Library protesters write page in history

Pateley Bridge has seen nothing like it since the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536. Then the people of the Yorkshire Dales rose against plans to dismantle monasteries. Now they are defending those modern day cathedrals of learning and silence, local libraries.

Saturday saw what many believe was the first protest march in the town: the library’s local history books certainly record none.

Today the reading revolutionaries will occupy the building on the quaint high street during its usual Wednesday lunchtime closure.

“We will refuse to leave and force them to send over a manager from Northallerton to keep it open,” says Shirley Gaston, the ringleader of the protests that have gripped this town of 2,500 souls in Nidderdale.

Ms Gaston is a very modern revolutionary: owning her own training business, she hopes to keep working on her laptop during the two-hour occupation.

She decided to co-ordinate protests to reflect a ground swell of anger about the move. “I have three children and I am in a book group. I can go on Amazon and order something but what about children and the old?”

The nearest main library is at Ripon, almost 12 miles away and an hour’s trip by bus.

On Saturday 250 people marched on the “supermobile” library bus – it arrives weekly – to express their anger.

North Yorkshire county council, the local authority, says it must save £2.3m of its £7.5m annual library budget because of government grant cuts, a situation echoed across the country.

Covering a vast area of rolling hills and moors with many isolated communities, it has opted to shut 24 of its 42 libraries, scrap its 10 smaller mobile libraries and introduce an additional “supermobile” with greater selection. It will then seek volunteers to operate smaller libraries, as happens in five villages already.

The moves come just as the county is experiencing a reading renaissance. Over the past five years there has been a 50 per cent increase in library members and they are using 20 per cent more books and computers.

Pateley Bridge library, open 16 hours a week, has 500 active borrowers and 350 more who use the computers or newspapers. Some 29 per cent are under 16 and 35 per cent over 55. However, each user costs £26.39, against an average of £16.50 across the county.

Ms Gaston argues that the library is more valuable to an isolated community and the council should reconsider. As she speaks, two primary schoolchildren come in to use the computers, telling their mother by mobile phone where they are.

“What would people without the internet at home for their schoolwork do?” asks Ms Gaston.

Diane Graham, 41, a farmer, also pops in with her daughters Stephanie, eight, and Melissa, six, as she does every Monday before swimming.

“I live 10 miles up the dale from Pateley Bridge. It would be an hour’s drive to get to another library. I don’t want to see it go.”

Doris Moore, 89, is partially sighted and walks to the library several times a week for audio books.

“They are wonderful. I would be climbing the walls if it wasn’t for them. I do not know what I would do without the library. I can’t read or watch TV,” she says.

Mrs Moore could receive books by post from a central service but would miss contact and advice from the librarian, she says.

Ms Gaston says that in a town where many parents work to pay the mortgage – property prices are among the highest in the region – it would be a struggle to find volunteers. The town would also have to pay heating bills, rates and broadband costs.

“I don’t think the library will close this year. But I think the council will close it next year when everybody has got fed up of protesting,” she says.

Councillors may already be studying the history books: Henry VIII, in effect, did the same in 1536, making enough concessions to rebel demands that many drifted back home, allowing him to mop up the rest and execute the ringleaders.

The ruins of Fountains Abbey just over the hill from Pateley Bridge tell their own eloquent story.