Novelist Jeanette Winterson's incendiary speech calls on companies to honour 'moral duties' and 'do an Andrew Carnegie'A fiery Jeanette Winterson has called for the hundreds of millions of pounds of profit which
Amazon,
Starbucks and
Google were last week accused of diverting from the UK to be used to save Britain's beleaguered public libraries.In an impassioned speech at the British Library this evening, the award-winning author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit said: "Libraries cost about a billion a year to run right now. Make it two billion and charge Google, Amazon and Starbucks all that back tax on their profits here. Or if they want to go on paying fancy lawyers to legally avoid their moral duties, then perhaps those companies could do an Andrew Carnegie and build us new kinds of libraries for a new kind of future in a fairer and better world?"Winterson was referring to the meeting at parliament's public accounts committee last Monday which saw executives from the three companies vigorously quizzed by MPs over their tax affairs, and accused of diverting UK profits to tax havens. Her lecture was to mark the 10th anniversary of the independent charity The Reading Agency, and was attended by fellow authors including David Nicholls, Julian Barnes, Joanna Trollope and Sarah Waters.She also suggested that libraries be removed from local councils' leisure budgets and put into the national education budget. "If we want libraries to take their place – I think their proper place in modern society – we can't make them compete with sports centres for resources," she said. "Libraries are doing more education work than ever. Libraries and literacy cannot be separated, I don't see how this can be classed as 'leisure' nor do I see how we have a choice between getting our bins emptied and putting cash into libraries."Last week, as Newcastle council proposed closing 10 out of 18 of the city's libraries, its director of libraries Tony Durcan said: "Public spending cuts mean the city council must make savings of £90m over the next three years, a third of our total budget. Faced with agonising decisions about child protection, care for the elderly and emptying bins – where do libraries, leisure centres and culture rank? I think we all know the answer."Winterson asked her audience if they believed in "the life of the mind – deep thought, concentration, reflection, real imagination – the expansion of the human spirit? Learning that is more than information? Creativity?"If they did, she asked, "then for whom? For the middle classes? For the right kids at the right schools? If you do, then when – when we are rich, powerful, wealthy? Or as a priority whatever we are?"Don't, said the author, "hand kids over to computer games and wall-to-wall TV – bring them to books early and see what happens. Give them real choice – let them find out what books are, what they can do. How to be Aladdin, Huck Finn, Lyra, Harry. Give them a library as good as anything Carnegie wanted, and see what happens. It is the best social experiment we could make."Winterson is just one of many authors to have spoken out in defence of the UK's libraries, 300 of which are currently estimated by the Public Libraries News website to be under threat or to have closed or left council control since April. Last week Philip Pullman, Julia Donaldson and Anne Fine were among the authors to attack plans to close Newcastle's libraries.She ended by telling the story of how she discovered TS Eliot in her local library in Accrington, aged 16 and about to be thrown out of the house by her mother "for breaking a very big rule – the rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex with your own Sex". Scared and unhappy, Winterson went to collect her mother's books from the library – including Murder in the Cathedral, which her mother had assumed was "a gory story about nasty monks". Winterson took a look, having never heard of TS Eliot, and saw it was written in verse."The librarian told me he was an American poet who had lived in England for most of his life. He had died in 1964, and he had won the Nobel prize. I wasn't reading poetry because my aim was to work my way through ENGLISH LITERATURE IN PROSE A-Z. But this was different. I read: 'This is one moment/ But know that another/ shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy.' I started to cry," she said.She went outside and read the whole thing, sitting on the steps. "The unfamiliar and beautiful play made things bearable that day, and the things it made bearable were another failed family – the first one was not my fault but all adopted children blame themselves," she said. "The second failure was definitely my fault. I was confused about sex and sexuality, and upset about the straightforward practical problems of where to live, what to eat, and how to do my A-levels. I had no one to help me, but TS Eliot helped me. I had no one to help me, but the library helped me. That's why I'm here tonight."Jeanette WintersonLibrariesTS EliotAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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