LETTER: Library cuts must be fought

'˜East Sussex Libraries The Way Forward' ... I think it means the way backward.

Libraries should be open from 9am to 9pm, six days a week as they were in Crawley in the 1960s. Also a step forward was Chelmsford, Esse,x in 1997, when the library was open on Sundays. The maximum day off. Most people not at work, with most leisure.

The mobile library bites the dust, and branch/small libraries fall in similar fashion.

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What are libraries? A bunch of books and other media facilities. They cost little to run and need to be open as much as possible. Restricting this facility is a wage cut. People are paid and tax is collected.

Tax pays to light streets, houses some, Tarmacs roads, enables doctors to be visited. It also facilitates libraries. But there is a dent with all these purchases. Why?

Capitalism, the system that underwrites all our survival, has an inbuilt problem. The profit rate that feeds the 3,000 that populate that part called the ruling class has a tendency to sink. There are temporary exigencies but as these run out of economic fuel, profits sink.

Profits sink, libraries close, potholes appear, council houses are not built, streets lights are repaired less, doctors are more difficult to see. The world has never been richer, but not for library users.

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The cuts must be fought and the most effective weapon, although not the only one, is the workplace. Work organisation, strikes, pickets, solidarity pushes another world into view. This is the direction of travel.

Colin Frost-Herbert

Abinger Place, Lewes

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