The Writer’s Action Group (WAG) and the Fight for Public Lending Right (PLR)

Abstract

In 1972, the experimental writers Brigid Brophy and Maureen Duffy came together with three friends to found the Writer’s Action Group (WAG). The group aimed to improve the financial lot of British writers, being inspired by an article in the Bookseller stating that the average author earned less in 1971 than they had done in 1966 even before taking into account the rapid inflation of the new decade. Within a year, they had published 17 articles arguing for writers to unionise and fight for Public Lending Right (PLR), a small royalty fee to be paid every time a writer’s book was borrowed from a public library. Other writers flocked to join WAG including B.S. Johnson, Giles Gordon, Eva Figes, Ted Hughes, Anthony Burgess, Doris Lessing and Raymond Williams. The fight for Public Lending Right was won in 1974 when the Public Lending Right Act was voted through the Commons. It is a story of high passions, entrenched beliefs and internecine conflicts. In particular, the group’s struggle with the Society of Authors involved a dramatic escalation from initial cordiality, through each side trashing the other in the press, to a final, dramatic showdown during the Society’s 1973 AGM. The conflict represented a core contention at the heart of post-war British writing: are writers to be seen as workers or as aesthetes? Using materials sourced from a wide range of archives alongside interviews with participants, this paper charts the rise of WAG from a personal passion project through to a radical movement and finally into a mature campaigning body.