When the rebels came to the Spell Library, they used the Union Literature section as ignition.
Deborah Moore, then library manager, arrived next morning to find that shelves and couches recently purchased as part of the reconstruction project were stacked to stand on the ground floor. Books that survived riots, part of Wool of Anti-Immigrant, Racist Disorders They broke across Britain in August last year, were yellowish smoke, their pages turned from heat.
Anger came first, said, then sadness, then determination to replace hundreds of books that burned, even though the smell of their destruction filled her nostrils. The feeling was: “Watch how we come back because we won’t be defeated.”
The library stands in Walton, a neglected district of the northwestern English city of Liverpool. A year and a half before the fire it was renovatedTransform it into a community center that offered training for unemployed, parental and toddler groups and a contact center for the local council. Then she became one of the most important victims in Britain in August the largest outbreak of public failure for more than ten years.
In hours of the attacker They killed three young girls In Southport, Coast City about 20 miles from Liverpool, disinformation He claims that the newly available Muslim immigrant has been extended by far right -wing accounts on social media. In fact, he was born in Britain, a Rwandan Christian family. However, violence against migrants broke out on more than a dozen places in England and Northern Ireland, which led to more than 400 arrests.
The murderer, Axel Rudakubana, was sentenced to life in prison Last week. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer described his actions as An example of a new kind of terrorismThe involvement of loners obsessed with violence rather than driven by any ideology.
Liverpool was among the first places to explode. Rioters went so far that they tried to prevent firefighters from entering the library, local police said at that time in a statement.
Alex McCormick, a 27 -year -old woman from a nearby suburb, saw in the library images of broken windows and blackened sites and immediately decided to start an online fund to help replace the books.
“We can’t burn books, we can’t do it,” she said. “We’re not like that, but in the rest of the world we look it now.”
Its goal was £ 500, about $ 610, but soon thousands began to roll, some money from celebrities. Mrs. McCormick, who has married for the month, found herself dispersed from her wedding products by watching the great and small acts of generosity. Young people mobilized their own libraries to send books; Others donated the books of the late loved ones; While the community members gave what they could. Within three weeks, Gofundme won 250,000 GBP.
“This is an incomprehensible amount of money for one library,” she said. When she returned from her honeymoon, a member of the local council called that Queen Camilla gave the books: The collection included Anna Frank’s daily, “love at the time of cholera” and “Tiger that came to tea”. British children’s classic from writer and illustrator that fled from Nazi Germany as a girl.
Mrs. McCormick, a member of another local library with a daughter named for a favorite literary figure, said she hoped to give people a more true picture of her city and public sentiment in Britain.
“Finally, 11,500 people donated money to handle funds and hundreds of other people donated physical books,” said Mrs. McCormick. “There were no 11,500 people on the rural road to cause trouble and burning the library.”
The library reopened in mid -December, four months after its destruction. Liverpool’s City Council paid for a price of 200,000 GBP. The Council spokesman said that the money McCormick received would be used for community programs.
In weeks after violence, the neighborhood was clamped by a sense of restlessness, the inhabitants said. People of colors said they were afraid. Mládec, who helps to run a coaching session for young people, said he had encountered some who participated in the riots and found that they were fighting shame and regret. It combined the hopelessness that many young people from Walton had already felt.
Everyone felt abandoned, said Sarah Atherton, who grew up in the neighborhood and whose children use the library. She said parts of the area had long felt forgotten.
POLICE arrested nine people for a disorder on County Road and one man was sentenced to 22 months in prison for participating in violence and Throwing a glass bottle for police officers.
County Road was overcrowded again in the Night of December, with dozens of residents carrying lantern at the re -opening show. Arc of balloons above the entrance to Spellow Library brought color on the street that lost many small businesses and equipment during a decades of austerity measures Under the conservative government in 2010.
A few days later, the first Saturday since its re -opening, the library was a buzzing hive. The woman came and burst happily, “You’re open!”
Iakob Drozdova, 11, was excited that his old library card could check new books. He registered on the class of drawings, while his stepmother, Sofia Drozdova, waited for plush new chairs and read. For Mrs. Drozd, who said she fled from Russia with her wife and their family over the Kremlin Anti-gay lawsThe library has become a refuge. August violence, she said, was an exception in an otherwise safe neighborhood.
“I don’t even have words in my native language,” said Mrs. Drozdova, who was a librarian in Russia.
During her first visit, Fungai Chirombe created a line for her favorite section: Self -help and Wellness. In the months since she moved from Zimbabwe to meet her mother, over 50 books have checked out. The library is on the Wednesday of her new home, where most welcomed her, even though someone threw her up on his mother a racial elevation a week ago, she said.
“I’m just glad to recover,” she said, crashing a lot of new books. “There’s so much material.”
The children gathered around the craft table and filled the cones of cellophane with chocolate powder and marshmallows to make reindeer googly. In the corner of children’s reading, the neighbor group dressed on the pantomime “Pinocchio”, while in another corner of the teenager he locked the computer screen and tried to find out her mathematical homework.
“It’s noisy,” said June Serridge, who examined her pedigree. “But it’s nice to be back.”
