New rules for Reform-run libraries after Pride row

Sounds ok to me.

I'd like to live in a world where rules about this were not needed, but the way our own culture is treated as unwelcome we have to push back.

When someone who is black or gay did something to be proud of we should honor them, but not because they are black or gay.

Unsurprising. Reform have no policies beyond exclusion, repression and reducing acceptance of difference.

Public libraries aren't meant to be politically neutral. They exist because of working-class protest, equality campaigns and the women's movement. Education is something Reform fears..

What, no more rainbow dildo monkey? No more drag queen story hour? Oh no.

www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/19438386.redbridge-libraries-fire-inappropriate-costume/

Can’t get het up about this. I don’t need sexuality thrust in my fave at the library.

Why does it have to be either/or? What's wrong with a St George display and a Pride display and a Black History display? Isn't that politically neutral? And why wouldn't an Armed Forces display not include LGB and Black people anyway, given plenty of servicemen and women are?

I love seeing different communities in our society being made visible. I love windows into other cultures including the ones I live next door to. Isn't windows into other minds and other places exactly what libraries are supposed to be?

No libraries exist because philanthropists like Andrew Carnagie paid to create them so ordinary people could have access to books and knowledge when they were to poor to afford them.
Public libraries are supposed to be a place of learning for all not a place for political ideologies or indoctrination.

As someone who manages a public library, I don't really think it's great that there are rules about this. However, they are a reaction in many ways to libraries allowing themselves to be political in ways that alienate some of their constituents.

I also think it's become a common things for libraries to be treated by government bodies, and even various goodly organisations, as a propaganda vehicle.

It can at times feel as if the whole year is a never changing round of official monthly celebrations. Pride month, Black History Month, Asian Month, Diabetes awareness, and on and on.

My own view is that while it is a convenient public sport for things like useful pamphlets, and there isn't anything particularly wrong with doing a book display on the topic of the moment, the real purpose of a display is to show people the books we have available, particularly ones they might not know to look for. Trotting out the same old topics year after year isn't helpful.

The displays I do yearly are small in number and represent items that people will in fact be looking for at that time in particular. Christmas and holiday books are the biggest example. Most of the good cause books don't move off the shelf.

In that case, I don’t want any public funding for them.

I think it’s superb that we have partisan community groups of all stripes, Labour clubs, conservative associations, Quaker halls, effective altruists, friends of Israel, etc etc.

None should exist as a publicly-funded project.

Would you consider a slightly different model, where libraries are publicly-funded community resources, not pushing any particular line? I think there could be something in that.

Are we getting rid of all the books about straight sexuality then? No more Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel?

When I taught young children, I would always explain why we celebrated Black History Month because I understood that it might seem like a strange concept to them. I find it incredible that there are adults who don’t get it though. Even the slightest understanding of history and sociology should make it clear.
I have no problem with libraries also celebrating events like St George’s Day though, it’s not mutually exclusive.

This is a pushback to overreach though.

Libraries didn’t just promote black history month (good initiative, fully aligned with what a library is for). Many enthusiastically aligned themselves with BLM, whose UK arm stated its purpose as dismantling capitalism and supporting prison abolition. They are extreme fringe positions with no consensus support.

Ditto trans: that’s a highly poltically contentious issue where one side has been pushing for something between a change in the law and wholesale civil disobedience in contravention to it.

Luckily we have public libraries to give an impartial airing to these issues, eh? Holding a space for multiple perspectives, bringing the values of scholarship and free enquiry. Not so much. It’s all been trans flags and trans displays, Whenever I’ve seen one I’m always curious to see if there are any alternative viewpoints promoted. I must have done that about ten times. Never once have I ever found a single book giving a sex-realist or GC perspective in any of those displays.

So, I’d like the kind of moderate-let’s-do-both ism that you seem to want. But that just doesn’t seem possible. It feels a bit crocodile-tears for people to complain only now that libraries are being politicised.

I'm all in favor of Pride, but can you hear yourself? Rapunzel being "about straight sexuality"? That's pretty sick.

That’s the wrong analogy. A better one would be if the Reform libraries decided to do month-long Hungary-style pronatalist pride festivals, celebrating the rugged masculinity of our manly heros and the comely virtues of our fair lady folk, as part of a project explicitly to reshape society.

You might think that the gay rights movement was a good thing (I agree). But it was also significantly political.

Saying if libraries can’t have gay pride then they can’t have books with straight relationships in it is a weird “politics for me but not for thee” position that should not be endorsed with public money.

Either both Orban-style and Tatchell-style social movements are fine to endorse in libraries or neither, I think.

My preference is that libraries don’t endorse any political movement. Study, debate, air, yes, all day long.

I think this is a good thing, too much focus on Pride events snd rainbow flags -it is a manicured day and now month and not everyone agrees with what it has beo’e. Incision is one thing but has become much more, black history to me is different, I think displays about an individuals achievement is great - also as local history falls into this many libraries will celebrate the life of people with different wthnic background, the currrnt BH month has become non specific

Libraries should be places to get books and a bit of peace and quiet.

Community noticeboard to pin up small posters about local events fine but that’s it.

No campaigns, no awareness, no celebrating anything of any sort for any cause.

The Pride displays are an issue because Pride is now actively anti same sex attraction. Many gay people are made to feel very uncomfortable by Pride.

You forgot Pride and Prejudice and much of Shakespeare.

Don’t be an idiot.

They were neutral until very recently in the history of Public Libraries, and a very quick Google would have told you how wrong you are about their history.

Like others on the thread I want libraries to be about supplying reading material to the public at no cost, and audio books, and encouraging the young to read.

Story time, yes. Drag story time, absolutely not. Purple dildo in a library display, have they completely lost their minds?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10/11/row-breaks-out-over-council-stall-promoting-gay-sex/

Honestly I personally would be happy if they didn’t do displays about any kind of awareness and stuck to books.

so personally I wouldn’t have St George’s day or armed forces day or lgbtwhatever or anything.

just books.

I like books.

and maybe a leaflet stand.

Drag queen story hour was probably ground zero for this. A bizarre concept from the get go - as someone who worked in libraries for years, I never understood the appeal. I don't like these sort of rules, but like others have pointed out this is a direct result of overreach.

I am more bothered about people talking on their mobiles in libraries or random nutters shouting than any political campaigns

I see all sorts of posters there but they don't make any bloody noise

No one is suggesting that talking on phones or shouting in libraries is acceptable. Why would this have any bearing on political campaigning?

What's political about being gay or black ? It just sounds like They don't want to acknowledge those groups at all because they think there's something wrong with them.

What's political about being gay or black ?

Nothing. But the movements associated with “rights” in general are political campaigns, which have their place in a democratic society. What is debatable is whether the local library is the place for such campaigns. I believe it isn’t.

On a side note, my local library had an LGBT+ (didn’t clarify the “+”) display of books recently. It included a rather thin biography of Florence Nightingale. I asked the librarian why it was there and she explained, rather patronisingly, that “some people thought that FN was gay”. She didn’t like my response that that was a pretty poor reason for retrospectively queering the poor woman.