London’s Burning! (And History’s Repeating Itself)

Dana Goblaskas



When I first heard about the riots that broke out in London’s Tottenham neighborhood on Saturday, I couldn’t help thinking that the situation sounded a little familiar. It all began peacefully as people protested the death of a young man at the hands of local police, and allegedly the chaos erupted after a 16-year-old girl threw a rock at police officers. That proved to be the spark that lit three days’ worth (so far) of riots all over London, as well as in Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, and Manchester.



The niggling thought that the riots reminded me of something bounced around in my brain for a few hours until it hit me—the Notting Hill Carnival riot of 1976. On August 30th of that year, the annual West Indian carnival descended into violence as youths threw bricks and rocks at police and set cars afire. I had heard about it from several interviews with The Clash’s front man Joe Strummer, who sang about the effect the riot had on him in the song, “White Riot.”



Strummer, along with Clash bassist Paul Simonon and manager Bernie Rhodes, was at the carnival when the riot broke out. As Strummer remembered in an interview in 1999, “Paul, Bernie and I [saw] this conga-line of policemen coming through the crowd. . . . Someone threw a brick at them, then another, [then] all hell broke loose.” (quote from The Complete Clash [2003] by Keith Topping) According to the BBC, the trouble started when police tried to arrest a pickpocket and “several black youths came to the pickpocket’s aid.” Relations between the police and London’s black community had been unstable all summer, and the Carnival ended up being the tipping point.



Fast-forward 35 years to the present. The Metropolitan Police, as part of Operation Trident—a unit dedicated to investigating gun crime in London’s black communities—have supposedly been increasing the number of stop-searches made on members of the community. As a result, suspicion of and resentment for police is bubbling under the surface. Unemployment rates in Tottenham are double the national average, and the neighborhood has one of the highest concentrations of poverty in the country. Then on August 4th, 29-year-old Mark Duggan was shot and killed by police during an attempted arrest. That lit the tinderbox.



Both the riots of 1976 and 2011 were prefaced by stark economic climates (as Strummer growled in “White Riot:” “All the power in the hands of the people rich enough to buy it”), high unemployment, and tense race relations. All it took each time was one moment of perceived injustice for the violence to erupt. Though it feels cliché to say it, these riots happening in London are a perfect example of history repeating itself. But whereas the Notting Hill riot lasted only one day, the current chaos in London has been going on for three, and has spread to other cities.



If people continue refusing to recognize what can happen if we don’t learn from history, how bad will the riots be a few decades down the road?

Archives and History: Notes from the New England Archivists Conference

Dana Goblaskas

Archives and history have always been fields that are closely intertwined; without archives, historians would suffer a loss of many valuable primary sources, and without a sense of history, archivists would have no context in which to place their collections. Without history, frankly, archivists would be out of a job.

Or would they?

The idea of a divide between the disciplines of archives and history may seem unimaginable to many involved in those fields, but according to James O’Toole, the Charles I. Clough Millennium Chair in History at Boston College, a split may already be forming.

This “archival divide” was mentioned a few times during the recent spring conference of the New England Archivists, held at Brown University, April 1-2. One of Saturday morning’s first sessions, titled “Is Archival Education Preparing Tomorrow’s Archivists?” featured a lively discussion (as lively as a room full of archivists can be at 9 am, anyway) about how the field is changing and how education is changing in response. To sum up: as records shift from paper to electronic formats, archival education is beginning to stress competence in digital preservation, database management, and knowledge of web architecture and social media. Some members of the profession are concerned that a rift is growing between students interested in the digital realm of archives and those more attracted to the “analog” side of things—the manuscripts, photographs, and other ephemera that spring to mind when one thinks about an archive.

After an hour’s worth of conversation about how to bridge that gap between digital and analog spheres, O’Toole—formerly a professor of archival studies at UMass Boston—broached the question: Where does history fit into all of this? Based on what had been covered in the session so far, it seemed like the whole idea of history was taking a backseat to the new technical aspects of the profession. O’Toole expressed concern that archival educators may be growing so obsessed with teaching new technologies that they’re no longer placing emphasis on understanding historical context.

Silence filled the room as veteran and fledgling archivists alike reflected on what this observation could mean for the future of the profession. Maybe it was just me, but there seemed to be a very faint sense of panic in the air, especially when another session attendee wondered aloud what would happen in twenty years when many “classically trained” archivists retire, leaving the young technical turks in charge.

Before any lurking sense of doom could take over, a voice from the back of the room spoke up, identifying herself as a student enrolled in the library science and history dual-degree Master’s program at Simmons College. With several fellow students beside her nodding in agreement, she explained that there’s no need to panic quite yet; there are still some archivists-in-training who feel that history is hugely important, not only in order to have an understanding of context, but also to know how to conduct historical research, which has the added bonus of helping archivists better understand and assist researchers.

Though this enthusiastic Simmons student helped to quell the panic a little bit, O’Toole’s point is still a distressing one. Later that day, at the conference’s closing plenary session, he discussed how some archival neighbors, such as historians, aren’t “in the neighborhood” anymore, and how the profession needs to hold on to its roots as it explores new and exciting technologies. I certainly hope the educators in the crowd—and the mentors, students, and others working in the field—heard his message. The digital vs. analog divide may be more popular in archival discussions these days, but the sneakier split growing between archives and history may be the one that proves deadly to the profession if left unchecked.

London Calling Librarians

This guest post comes from Dana Goblaskas a former student of mine who works at the MIT library. Dana stuck out to me from the start because of her intellectual curiosity and because she was into pop music history, punk, and indie rock. Pluses in my book. Here she tells of her two-week trip across the water as a participant in University College London’s Librarianship Summer School.

Dana Goblaskas

As a self-proclaimed history nerd and an Anglophile, it’s hard for me to be giddier than when I’m immersed in the tangible history of England. And if I can earn credits toward my degree for that immersion, well, let’s just say the happy dances abound.

Last month, I took part in the inaugural session of University College London’s Librarianship Summer School, co-sponsored by the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Studies. The two-week seminar examined the past, present, and future of Britain’s libraries and the field of librarianship, and featured daily field trips to museums, libraries, and archives throughout the city and beyond. Lectures by librarians, historians, and UCL faculty provided background for what my classmates and I saw during tours, and behind-the-scenes peeks into the workings of such places as the British Library and Bodleian Library at Oxford set our future-librarians’ hearts a-racing.

For the history nerd in me, there was plenty of “past” to learn about and see firsthand. Lectures about medieval manuscripts and eccentric pioneers of cataloging were coupled with glimpses inside Wren’s Library at Trinity College Cambridge (built in 1695), the Natural History Museum, and viewings of treasures like the Domesday Book at the National Archives.

Perhaps even more exciting than getting to drink all that in was seeing how much effort these institutions are presently putting into making their historical collections available to the world. With help from foundations like JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), many of the places I visited were in the midst of massive digitization, indexing, or retrospective cataloging projects. Inspired by the popularity of the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? TV program, several libraries and archives were focusing on increasing public accessibility to the parts of their collections that could be used for genealogical research.

As for the future of Britain’s libraries, I think they’re heading in the right direction. Facing questions about libraries’ continuing relevance to society head-on, they are adapting to the communities around them and showing that they’re in it for the long run. A new “chain” of libraries called Idea Store is springing up around London, abandoning confusing catalog classifications and offering a wide variety of classes to support continuing education in their neighborhoods. The libraries in the London borough of Haringey recently won a grant that placed free medical clinics and wellness centers alongside their book stacks.

And in addition to focusing on expanding digital content and accessibility, some institutions are appealing to the public to help develop their collections. Projects such as Transcribe Bentham at UCL and Oxford’s First World War Poetry Archive rely on crowd-sourcing to create and identify materials, as well as on social networking tools like Twitter and Flickr to get the word out to wider circles of volunteers.

Coming back down to reality after two weeks spent doing not much more than hanging around inside and gawking at cool old libraries—or cool new libraries—was a little difficult. But coming back with great experiences, thousands of pictures, and a head full of ideas lessened the blow of the transition. And I’m excited by the prospect of so much more incredible content being made widely available. Now I just have to finish my research paper to earn those credits, and I think the happy dances will abound once again.