearly that regulation will not be allowed if it is more burdensome than necessary. And who decides what a burden is? Whether planning laws, or health and safety laws, or environmental laws are a burden? The WTO: not your elected politician.

Liz Barclay: Lord Newby, that is a worry, surely.

Lord Newby: I think that is a worry, but I think Nick is exaggerating the scope of GATS at the moment. My understanding is that services provided by government, em, by the public sector, the GATS agreement as it currently stands are not covered. I can clearly see that once you start privatising public services, you then run into difficulties. But I think, em that’s as much as a problem about whether you should be privatising public services in the first place.

Nick Cohen: No, it is whether the market is opened up. And it is already is, in everything – even in prisons in this country.

Lord Newby: Nick, I’m not disputing the…

Nick Cohen: [Interrupting]… Just a second: can I just throw a quote at you from Dean O’Hare, who’s the President of one of the world’s biggest insurance companies (American, of course)? He says: “We believe…” (he is talking about GATS) “we can make progress and negotiations to allow the opportunity for US business, that’s private health care, to expand into the foreign health care market.” And the previous head of the WTO said: “The world has not taken on board just how important and how big this is.”

Christopher Roberts: Yes. I mean, Dean O’Hare can speak for himself, and it seems to me quite reasonable for service industries around the world to look for opportunities to develop their business in their own interest as well as those of the countries where they invest and develop. And from the UK point of view, it is hugely in our interest, with two thirds of our economy accounted for by services, to develop international trade in this area. Hugely important for our employment and for wealth creation here. So that’s not something lightly to be thrown away.

Liz Barclay: Give me an example of what you are talking about.

Christopher Roberts: The fact is that, er, financial services, for example, accounts for a million jobs here in the City of London. And we have a huge international business in financial services, and the sort of skills and knowledge which British banks and insurance companies bring to other countries around the world strengthens their economy. It’s good for us – sure. But it is good for these other countries as well.

Liz Barclay: Nick, there must be positives to this as well. I mean if we are in a situation where, for instance, skills are transferable across national borders, and you don’t have to, perhaps, retrain to be a doctor in this country, because we already know that their qualifications and technical standards are of such a standard that you can operate. Then surely that has got to be a good thing?

Nick Cohen: Well, of course. I wouldn’t deny that there will be benefits for British companies, particularly in the City, where the real pressure for this is coming from. Leon Brittain has gone from being trade commissioner to lobbying for the City. I wouldn’t deny it. Of course there are. But what we are being asked to do, in effect, is sacrifice across Europe, our social democratic health and welfare systems for trade opportunities in the Third World. Now, whether that will be good for the Third World or not is a very, very difficult problem to decide. It will be good in some cases, but the only Third World countries that really got out of poverty in the Far East, Japan and the Tiger economies, have done so by protecting their industries and not by opening them up to free trade.

Lord Newby: I must just take issue with him. How can he say that GATS is going to sacrifice our social and democratic traditions in health and education? I mean, there is no slight, I don’t think there is the single beginnings of an example of where that has begun to happen in Europe. And I don’t see how, under GATS rules as they currently stand, or are as they are envisaged, they are going to sacrifice the ability of European governments to have high levels of health and education provided by the state on the broadly similar basis as we’ve known it in the past.

Nick Cohen: I’ll just actually, er quoting, er, Pascal Lamy, the er, European Trade Commissioner, who succeeded Brittain, who was saying that, you know, these are areas ripe for liberalisation – health and education.

Christopher Roberts: At the moment, no country in the WTO has asked for any concession from any of its trading partners in the health area. That is a simple fact, as of now. Countries around the world are not looking to liberalise their health services.

Liz Barclay: But that is not to say that that might not happen. In this country we are quite far down the privatisation route. I mean, I suspect there was a time when nobody would have thought we would have privatised our telecommunications and our transport, for instance. Or, our water. So the day, it, it must be possible that the day will come.

Christopher Roberts: In theory, in theory yes, but it hasn’t happened yet. But to go back to the essential point, that, under GATS, governments retain their complete power to regulate.

Nick Cohen: That all sounds very reasonable, em, but, er, let’s take the case of bananas which er, his Lordship knows about. We had (Britain and France had) small Caribbean islands, populations descended from slaves our ancestors took there. We had an agreement to buy bananas from them to stop them falling into poverty. An American multinational which doesn’t even grow bananas in America, but pays money to both Republicans and Democrats, took us to the WTO. Suddenly decided that bananas were a service. As I said, it’s an imperial definition. They’ve lost their trade concessions. Now there is a public interest far, far above the trade interest in this. There’s a public interest in honouring agreements, but also in stopping those islands from becoming centres for drugs dealing, which will flood Europe and America with drugs. But the WTO said: “Oh! It’s a restriction on trade!” – and there it goes. You cannot let business determine what the public and the national interest is. There are higher interests. There are greater considerations, to be borne in mind. And that’s why we have elected politicians.

Liz Barclay: Christopher Roberts?

Christopher Roberts: No, I wouldn’t accept that the Americans dominate the scene. I think that, that underestimates the negotiating skills both of the EU negotiators and those from the developing countries. I spent two days in Geneva last week, talking to a range of developing countries, all of whom were very interested in the GATS; who have their objectives in areas like, like tourism and movement of persons.

Liz Barclay: Lord Newby, we’ve got no agreement round this table at all, it seems to me. How on earth are ordinary consumers supposed to understand how this will effect them?

Lord Newby: Well, I think the fact that we find it difficult to know how it is going to effect them, er, demonstrates the problem. The organisations that we are talking about, have become, em, almost like a sort of Byzantine court, in terms of er, rules upon rules, which are extremely difficult to be penetrated. And I think that, I agree with Nick that there needs to be a greater public input into the whole thing and I agree that the rules, the way that the rules need to be implemented need to be simplified. And I think that the British government and the EU governments, er, and the developing world governments, need to be very, very vigilant about future moves, and shouldn’t be rushing, er, to get to the next stage of implementation of rules.

Liz Barclay: Lord Newby, Treasury Spokesperson, Nick Cohen from The Observer and Christopher Roberts, Chairman of the Committee on Liberalisation of Trade in Services. Thank you all for joining us.

ENDS

20th October 2001

In view of this tragedy, a debate about the restrictions imposed by the US
on Cuban residents to visit and send supplies and money to their families in
Cuba has begun. Cuba has requested authorization to buy materials from
the US to repair homes and power lines. In addition, Cuba has requested
that US companies receive authorization to extend commercial credits to
the island to buy food. The Bush Administration’s reply has been a
ridiculous offer of aid while ratifying their policy of political and economic blockade, even more cruel and immoral under the present circumstances.

We are sending an appeal to artists and intellectuals around the world to
demand an immediate end to the criminal US blockade and to promote
solidarity and support of our country.

To Sign up: http://www.concubahoy.cult.cu

Email: concubahoy@uneac.co.cu concubahoy@cubarte.cult.cu

ISC calls for this decision to be rescinded, & will be putting the following motion to the next CILIP agm:-

This agm affirms it commitment to the most fundamental of human rights – the right to life.

This body condemns the arms trade, & all its relate industries as being responsible for the negation of this most fundamental human right.

We view the recent inclusion of The Aerospace and Defence Librarians Group (ADLG) as a Special Interest Group with CILIP to be in opposition to this most fundamental of human rights.

We therefore call for the withdrawal of The Aerospace and Defence Librarians Group (ADLG) as a special Interest Group within CILIP.

&

Directs that CILIP should affiliate itself with the Campaign Against The Arms Trade ( CAAT ).

A motion to this effect will be presented to the next CILIP AGM.

ALA Council

Resolution on the Crisis in Kenya

January 2008

WHEREAS, hundreds of people have been killed and injured, and thousands have been displaced by the current violence in Kenya generated by the controversy surrounding the December election results;

WHEREAS, the Kenyan government has recently curtailed freedom of the press and broadcasting and the right to assemble and demonstrate peacefully and non-violently;

WHEREAS, the American Library Association has endorsed Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (policy 58.4) which covers freedom of the press and freedom of expression – rights which the Kenyan government is now denying its citizens;

WHEREAS, the American Library Association opposes any governmental prerogatives that lead to the intimidation of individuals or groups and encourages resistance to such abuse of governmental power (Policy 53.4);

WHEREAS, the American Library Association recognizes the vital importance of free and open elections;

WHEREAS, the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars has issued a call for an end to (1) the widespread violence by the principal Kenyan political actors, (2) restrictions of the right to assemble and demonstrate peacefully and non-violently, and (3) recently declared restrictions on press freedoms;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the American Library Association calls for an end to the violence in Kenya, a return to press and broadcasting freedom, and the right to peacefully assemble for the people of Kenya.

‘Views sought on controversial stock in libraries guidance’ (1)

‘Smith seeking to close websites that promote jihad’ (2)

‘Lecturers warn against college “spy” rules’ (3)

By John Pateman

A common theme runs through these recent news headlines – the Government wants to recruit librarians, internet site providers, students and lecturers in its ‘War Against Terror’.

The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) has launched a new consultation on managing ‘controversial stock’ in libraries. This follows from the Prime Minister’s national security statement to Parliament in November 2007. The MLA was commissioned to produce guidance for public libraries on the management of ‘extremist and inflammatory material’.

The first principles of the draft guidance are that ‘Free expression and open libraries remain essential to British democracy’; and ‘Libraries operate within the law to provide free access to a diversity of information, opinion and ideas in a neutral and hospitable environment.’

The problem is that stock selection is now subject to a range of laws, some of which are contradictory. The guidance seems to suggest that individual librarians should use their personal judgement in deciding which law to apply. One consequence of this could be that librarians become risk averse and decide not to stock books which can be regarded as ‘controversial, extremist or inflammatory’.

There is a precedent for this which the guidance does not mention, and that was the disastrous effect on stock selection of Clause 28 which made it an offense to ‘promote homosexuality’. As a result many library authorities refused to stock the Pink Paper or gay books and this policy and practice remained in place long after Clause 28 was repealed.

For many years the primary legislation relating to public libraries was the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 which puts a duty on local authorities ‘to meet the general requirements and any special requirements of adults and children.’ As the guidance points out, these duties may present ‘problems for libraries located in areas that contain a high proportion of residents with radical beliefs.’

However, the Public Library Act has now been qualified by the Terrorism Act 2006 which defines a ‘terrorist publication’ as one that is likely ‘to be understood by some or all of the actual or potential recipients as a direct or indirect encouragement or inducement to commit, prepare or instigate terrorist acts’. Contents that are likely to indirectly encourage terrorism include any matter ‘which glorifies the commission or preparation (whether in the past, future or generally) of acts of terrorism.’

A librarian could be found guilty of providing access to this material if it was proved that they did so as the result of both a ‘guilty act’ (such as loaning the material) and a ‘guilty mind’ (the intention to encourage or induce an act of terrorism). The sentence for this offence is imprisonment for a maximum of 7 years.

A librarian could also be found guilty of the offence of ‘encouragement to terrorism’ but this is less likely because the defence of innocent dissemination is wider. The maximum sentence for this offence is also 7 years.

Section 3 of the Terrorism Act applies to providing internet access and a librarian must comply with any section 3 ‘notice’. The notice is a ‘declaration by a police constable that the statement, article or record is unlawfully terrorism related.’ When the notice is issued the librarian must, within 2 working days, stop making the matter available to the public (for example, by blocking an offending website).

Section 58 of the Terrorism Act makes it an offence to ‘collect or make a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’. The librarian has a defence if he can prove that he has a ‘reasonable excuse’ for his action or possession. The maximum sentence for this offence is 10 years imprisonment.

The MLA advises that ‘Librarians and library authorities should take pre-emptive precautions to ensure that information that is likely to be useful to “terrorists” is not stocked.’ This is a green light for the culling of any material which might pose a potential risk. This could include classics such a Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence and Guerrilla Warfare by Che Guevara. The MLA guidance is that ‘historical accounts that could be interpreted as glorifying terrorism may be stocked if there is little to no possibility that a current reader would try and emulate the acts described.’ However, there is evidence that the works of Lawrence and Guevara are being used by combatants in Iraq and so they could fall foul of the Terrorism Act. And presumably any novels which contain detailed descriptions of ‘terrorist’ activities should be removed from library shelves as well.

Another important piece of legislation which has been qualified by the Terrorism Act is the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. Sections of these Acts indicate that by banning certain ‘extremist’ publications from libraries, Librarians and library authorities could be behaving in a racially discriminatory manner and / or operating a racially discriminatory practice. However, there is a critical overriding ‘disclaimer’ with regard to ‘safeguarding national security.’

The MLA guidance is that ‘Librarians and library authorities should not be unduly concerned with the provisions of race relations legislation, and focus on avoidance of commission of the offences created by the Terrorism Act.’ This is a particularly worrying element of the guidance because Librarians are effectively being asked to disregard the Race Relations Act to avoid falling foul of the Terrorism Act. In this respect the guidance does not achieve its aim of helping to promote community cohesion through the provision of a balanced range of information, learning and cultural resources.

The Public Order Act 1986 creates a number of offences in relation to conduct intended to stir up racial and religious hatred. This includes the display, distribution or possession of ‘threatening, abusive or insulting’ material if ‘racial hatred would be likely to be stirred up’. The stocking of ‘extremist’ literature within a library suggests that Librarians could be susceptible to this crime although there is a defence of innocent dissemination. The maximum penalty is 7 years imprisonment.

The MLA advice is that ‘Librarians and library authorities would be wise to take pre-emptive precautions to avoid having to rely on a defence.’ Once again the MLA is advising librarians to be cautious and risk averse and to remove from their shelves any materials which could fall into this category. This seems to be contrary to the first principles of the guidance that ‘Libraries operate within the law to provide free access to a diversity of information, opinion and ideas in a neutral and hospitable environment.’ In this regard the guidance does not help libraries to fulfil their role as access points to publicly available information.

Library authorities have an obligation to carry out their duties in accordance with the provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998. Article 10 (1) of this Act states that ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.’ Article 10 (2) qualifies this right by making it subject to a number of competing interests such as national security.

Once again, the MLA guidance urges caution and advises Librarians to comply with the Terrorism Act rather than the Human Rights Act. The guidance is that ‘A library itself is not under a duty to guarantee the expression of all ideas for all people.’ This appears to contradict the first principles of the guidance that ‘Free expression and open libraries remain essential to British democracy’.

If a publication contains references to ‘extremist’ beliefs, then excluding or banning it may be an offence under the European Convention on Human Rights which includes the right to ‘manifest’ one’s religion or belief. However, as with Article 10 this freedom is not absolute and can be qualified on a number of grounds, including compliance with the Terrorism Act.

The Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 requires local authorities to involve ‘local persons’ in the exercise of a particular function (such as stock selection) if it ‘considers it appropriate’ to do so. If local people are involved in stock selection the MLA guidance is that ‘it will depend on the circumstances of the particular case as to whether the legislation will apply to the particular individual or organisation.’ This statement is not equivocal or clear and further guidance or clarification is needed.

Overall the MLA guidance does not achieve its aim of meeting the needs of library managers and staff in the selection, presentation and promotion of material in the context of wider stock policy. It is far too cautious and risk averse and will have the effect of controlling and restricting the selection of stock that can be interpreted as ‘controversial’, ‘extremist’ or ‘inflammatory’. It is not possible to agree a common definition of these terms in the same way that ‘Obscenity’ could not be defined within the Obscene Publications Act, which has consequently fallen into disuse.

As well as posing a threat to stock selection, this guidance also challenges the professional ethics of the librarian. Rather than becoming an agent of the state’s security apparatus librarians, of all people, should be standing up for freedom of information and freedom of expression. The response of librarians to this guidance should be the same as that of students and lecturers who have warned that new government guidelines on tackling Muslim ‘extremism’ in universities must not become a ‘snoopers’ charter.’ And instead of culling our book stocks and censuring the internet we should be supporting the views of Mark Littlewood of Progressive Vision who commented that ‘The idea that terrorism can be thwarted by seeking to shut down extremist websites is absurd and dangerous.’

References

(1) Consultation on draft guidance on the management of controversial materials in public libraries, MLA, 2008

(2) ‘Smith seeking to close websites that promote jihad’, Daily Telegraph, 18 January 2008

(3) ‘Lecturers warn against college “spy” rules’, Morning Star, 23 January 2008

John Pateman

Information for Social Change

24 January 2008

Coinciding with the UN Climate Talks (MOP 3, COP 13) in Bali, Indonesia, from the 3rd to the 14th December 2007

See:

http://www.globalclimatecampaign.org/

http://www.lisjobnet.com/LisJobNet/Jobs/jobA0711-21.htm

We remember the many victims of the two regimes which went to war over these small islands.

We celebrate the efforts of all those who worked to prevent or end that pointless war.

We call for the people of both nations which were involved in this pointless conflict to work together so that such a pointless tragedy might never be repeated.

Edgardo Civallero – Argentina Martyn Lowe – London

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