Courtney McGrailDear Editor, Your article ‘Catholic Library leadership rejects crisis claims’ (IC 27/10/2016) reports that the new chairperson of the Central Catholic Library insists the library is not in a state of crisis despite almost a third of library’s board having stepped down.
It is hard to imagine anyone who read the article with attention sharing the chairperson’s views, even if she maintains that the previous board’s plan to place the library under the care of Dublin City University was one that the library membership has comprehensively rejected.
Perhaps the most telling detail in the piece is the line that relates how the library’s membership has long been shrinking, but has increased by half since the beginning of the year, with the newly-boosted membership voting to abandon the DCU plan and to place new members, opposed to such a plan, on the library board.
Are these new members, who have joined the library against the trend of many years, members in any meaningful sense? Do they use the library? How many of them have done so in the past, or are doing so on a regular basis now?
Some months ago, The Irish Catholic reported that the library had a declining membership with even fewer people using it: do the new members, who have changed the direction of the library, have any real connection with the library?
Those of us in the UK who have watched in dismay as thousands of new members hijacked the British Labour Party in order to push a hard-left agenda which, while attractive to many within the Labour party, has no traction among voters at large, such that the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn looks set to become a large but impotent protest movement, must feel alarm bells ringing at such entryism.
Yours etc.,
Madeleine Wilson,
Brighton, UK.