Our People’s Palace is not for profit!

£188m of our money has been invested in building our new city Library. Yet Sir Albert and his Labour Cabinet have started a privatisation process that could allow a private profit making company to take over the running of the new Library and other Library services in the city. Any profit would be paid for by Birmingham Council tax payers.

Join us to support the new Library of Birmingham as a public non-commercial cultural space which remains a publically owned and publically run service.

Get involved in forming a Friends of the Library of Birmingham group; Join us when we meet on 4th July to found the group.

7.30pm on Thursday 4th July 2013
At: Lecture Room 2 at the Birmingham Conservatoire
Paradise Place, Fletchers Walk, Birmingham, B3

A message from beyond the grave
Dear Sir Albert Bore,

‘The common rights of ownership have disappeared. Some of them have been sold; some of them have been given away by people who had no right to dispose of them; some of them have been lost through apathy and ignorance; some have been stolen by fraud; and some have been acquired by violence.

Private ownership has taken the place of these communal rights, and this system has become so interwoven with our habits and usages, it has been so sanctioned by law and protected by custom, that it might be very difficult and perhaps impossible to reverse it.

Yours sincerely,
Sir Joseph Chamberlain
(Taken from the speech to the Birmingham Artisans’ Association at Birmingham Town Hall on 5 January 1885).