Primrose Hill Community Library celebrated its tenth birthday 

CONGRATULATIONS to all those connected with Primrose Hill Community Library that celebrated its tenth birthday in style this weekend.

The Book Festival boasted a formidable line-up of speakers, many of whom could have headlined literary events worldwide.

How wonderful to have such support for what has proved to be a crucial amenity for so many people.

It feels like more than 100 years ago, but back before the pandemic, Brexit, climate breakdown and Isis, the news agenda was firmly fixed on local government cuts and “austerity” measures.

In 2012, nine Camden libraries were threatened with closure. In the end all were “saved” except for Highgate, Primrose Hill and Keats Grove, which were hived off to teams of volunteers. They became non-statutory libraries divorced from Camden’s management system.

They are run by boards of community representatives that act as the library’s accountable body, along with local Friends’ groups.

At Primrose Hill, fundraising drives have helped pay for a professional librarian and hundreds of thousands of pounds of pledges have been secured from supporters to keep it going. The library is now open longer hours than it was before.

None of this will have been easy. Management by unpaid volunteers requires commitment. A group of supporters who are full of promise and aspirations, may not hold so much enthusiasm after a decade of committee meetings and accounting.

The system relies on pure graft from the kind of people who have the time, energy and nous to commit themselves to major projects.

One of the short-sighted arguments for the Camden library closures plan was that fewer people were using them and they were in terminal decline.

It was arguably hard to imagine back then that these important centres for the community could one day double as warm banks for those unable to pay energy bills.

More local authority cuts will be coming down the line if Liz Truss’s economic pork pie fails to grow as planned. Whatever Kwasi Kwarteng says now, how else are they going to pay for all these tax cuts?

This week a report came out saying that austerity measures, introduced with such gusto by David Cameron, George Osborne et al, caused 330,000 excess deaths. That’s more than in Covid killed in the UK.

Camden’s remaining libraries may well need defending again if the Conservative government resorts to a new wave of austerity.

It will come down to, as Nye Bevan once said of the NHS, whether there are enough folk with the faith to fight for them.