Page 2, 1st December 1944

1st December 1944

Page 2

Page 2, 1st December 1944 — CATHOLIC LITERATURE DISTRIBUTION
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Locations: Birmingham, Cambridge, London

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CATHOLIC LITERATURE DISTRIBUTION

SIR.—At intervals interest is ex pressed by your readers in the problem of Catholic bookshops, As thesc. readers often point to what the Communist and other Left wing
groups manage in the way of bookshops may I offer a few lines of thought?
On the Left there is the official C.P. central shop and main : wholesaler, Central Books, .of Parton Strcct, London. In London the retail work is carried on by Thames Bookshops with seven branches. Outside London the retail work is partly sponsored by the local C.P. District Council under various names, e.g., Key Books, of Birmingham, and partly by independent Left ginups or individuals, e.g., MacLaurin's Bookshop at Cambridge. In all there are 36 bookshops that have connection or affinity with the Communist Party, plus a dozen Anarchist, Trotsky or E.L.P. shops. To this total must be added the Left equivalent of Burns Oates and Washbourne shops, Collett's bookshops with three branches.
What are the Catholic whotesale and retail. outlets? Bums Gales have five branches, thus outstripping Collett'. We have a handful of independent ehops, Coldweirs, etc., plus the various C.T.S. shops. In additioe there ate very many repositories, etc., existing mainly for the sale of Catholic literature arid devotional articles. It would seem possible for us to reach a wider public and thus exercise a greater influence than any Left wing group. Where the C.P. ,has an advantage is in its organisation. While we have the Sword, the CT-S. and th6 C.S.G. all publishing separately, the COO publishes all its material from one source.
This gives it an administrative adverttage. Its retail owlets have a full stock of all the publishers' pamphlets. while among Catholics it is rare to find a C.T.S. church door rack that gives equal prominence to C.S.G. literature or feat the C.S.G. study circle taking that Society's pa mphleto and also handling publications of the C.T.S. Is it overbold to suggest that we could do with one wholesale organisation which would publish for all the main Catholic bodies; or if that is going too far would at least handle them all?
The second main advantage is in topicality. It is easy to point to C.P. pamphlets and say that they are all topical and to look at the C.T.S. list and throw one's hands up in horror. The problem is not so easy. The C.T.S. must publish the doctrinal explanations and the C.T.S. must publish the serious study pamphlets and maybe the Sword must publish highbrow reprints from the Tablet. But topical material is extremely rare. The C.S.G. pamphlet on Mobility of Labour was, if anything, before its time and the Sword leaflet on Poland is topical. But taking the publications as a whole, how many are topical? The system of a publication committee that takes months before a MSS. is finally passed is against topicality. This is not to deny that topical things have. been published. Distribution is a third point worth considering. If the C.P. publishes a pamphlet is on sale throughout the country at once. A campaign is often built round it. Our church-door sects on the whole rarely have a new pamphlet. It is not their fault ; ordering a few dozen assorted pamphlets every so often is the fault. What is needed is special church-door efforts, say once a • month, concentrated on a specific pamphlet, which might be a C.T.S. one or of some other body. These points are not all theoretical. Before the war St. Patrick's, Wigan, used to sell up to 200 copies of an individual pamphlet each month. In one Glasgow church, St. Teresa's, 1,000 copies of the penny edition of the Joint Pastoral were sold on one Sunday. Personal experience has proved to the that a church-door rack is improved if the pamphlets of all publishers are displayed. Likewise experience has proved that it pays to have a central depot, whatever its form is, from which parish sellers can obtain C.T.S., C.S.G. and other • pamphlets. The advantage the Left wing bas is not in the number of retail points, nor, the number of pamphlets but in
organisation. R. P. WALSH.
Garden Cottage, Standish Hall. Standish, Wigan,




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