The Stalinists have taken over the London Library
An outraged Paul Barker reports from the tense AGM of this great literary institution at which the trustees pushed through a dramatic increase in membership subscriptions The lights blazed out across St James's Square from the high, first-floor Reading Room of the London Library as members crowded up the handsome staircase, last Thursday evening, to take part in the fiercest row the library has seen for many years, or maybe ever. Some members had to squeeze on to narrow upper galleries, where you search out dusty dictionaries in obscure languages. From there, they intervened in the to-and-fro of hot argument down below, like shabby cherubs in a Raphael painting.
This wasn't some minor fluttering in a dovecot for eggheads. The London Library is one of the capital's most discreet but most valuable adornments. Tucked away behind an unassertive Victorian frontage, it was founded by Thomas Carlyle because the Reading Room of the British Museum wouldn't lend; its successor, the British Library, has the same policy. The outcome, 150 years later, is a wondrous collection of books which the 8,000 subscribers can wander through and take out to read at home. (Fortunately, many are rare users, keeping up their subs out of friendship: a pleasant charitable gift.) The library and its assiduous staff are constantly listed by authors in their acknowledgments.
To be a member is like belonging to a kind of club. To roam the open stacks, with their extraordinary assemblages of known and unknown authors, makes me — member No. 0317 — feel, however briefly, that I may be a sort of intellectual, after all.
Or, at least, it has until now had that air of friendly mutual support. The library isn't a 'mutual' in the technical sense of the Yorkshire Building Society or the Wine Society. But it has appeared to be run in a spirit of collegiality. That spirit evaporated last week, confronted with a display of central committee Stalinism. The anger had to be heard to be believed. One distinguished former trustee has said it may be the beginning of the end for a great institution.
This was the AGM, which is normally, I believe, a polite little get-together — meeting the trustees over a glass of wine. What caused the blow-up? Why did I, and so many others, go along for the first time? We'd received a little green brochure, tucked in with the annual report, saying that the trustees had decided to near-double the subs — from £210 a year to £375. No organisation I have ever belonged to, public or private, commercial or charitable, has given its customers such a cold-bath experience. The usual effect of such drastic price rises is to drive people away. A peculiar way to run a railroad.
I went along, ready to propose that the matter should be referred back for further consideration. There are worries about running costs, which the trustees have allowed to drift on. The library has also, as one member noted, plunged into buying, and converting, adjacent property in the dearest part of the dearest capital in the world; the idea is to cling to its policy of holding absolutely every book on site. In the resultant panic, the membership subscription is targeted. Allegedly, it now only covers 55 per cent of its true cost. Even so, why couldn't any increase be staged, especially at a moment when an authoritative survey finds that the average income of authors from their work is £4,000 a year?
In the debate we had reckoned without the chairman of trustees, Sir Thomas Legg. He took over, in 2004, from the amicable historian of typography Nicholas Barker (no relation). A bencher of the Inner Temple, Legg joined the Lord Chancellor's department in 1962, and rose to the top, as permanent secretary, from 1989 to 1998. This department of state has always been described as 'arrogant', 'secretive' and 'out of touch'. At the library meeting, Legg came across as the very model of a modern mandarin, oleaginous but ruthless, with the art of literally looking down his nose. He knew all the rules, oh yes; he reminded me of the old proverb that a bad judge knows the law; a good judge knows what the law is for.
Everything was take-it-or-leave-it. Names of four new trustees were presented. No discussion or questioning: we had to swallow the list as it was. The names were as obscure as most of those who are trustees at present. On the subscription — no reference back was permitted. We had to accept or reject, and in the latter case the trustees 'would have to consider their position'. (Not a bad idea,' someone murmured.) I switched my motion to a call to reject, as the only way to get a debate of any sort, though we were warned that rejection 'could destroy this great library'. My argument was that this abrupt way of conducting business destroyed any spirit of mutuality.
From the hall, the journalist and biographer Terry Coleman recalled the gentler way the MCC had acted when facing another supposed financial crisis. A vice-president and former trustee, Lewis Golden, made a moving speech in which he said the issue wasn't just financial but also moral. He'd be 'deeply ashamed' if the subscription proposal were pushed through. An endowment, he reminded everyone, had been raised specifically to subsidise subscriptions and attract new members (which it did); this money had now been raided for the new extension. He said he would willingly ease the dilemma by putting £250,000 into the kitty 'in memory of my lovely wife'. This offer was ignored by the chairman and the central committee of trustees, sitting beside him The 'pro' members called on the 'antis' to bite the bullet, face the future and such-like managerial shibboleths. As the evening drew on, exhaustion set in; the pro side won in a show of hands —perhaps 150 to 100. 'Reject', of course, sounded much fiercer than 'refer back'. Without actually saying, 'We wuz robbed,' I also share a fellow member's suspicion that a silent majority of supporters were asked to come in (one was heard saying, 'This is a make-or-break meeting') and vote accordingly. It was striking, afterwards, how many present and past trustees came across to say they didn't, personally, think this was how it should have been done. When the highly regarded art historian Jules Lubbock went up to Legg afterwards, to complain about the lack of collegiality, the response — de haut en has — was 'Who are you?'
I went away sadly into the night to catch my bus, passing the portraits of such London Library eminences as Leslie Stephen and IS. Eliot on my way out. I think I was meant to feel like an enemy of the people. I felt more like a member of the Tiers Etat at an early stage in the run-up to revolution, faced with an apparatchik of the ancien regime. While I ponder whether to let my membership lapse, I shall write — as I know others will — to suggest to Tom Stoppard, as president of the library, that he mounts a review of the library's outdatedly centralist governance. And I only hope that the loss of membership, and of spirit, won't be as great as I feel it is almost sure to be.
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