2. Save St James Street Library Campaign
Part of People Making Things Happen, a Big Lottery funded project exploring the history of The Mill.
The library was closed by Waltham Forest Council in 2007, who cited low visitor numbers and funding issues. Many residents felt that they had not been consulted over the closure and some people remember its doors being closed as the first they had heard of it. Against the backdrop of other local buildings and facilities potentially being lost – a campaign to save the William Morris Gallery was active at the time – and other large developments proposed around Blackhorse Road, local residents, some of whom were part of the Blackhorse Action Group, started campaigning against the library closure. Campaigners held events outside the building itself and took petitions, banners and placards to the Town Hall, but the council refused to re-open the library, instead looking into various options including selling the building off or using it as a drug rehabilitation centre. The building remained closed for several years, with property guardians living there for some of that time, using the downstairs as a living room and the other rooms as bedrooms.
Oral history extracts about the library campaign
Scroll down for transcripts
Love St James Street Library – film by Neil Meads 2010
Love St James Street Library from Blackhorse Action Group on Vimeo.
Oral History Transcripts
1. Alison Griffin
I was, like everyone locally, a bit shocked and disappointed when the library was suddenly closed with no notice in Easter 2007. There hadn’t been any warning or consultation, and I live five doors down and I had been in a week and a half before they closed, to take books out, so they hadn’t consulted anyone, because I hadn’t known. So, many people thought this was a bit of an outrage and a petition was quickly put together and over time there was various campaigning issues, campaigning actions asking for the library back, including most notably locally, there was a monthly open-air library that was run by people from the community, outside.
2. Mo Gallaccio
It seemed like a really lovely little library, it was very well-stocked and I said to the librarian, “Oh great, I shall be in here all the time” and she said, “Well, sadly you won’t because they’re about to close me down.” So when I actually moved here, the library had been closed and I joined the Save the Library campaign, which was being run by Janet Wright and we used to meet outside the front of the building. We put up a table, we had books, and children and old people used to come out and swap books that they’d got the last time and sign petitions and things like that. There was a huge outcry about the library having been closed. It was very well-used, so there was a lot of interest in it being reopened. The council weren’t up for reopening it. We had a kind of celebration day which I organised, which was called Love St James Street Library Day, and we had a kind of little fete, there were forms for people to fill in, there were cupcakes for people, playing music, there were a few books, it was a general kind of nice community activity and we hung lots of banners all over the front of the building. I asked people to send me an email which said what they would like to do in the building if the building was available, and I printed out all their wishes on A4 paper and hung them outside, so it said conversation club, knitting, homework club, languages, all sorts of different things that different people in the community had come up with and said if that building was available, that’s what they’d like to do. And a lot of people obviously wanted it to be a library but sadly, we weren’t able to make that happen.
3. Natasha McFadzean
I really remember coming in here one day, when it was a library before. And there was somebody sitting at reception, but there were no books or anything in here. I’d come in to use the library, but there was nothing here. And I said to the person at reception, ‘oh, are you having re-decorations or something?’ And they said, ‘No, we’re actually closing down.’ And I was really shocked, because, I mean, considering that I lived down the road, I had no idea that the library was closing.
4. Sarah Kinson
We met in each other’s houses and tried to think about ways that we could draw attention to it. So for example, we got in touch with Michael Rosen, who was the Children’s Laureate at the time, and he was really supportive. And that was a great boost, just to get somebody who thought this little tiny local library, which meant so much to us, but it was nice to get that sort of recognition from outside. And we just started writing to newspapers and writing to local councillors, writing to the MP, writing to anyone we can think of, to sort of say, Look, don’t do this, or at least stop and think about what you’re doing.
It was a bit like a relay race, because some people had started it off, and then those people would dip in and out and hand it on to other people. And there were lots of people plugging away. I think another turning point was we decided to hold a public meeting in 2010 in the Baptist Church on Blackhorse Road, and it was a cold, wet night, but lots of people came. And you know, even that was getting on for three years after it closed. And I think we just wanted to keep showing the council, look, it’s not just a small group of people who are bothered about this. Lots and lots of people are concerned and we got over 2000 signatures on the petition. So we just kept going.
5. Janet Wright
I look back, there were so many funny times and so much colourful stuff and people were witty and funny, we had fabulous people around us, and we were meeting all these fabulous people because of the campaign, but it was also just grindingly, grindingly hard work. And it started to become possible that we might actually be able to rent the building, take it over in some way and set up things we wanted, including the honesty library, because that was always my absolute passion about the place. And starting to see that become first of all just a wild idea and then a sort of, a wild idea with just a slight possibility of maybe we could work towards some version of that, and then, you know, just growing on from that, it was fantastic.