In a posting on their website dated 2nd June Carnegie Community Trust accuse the Friends' committee of lying, but there is no indication of when or where the statements objected to are alleged to have been made, and there is no distinction made between the Friends and Defend the Ten, a separate organisation.
If there is any assertion in anything written on behalf of the Friends which it is felt needs justification I would be grateful if this could be brought to my attention. We do usually give chapter and verse for anything we publish, and would be happy to remedy any apparent omission.
The CCT posting contains many more inaccuracies than we have time to correct at present. The matters concerned have already been dealt with in detail previously. However, I should mention some aspects which are likely to jump out at readers:
1. There seems to be an attempt to distract readers from the basic fact that Lambeth acknowledge that they have the money to run all their libraries but CHOOSE instead to spend this money on subsidising gyms. (Culture 2020 Report paragraph 5.8)
2. CCT refer to a proposal for an “endowment” fund and say this could have covered staff salaries. At no time was it suggested to the Friends that the fund could pay for library staff. We were invited to establish a volunteer-run library. This had already been rejected by our members in general meeting. No other Friends group would agree to volunteers replacing professional staff. (The proposal did not go ahead anyway because it was to be funded by selling off Waterloo and Minet Libraries which proved to be impractical.)
3. The CCT claim the Friends want only a library and nothing else. We have never said that; instead, we have consistently proposed developing the library for compatible wider use. The charity we set up with eight other user groups, Carnegie Library Association CIO, will do just that.
The interesting thing about the posting on the Trust’s website in my view is not the outrageous allegations they have invented but their claim that the Trust had only a single predecessor, the Project Group.
What people are hiding is always worth considering. In between the Project Group and the Trust there was the Shadow Trust Board. This had seven members of whom four (the Four)were serving or former Lambeth councillors and another was the partner in life of one of them. Just in case the other two members (the Two) got uppity the memorandum which was the Board’s constitution provided that in the event of a disagreement the majority could expel the minority! It was this very obvious domination by Labour activists that alerted the public and Labour Party members especially to the fact that the Project Group and Board were creatures of Lambeth’s administration.
The Trust replaced the Board and is equally under Lambeth’s effective control. It has five trustees. Three have been appointed for three years. These are three of the Four. The remaining two trustees are the Two. They have been appointed for two years. There is no provision for expelling them but they have presumably by now established their lack of independence.