Finance Social Media Financially we are still, as always, in a state of The Library’s Facebook page has over 2,660 ‘likes’ (2,200 in April 2013) and our contradiction. On the one hand we have feed has 1,950 followers. This is up from 1,200 in April last year. The e-bulletin healthy balances, thanks mainly to bequests publicising our future activities goes out about once a fortnight to over 1,600 people from supporters, but on the other hand our (1,350 in April 2013). core annual expenditure exceeds our core The Library blog has featured a wide range of guest posts including income by some five figures a year. We have ‘Benny Rothman and the police officer - the story of an iconic to make up the shortfall by dipping into those photograph’ from Peter Jackson, the police officer pictured towering balances. over Benny Rothman at the 50th anniversary of the Kinder Trespass. Without these generous bequests and the Our new front room has a QR Code in the window, for passing smart regular donations given to us by our friends, phone users to learn about us. the Library would not be able to survive. Fortunately the Library is secure for the Publicity foreseeable future, but we have to keep up Maxine Peake appeared in July on BBC2’s Culture Show in a programme partially filmed the fundraising efforts to replenish our in the Library. Her passionate advocacy of the importance of WCML’s collections had a reserves so that they don’t, over time, dwindle big impact and brought many new readers and visitors to the Library, as well as boosting to nothing. Our total core income for 2013- our social media followers. 2014 was £105,000, of which £57,110 was The most unlikely publicity of the year came from a drop-in visit from a journalist which from donations, £22,872 Council grant led to a large feature about Len Johnson, and the Library more generally, in the sports (a reduction of £4,000 on the previous year), pages of . and £18,700 interest earned from our investments. Other sundries brought the total The Library’s new Front Room resulted in online features on the to £105,000. Our core expenditure was Web sites of Creative Tourist and Confidential, and Working Class Movement Library £115,000 so you can see that we dipped into we got mentions in various blogs including one about our exhibit reserves to the tune of £10,000. of Bagpuss’s radical family tree. We were lucky to receive an additional windfall of £26,463 by selling our shares in Raising The Profile Of The Library TALIS - as we only had these shares because Annual Report Invitations for the Library to take part in events and projects across we previously used TALIS cataloguing and beyond continue to increase. software, we decided that the money should be used for future IT and communications Small Heritage Organisations Working Together (SHOWT) is a newly-formed network development. which brings together some of the small unusual collections in Manchester and Salford April 2013 – March 2014 which have few resources for publicity. Other members include Manchester Jewish For the moment, we can say that everything Museum, , the Pankhurst Centre, Chetham’s Library and the Greater is relatively ok on the financial front. Manchester Transport Museum. The Network has received funds from Museum Development North West to install Standpoint visitor evaluation software in every venue. Conclusion The Trustees wish to record their gratitude to the staff, volunteers, friends and all our active supporters for their invaluable personal contribution to the Library which enables it to run to high standards and also to be a warm, welcoming place. We are grateful to all the individuals and organisations who support us financially in these difficult times. We are determined to do everything in our power to ensure the long-term future and continuing development of the priceless collection we hold in trust.

WWorkingCClass MMovement LL ibrary 0161 736 3601 [email protected] www.wcml.org.uk @wcmlibrary facebook.com/wcmlibrary

Registered Charity No. 1115731 Company Limited by Guarantee No. 5721140 Introduction Events highlights It is pleasing to report that the year under review has been one of growth and achievement. We have had a really packed year of events, from films to talks to In October our contribution to the annual However Salford City Council, our major funder, has made the third planned cut in its grant and, despite the generosity of our many concerts to communal sewing… Manchester Weekender was ‘ Darn that Picasso’ when we joined with activist friends, income from donations and interest receipts were not sufficient to make up the deficit. The Fourth Annual Frow Lecture was given in artists from Brighton who are sewing the May by Owen Jones on the theme ‘Change The Trustees have agreed a three-year Strategy to meet the challenges we are facing and to ensure that we uphold the principles of image from Picasso's sombre anti-war Comes From Below’. For the first time we had to our founders. masterpiece, Guernica, into a huge turn people away so an audio version of Owen’s banner. Black History Month was Usage Of The Library inspiring talk was made available on our Web site. The Front Room marked with a talk by Marika Sherwood The Library continues to be very busy Explore the Past, Later in the month we held our first film festival. with the numbers of drop-in visitors, on the struggles of Manchester’s black Change the Future In June, Will Kaufman performed ‘All You people attending events and email community from the 18th century to the Jim Crow Fascists: Woody Guthrie’s enquiries continuing to grow. Work on converting one of the Pan-African Congress in the city in 1945. ground floor rooms into a Freedom Songs’ at Islington Mill. He In January the Library lent material to a pop-up exhibition about We gave tours to 244 people in the welcoming drop-in space for donated the proceeds of over £400 to the community football club FC United of Manchester at the People’s calendar year 2013 (up from 204 in visitors new to the Library was Library. Also in June we hosted the launch History Museum, and a linked, well-attended walk ‘Radicalism, 2012) and 757 people came to Library completed in October. It was of the book Physical Resistance: an football and co-operatives’ brought people to enjoy a tour of the events, up from the previously record- funded by a generous donation activists’ history of the collective anti-fascist Library’s collections. breaking 718 the year before. Drop-in from the former T&GWU Chloride struggle in Britain edited by Louise Purbrick visitors totalled 224 (207 in 2012). 6/153 Branch. It was fitted out from the writings of the late Dave Hann. We marked LGBT History Month with a talk by Peter Tatchell, ‘Queer Britain: the Access to the selection of images from with books representative of our A series of talks was held in June and July on a range of topics struggle for LGBT human rights’, and our collection in the University of Salford collections, image boards, easy from the role of women in the UK punk scene to “horse burgers” in International Women’s Day with a talk Digital Repository (including images of chairs and lamps to assist Newton Heath in the 1850s. the Spanish Civil War, and of local reading. Of course, tea and entitled ‘Socialist women of the In August a ‘Living History’ performance on strikes and demonstrations) has trebled in the past year, coffee are served. Independent Labour Party: political the theme of Peterloo was given by an actor with nearly 2,000 views. propagandists and trade union organisers, from the People’s History Museum to an 1890s-1914’ by June Hannam. 2,477 records were added to our online catalogue during audience of older Manchester residents, all We held an Open Day at the end of March the year, including 1,994 books and pamphlets (97 of the Esmée Fairbairn of them first-time visitors to the Library, as as part of the Manchester Histories books published within the last five years). Collections Fund part of the City’s Culture Champions: Valuing Festival’s Creative Threads event. We had Uncovering Ideas Worth Fighting For project Older People project. nearly 100 visitors, the vast majority of Heritage Lottery Fund Much work has been done to unearth and link 'hidden gems’ in the In September, we marked the centenary of the publication of Ethel whom had not visited us before and many Invisible Histories project Library, the People’s History Museum and the Labour History Archive Carnie Holdsworth’s Miss Nobody , one of the first novels arriving on special heritage buses. The Interviews conducted by volunteers with former as well as strengthening links between staff and volunteers across the published in Britain by a of working class background. Bailey Sisters sang during the day and workers in the three ‘lost workplaces’ of Agecroft institutions. gave a concert in the evening using colliery, Dickie Haworth’s cotton mill and Ward & We ran two well-attended Open Reading Days: one using material material from the Library. Goldstone engineering were completed in August. from our Peterloo collection and the other using material on women A group of students from Buile Hill Visual Arts College and democracy to coincide with Parliament Week. Students from Exhibitions used the interviews to develop a podcast in the spirit Winstanley College in Wigan participated in a project on the theme of In April, the 50th anniversary of the publication of E.P. of Ewan MacColl’s 1950s Radio Ballads, as part of a ‘oratory’. Thompson’s The making of the English working class community partnership. The project was the theme of was celebrated with an exhibition of Thompson’s work the Library’s stall at this year’s Manchester Histories in the Library’s collection. The event marked our first Festival celebration day in – joint conference with the People's History Museum. and we were thrilled when the students won the This was followed in July by ‘Knowledge, Work and Festival’s Best Schools Histories Award. Volunteers Workers: Science and the Working Class’ which We have a full highlighted unusual aspects of our collection and was complement of linked to an international conference on the history of volunteers and continue science at Manchester University. to have a waiting list. Volunteers undertake a In October the centenary of the Dublin Lockout was wide range of tasks, from welcoming visitors, creating exhibitions and marked with exhibits from our and the Co-op Archive’s digitising tapes to adding indexing terms to books to make them easier collections, as well as with a conference. And in to find on our catalogue. December an exhibition about the Invisible Histories project marked its conclusion.