The Sparrows' Nest: An Anarchist Library

 

What is it? Where is it?

The Sparrows' Nest is in St. Ann's, it’s situated in a normal house, and we are a library specialising in anarchist and anti-authoritarian writings and history as well as local working class struggles that go beyond this particular niche of the radical spectrum. We have been running since late 2008, so we just had our fifth anniversary. We are unfunded and so run by a collective of volunteers, but we are dedicated and have put a lot of hours in over the years. We are open every Tuesday between elevenish and twoish, however we are very happy to arrange an alternative date if needed. 

 

I’m intrigued by the idea of a library in a house. Do people live upstairs? 

There is someone looking after the place, but everyone who is in the collective lives elsewhere. The primary function of the house is the library, so reading material is both upstairs and downstairs.

 

Where do you get your books from?

Most of our material is from donations, but we buy the odd book here and there, often at Anarchist bookfairs and such to keep up with new publications. 

 

What can you offer that an academic library can’t? 

We have of course all the books, pamphlets and journals that you might expect to find in an anarchist library. There are all the classics, lots of works on the history of anarchism, historical persons that influenced the movement and so on. With some exceptions most of our books are not that rare. But we do have about twenty metres shelf space filled with anarchist literature, whereas a university library would probably have one and a half metres on the subject. The real treasures of the Nest are however the archival collections that have been donated to us. Very often someone has been clearing out their loft, usually an activist who has been collecting flyers, minutes and correspondence for decades, and they will give it to us. Often we have full black bin liners full of bits of paper and then we’ll pull them apart and find some of the most exciting and amazing archival material, including tons of rare and unique documents. 

 

Is your collection digitised?

Partly, yes. Over the past eighteen months we’ve put a lot of time into digitising materials but are limited in regards to the equipment we have. We can’t digitise old fragile newspapers for example, because we just have a normal scanner, and we can’t ram these delicate bits of paper about. We have put a lot of effort into digitising the rarer pamphlets, journals and documents we have; and we’ve put a lot of effort into digitising some of the archival materials. You can find our entire digital collection on the website in the Digital Library bit.

 

 

Anything in particular stand out?

There is for instance Ron’s Collection, providing loads of material partly filling a gap in the movement’s history. A lot has been written regarding Spanish Civil War, that is the mid to late thirties. Then there is loads of stuff written regarding the period when things kick off again in the 60s for instance events in France in 1968 and all around the world. But in-between there is a bit of a void where very little gets written about. Then we were donated a couple of black bin liners that were full of material from the forties to the sixties, effectively the unofficial archive of one London based group of Syndicalists. This collection of 1,100 documents, all of which are on the website, help to fill that void, as it is their correspondence with their members around the country and other groups and individuals around the globe. It shows what people in the forties, fifties and early sixties got up to, and how they communicated with each other. It also shows what they were interested in. It’s the kind of material that nowadays would be sent in an email that would be deleted once read. 

 

Such as…

One typical letter is one by a group in the southern United States who send in sixpence to renew their subscription of the Syndicalist group’s journal, but they also talk about what they have been up to in the same document. They talk about anti-war demonstrations that were going off in their area during the Cuban missile crisis, they talk about what the civil rights movement were up to, the resistance the civil rights movements encountered by the local Klu Klux Klan. So, you see, just from one letter in that bin bag, you find a lot of material that you would never find otherwise, unless you start working your way though some obscure local papers.

 

What kind of relationship do you have with universities? 

We’ve done presentations and conferences, for instance for the Anarchist Studies Network which is based around the University of Loughborough. We’ve had quite a few people over the years who are working on PhD projects that cannot find that obscure journal from the eighties anywhere else, so they find us online or get told by their lecturer to talk to us. We literally got exciting materials for dozens of potential PhD projects. 

 

Are you actively trying to engage with universities? I ask as more people need to know about your collections…

It is something we will do systematically this year. One of us spent a lot of time hunting down lots of addresses of people around the country who, for instance, may have PhD students who may be looking for relevant material. We intend to have a focussed campaign raising awareness of our collections as well as some fundraising later in the year, which is primarily focussed at academics. 

 

 

Have you thought about lottery funding?

Funding anti-capitalist political activities by exploiting other peoples gambling habits is an ethical dilemma. But it would be nice to update our digital library and make it easier for people to find information. This kind of cost is something that could only be funded through a large grant of some sort or other.

 

Anarchism is one of those ‘dirty words’ that’s been negatively appropriated over the years. How would you define it? 

It’s a very hard question to answer because luckily there has never been a great leader who has given out a party line. So it’s always down to the individual and how they interpret it. 

 

I’m regretting asking this already. Sorry, go on…

For me the aim is to overcome a society with a hierarchical power structure. The idea is that power is always based in violence, in the end it’s always “I have power over you, cause if you don’t do what I do, I can make you do it”, that can be in various forms, such as a police truncheon and the need to play by the rules in order to eat and have a roof over your head. The aim for me is always to create a non-violent society, where people organise themselves voluntarily, without anyone ruling another person, creating an order that is not dependant on the end of a baton: a society where people help each other, not because they have to, but because they want to.

 

Why Sparrows Nest? It doesn’t sound very anarchist ….

Prominent among the founding members of the Sparrows Nest were members of the local Anarchist Federation, who blog under the name the Nottingham Sparrow, instead of the Nottingham Arrow: the city council’s propaganda rack for many years. With having the name Nottingham Sparrow, you needed a nest for all the sparrows, and that’s how the name came about.

 

Perhaps one of the most recognisable local anarchists was the recently deceased Ray Gosling. Did you have any involvement with him?

He came to the Sparrows Nest once to do a talk. It may suffice here to say that it wasn’t quite what people were expecting, but in hindsight it was a very funny meeting. It inspired a lot of other activities, such as in the end the launch of People’s Histreh, Nottingham’s Radical History Group. We are very glad that Ray’s friends and his sister have done so much to ensure that the memory of Ray’s life and work will be kept alive. A lot of his work has been donated to Nottingham Trent University but we also inherited a lovely stash of papers and journals that we are still cataloguing. They’re mostly from the early sixties, including some very interesting local publications. We feel very happy and privileged that Colin Haynes and Juliet, Ray’s sister, have entrusted us with that material. It’s a very eclectic collection of materials with everything from individualist anarchist publications from London, to civil defence nuclear war protection guides. All kinds of stuff, that’s been great to have.

 

Sparrow's Nest website