‘They murdered Valjean, when they chained me and left me for dead, just for stealing a mouthful of bread’ – Les Miserables
To live in 21st century Britain is to live in a country with security tags on butter and cheese, and three million children living in food insecurity.
It is a common omen to see the cardboard policeman looming over you while doing the weekly shop. The cameras in the corner hoping to catch you slipping a steak in your shopping bag. Stealing and shoplifting is on the rise, 2023 was the worst year on record for shoplifting. There were more than 430,000 cases recorded, an increase of more than a third from previous years. This only accounts for the ones who were caught, the more sophisticated smugglers were more discreet. In the heat of this ever rising cost of living crisis, we are more willing to pocket an item or conveniently “forget” to scan it.
But how did we get here? How did the legendary heroic outlaw figure of Robin Hood shift from an English folk story to a disney fox best pals with a monk/bear, to us, the common people?
Food as means of a currency has always been weaponized against people in societies. Access to simple human needs like food, water and housing has formed the basis of political movements and ideologies, its giving socialism. Our human hunger is universal, it reaches the furthest corner of the world. It made Peeta give Katniss a piece of bread, Mr Scrooge buying the prize turkey for the Cratchits and Marie Anoinette saying ‘let them eat cake’.
Hunger is a chronic problem across human history that has become amplified through its integral relation to the capitalist system of commodification. The ruling class is able to create a ‘food regime’ focusing on: production, distribution and consumption. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 recognized the right to food as part of the right to an adequate standard of living. Marx wrote, ‘all labour, is originally first directed towards the appropriation and production of food’- straight bars. So as a society why must we shoplift in as a means to satiate our starvation?
As to many of the problems at the heart of British society, in my humble (and Northern) opinion, this can be traced back to the witch herself: Margaret Thatcher a.k.a Thatcher the milk snatcher.
Let’s rewind. Under the Liberal administrations of 1906-1914, the British Parliament started off with a bang and passed the Education (Provision of Meals) Act. Allowing Local Education Authorities to provide free meals to elementary schoolchildren, funded out of the local rates. In 1921 – this was extended to free milk. A third of a pint of milk a day for every child in school was a simple, effective way to counter the worst effects of malnutrition caused by wartime rationing. In 1937, Glasgow’s very own John Boyd Orr revealed that there was a link between low-income, malnutrition and under-achievement in schools. Ellen Wilkinson, the first female Minister of Education in Britain saw the Free Milk Act into law in 1946. Slay.
UNTIL, Big T enters the scene. As Secretary of State for Education and Science in 1970, Big old Thatcher decided, why do children need protection from the government from malnourishment? Original thought. In the 1970s Food banks were unheard of in the UK. Hunger has risen under the following Tory Governments following Thatcher the milk snatcher. Britons going hungry have been forced to become food bank users instead. The Trussell Trust, one of the leading food bank charities now has over 2,500 operations across the UK. In the midst of this, enters Dishy Rishi. During Sunak’s tenure as chancellor, wild to think he became prime minister (crazy pipeline) over 21 million pounds was lost to fraud, an underestimation of the true amount lost and over three times preceding years of Tory Governments. Nice one Rishi.
Our plates and portions have slowly lessened, yet contrary to Conservative beliefs this doesn’t affect our hunger. The effects of food poverty have detrimental consequences both physically and socially. Bang on Boyd. Under the Tory Governments there has been a shift in the nature of poverty;gone are the days of a gorging monarch having fancy dinner parties, apple in the hogs mouth and all. Now it is the very Government supposed to be protecting the people who are starving them, one singular act can impact the appetite of our great nation. Across the 24,253 schools across the UK educating around 9 million pupils, around 25% need free school meals. That’s around 2.1 million of our darling nation’s children.
So as dinner time creeps slowly closer and there are hungry mouths waiting to be fed, what is to be done? Being “hangry” is real.
As a society, not just in our very “un-great” Britain, we must find a means of satiating our appetites through collectivism not individualism, feeding the people around the table as well. The capitalist commodification of our appetites has pushed us into over gorging, canning and stockpiling. One shouldn’t have to read Das Kapital from cover to cover to understand the importance of having access to the fuels of our physical fires. The Government and administrative bodies, within any country, should be catering and serving up this social satiation.
Good luck Starmer!
https://www.education-uk.org/documents/acts/1906-education-(provision-meals)-act.html
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/apr/analysis-brief-history-school-meals-uk-free-milk-turkey-twizzlers https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/food-poverty-in-the-uk-the-causes-figures-and-solutions/
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