This spring, Fossil Free Books (FFB) submitted two resolutions to the Society of Authors (SoA), the largest UK trade union for authors, illustrators and translators. The first sought steps towards severing ties between the book industry and corporations profiting from fossil fuel extraction.
The second was a statement calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, in solidarity with a cultural infrastructure – an entire literary life – which has been all but obliterated. It asked our trade union to do the bare minimum in support of massacred colleagues, as many other unions in the UK have done.
The first resolution passed. The second did not. It was opposed by the Management Committee on the basis of a new SoA policy of not commenting on ‘issues of a more general political nature’. During a meeting, representatives from the SoA management also told us that referring to authors as ‘workers’ would be unpopular among our membership.
It’s not surprising that a trade union that doesn’t regard its members as workers also views ‘politics’ as exceeding its remit. The definition of people as workers is itself political. FFB was founded on the fundamental conviction that we – authors, booksellers, publishing staff, illustrators and translators – are workers.
The conditions under which we carry out our labour vary, yet through it, we create the commodities our industry exists to sell. As recent month’s events have revealed, that conviction disrupts the way the literary establishment encourages us, as authors, to view ourselves.
Labour organising or anonymous activism?
Aside from our SoA motions, FFB has become renowned for a campaign focused on Baillie Gifford (BG), a Scottish investment manager and until recently sponsor of ten UK book festivals and one literary prize. FFB members have written in depth about BG’s investments, and our decision to bring them to light.
On 15 May, we published a statement, now signed by 800 authors and other book workers, calling for BG to divest from its holdings in fossil fuels, and its investments in companies with links to Israeli apartheid, occupation and genocide. In the weeks that followed, we were called ‘wreckers’ and depicted as enemies of culture. We were ‘pretentious kids’ for pointing out that BG had investments in arms companies working with Israel.
We were never, nor did we try to be, anonymous
In the onslaught of opinions, I was especially struck by the way the term ‘book workers’ appeared in citation marks, even in less aggressive pieces written by fellow authors, as if rather than a factual description, the concept was a strange curiosity. Our position in the industry was further called into question by BG itself, which referred to us as ‘ activists’ engaged in an ‘anonymous campaign’ in the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s statement announcing that it was parting ways with the firm.
We were never, nor did we try to be, anonymous. In fact, when the divestment campaign started in August 2023, several of us met with the Edinburgh Festival’s leadership and had been in contact with other festivals and BG representatives ever since. The names of signatories were publicly available; we had named media spokespeople.
Had we actually been anonymous activists, we would be protesting at the gates, not meeting with directors. The description of us was deliberate; designed to delegitimise our stake in the industry – and our right to seek to change it.
Shaken self-conceptions
Authors are often applauded by the industry for their activism, and political engagement can be used as part of a marketable profile. Think of Naomi Klein – who has publicly supported our campaign – Rebecca Solnit, Angela Davis, and so many others. As authors, we are encouraged to speak up about social justice, but only as long as we act in an individual capacity, and only as long as we don’t scrutinise the material reality of the industry itself, contesting the idea of literary spaces as utopian.
The role of the author-activist is one that the book industry – including festivals – understands. It’s also one that, paradoxically, occludes collective efforts like labour organising. Instead of relying on individual statements, organising springs from collaboration, networks of support and mutual aid. It creates systems of interdependence and trust.
FFB was founded on the fundamental conviction that we – authors, booksellers, publishing staff, illustrators and translators – are workers
Identifying as a worker means recognising that what you do creates economic value. This position aligns you with other workers, in an agentive collective. The archetypal writer works alone, however, and what we produce is far too often ascribed to individuals, obscuring the work of countless others: agents, editors and copy-editors, designers, printers and many more.
Identifying as a worker contradicts the image of the writer as a celebrity or uniquely creative genius – and its promise of individual success, which for most will never tally with reality: authors in the UK make £7,000 a year on average from their writing. To speak of ourselves as workers is to challenge some of the most fundamental codes – of insular creativity, innovation and imagination – that make up the bloodstream of our industry, the language it knows how to speak.
Hay Festival and Edinburgh International Festival didn’t suspend ties with BG because of their investments being discussed during events; they did it because they couldn’t carry out festivals if authors withdrew their labour through boycott. It certainly mattered who withdrew – and the subsequent impact on ticket sales – but the research, the meetings, comms and decision making which made the campaign all possible was carried out by all of us.
In the industry backlash against FFB, there was a (sometimes wilful) mistaking of collectivity for anonymity. That tendency reveals important aspects of the literary world’s self-image, but also other ways we could see ourselves.
Alternative book worlds
These words are work – as well as an act of devotion from my brain to yours, and a belief in craft as part of this struggle. They are production and the intimate pulse that binds us. Some have called FFB’s campaign ‘a desecration of the idea of literature’, a description which I, in part, agree with: we are challenging certain beliefs about what literature should do.
FFB members each carry with us a fundamental understanding of art as unavoidably entangled with the world. Each of us knows that, under violent capitalism, books and literary events cannot be intrinsically a force for good – we have to try harder, be willing to look closer at what lies behind the slogans and the good intentions, and to act when we learn that funders are complicit in the destruction of communities, including the killing of colleagues.
Being part of this collective means that I’m not alone as I continue to negotiate the relationship between art and politics. For all of this, I’m immensely grateful.
Working with this community of humans takes me from the desks of my life and into spaces where visions are so much greater than my own capacity. Here, I am surprised and challenged. Here, we build the courage to frame, and make, art differently.
Being part of this collective means that I’m not alone as I continue to negotiate the relationship between art and politics
The debate around FFB goes far beyond our own campaigns. It shines a light on the societal value of the arts but it also points to what might be possible if that value was better understood.
What if we, as authors, had a union that brought all of us together, and fought for us not only to be paid properly, but against the oppression of our peers, across the globe – whether we write, design or sell the books?
What if festivals, instead of operating as platforms for individual authors, truly prioritised the questions which might help our survival, through exercises in collective imagining? What if books were honestly presented as the products of the labour of many, not of one ‘great mind’?
All of this is possible – if we reframe how we view authors; if we see ourselves as a workforce.
