Does Britain value culture any more? Ask the striking workers at the British Library | Zadie Smith

"For example, you can keep selling yourself, to foreigners, as the country of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and luring busloads of tourists to Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath, and put a statue of George Orwell in front of the BBC, and imagine yourself a cultured and literate nation, which the rest of the world admires for its devotion to the written word"

"The British Library is our great national home of cultural workers. We go there to read and research, to learn and to grow, to write and to think, to inspire and create. Facilitating our work is a great army of library staff, who are also cultural workers. Without them, the library does not function, the books do not get read, the culture does not come to pass."

"According to their union, they are offered pay deals so dire that many of them work multiple jobs and live in substandard housing. Seventy one per cent of respondents to a union survey find their salary insufficient to meet basic needs. Some workers report mental and physical health deterioration as a consequence of these poverty wages. When a massive cyber-attack on the library results in a major disruption of the service they are able to offer,"

A country's values can change over time, creating a cognitive delay between the country imagined and the country that actually exists. National branding around historic writers and heritage can persist while cultural institutions are chronically underfunded and cultural workers are treated with contempt. The British Library functions as a national home of cultural workers and as a place for reading, research, learning, writing, and inspiration. Library staff facilitate access, preserve collections, and enable cultural creation. Union evidence shows many staff accept dire pay deals, work multiple jobs, and live in substandard housing. Seventy-one percent find salaries insufficient for basic needs and some report mental and physical health deterioration. Cyber-attacks can amplify service disruption and expose frontline staff to public anger.

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