Beyond Food Banks

WHEN (NEO) LIBERALS CONTROL THE NARRATIVE ABOUT POVERTY: FOOD BANKS

On Dec 13 2019, in response to the Tories being re-elected with a large majority, The Guardian argued that what people should do to "help” or even just “feel better” was to donate to food banks to help the 'deserving poor'. The clear message being that the readership of The Guardian were not themselves users of food banks and that The Guardian had played no role in the defeat of Corbyn. Food banks had been somewhat prominent during the general election, the Labour Party featured them in some campaign messaging and tweets and notably, Channel 4 released a documentary series that included young children talking coherently about the need to choose between heating and eating. The #ToryStory intervention that was started by Jacob Barb-Rosenberg at Mayday Rooms and supported by members of Plan C was briefly trending on Twitter and achieved some media coverage. The real life stories of what life has been like under ten years of Tory rule were sickening and all too familiar to many of us across the country.

SO, WHAT IS WRONG WITH FOOD BANKS? 

The current organisation, meaning and crucially how people experience accessing food banks follows a well worn Victorian-era path of providing help for those deemed to be poor but “deserving”. Just enough to stop people starving but never providing enough resources so that they are able to confront the structural reasons they are hungry in the first place. The problem of poverty, destitution and hunger are located as problems with the individual, their life choices and their personal circumstances that are always described as spiralling downhill.  

By April 2019 there were around 2000 food banks in the UK and around 2% of the UK population are currently using food banks - of which 1200 are run by the Trussell Trust. There are around 14 million people living in poverty in the UK. On the front page of the Trussell Trust website reads their commitment to End UK Hunger. The Trust has shifted from the previous CEO’s position that there should be a food bank in every town, to the current CEO who wants the Trussell Trust to “go out of business” and shifted to an NGO style campaign mode of advocacy on behalf of their “service users”. Even The Sun recognises the role that Universal Credit has played in increasing poverty and food insecurity across the UK. The top reasons for referrals to a food bank in April - Sept 2019 were low income (36%), benefit delay (17%), benefit changes (16%), debt (8%). 

Through Trussell Trust food banks, people can only access food with a voucher. Vouchers can only be obtained via assessment of “care professionals” - health visitors, school counsellors, social workers etc. The vouchers ensure that only those deemed deserving by the state are able to access food. People only receive 3 days of food -  “nutritionally” balanced non-perishable food - which means no fresh vegetables, meat or dairy. Trussell Trust have the following corporate partners: Tesco, CISCO, ASDA (Walmart), Waitrose, Cummis, Unilever. Research about food bank users indicates that the vast majority of users receive state benefits, at the same time in-work poverty means that many workers also now rely on benefits. One of the key findings in the research from the Trussell Trust is that nearly 75% of users have at least one health issue. 

THE PLAN B FOR FOOD BANKS WOULD REQUIRE GOVERNMENT AND UNION ACTION TO:

• Significantly increase the minimum wage, even with the increase in 2020 the National Min Wage is only £8.72 for workers over the age of 25 / only £15K p/a after tax. 
• Significantly increase state benefits and an end of sanctions that reduce / stop benefits 
• OR a significant reductions in cost of housing / rent, food and the cost of living 

SKETCHES OF A PLAN C - TO GO BEYOND FOOD BANKS

Of course, Plan B would be a welcome respite for those who are currently starving (and is the reason so many of us fought so hard in the election), but the reason such reforms are actually part of the problem - even more so within the context of the climate crisis - is that it leaves the violent and disciplining wage relation of capital in place and in no way confronts the horror of industrial agriculture or food production. In fact, just like Plan A, Plan B demands that food is produced and sold as cheaply as possible, which means low wages and more fossil fuel inputs. It is worth noting that food in the UK is historically at a very low cost to consumers - in fact it can’t get any cheaper. The problem with Plan B is that it leaves the working class with no way to eat unless we sell our labour power or be at the mercy of the nation state to give us benefits. The problem with Plan B is that it relies on food being produced cheaply, and considering that the UK currently imports 50% of our food (though it’s been claimed the actual figure is as high as 80%) - that means we get locked into exploiting workers in the global south and of the food we do produce here, migrant labour. 

RESOURCES AND CAPACITY TO THE NORTH, MIDLANDS + WALES 

The map of food bank users in the image tells us how power and resources are distributed in the UK. One of the previous organisational strengths of Plan C was our commitment and realisation of a multi-city and town organisation. It should go without saying that building a revolutionary working class organisation in Britain requires action, resources and leadership from outside the M25 as well as a strategy for organising the working class in London. As a matter of urgency we need to renew our (anti) national strategy of developing local groups and campaigns in as many towns, villages and cities as there are interested people. 

When large swathes of the population (waged labour) and crucially also wealth (capital) flow towards and are concentrated in London and the South East it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that all roads lead to Rome. However, in the story that pits the elites of London against the salt-of-the-earth northerns, who is invisible are the millions of working class people - many of them migrants - who sweat it out in one of the most expensive and exploitative cities in the world (not to mention that there are plenty of posh wankers in the north). Of course one size or indeed one slogan doesn’t fit all, but dogmatic and reductive notions of regionalism, based on having to be “a local” and by extension “the authentic working class” produces a reactionary and conservative notion of who gets to belong (and surprise, surprise it is never migrants and rarely is it people of colour). 

We need to rebuild working class confidence, institutions and power in deindustrialised / coastal towns and cities. To do that we need to be able to tell a new story that acknowledges but moves beyond the closure of the mines and factories. We need to find hope in something other than “growth” and we need to be honest with people. “Good” jobs (aka men’s jobs) and the relative political and economic power that came from manufacturing are not going to return - not even under the Green New Deal. To be blunt - there just isn’t enough lithium on Earth to mean that everyone gets a beep beep electric car, a factory job and pension to go with it. If the working class are to survive the coming climate crisis then we need to understand what and who produces our starvation. The answer is as old as capitalism itself and we have a historic opportunity to get revenge for 400 years of violence, exploitation and genocide.  Take back control of the land.

To be able to organise against the conditions that produce starvation for millions of people in the UK, we need to urgently move beyond Plan B solutions that do nothing to address the intersecting ways that waged labour, land ownership, industrial agriculture and food production produce the dire conditions that millions of people - not just in this country but across the world - experience on a daily basis.If the working class (as opposed to the bourgeois and ruling class) are to lead and control efforts to confront the climate crisis in the UK it requires a revolutionary social and political movement capable of bringing production and reproduction back into the same sphere (aka abolishing the fundamental relation of capitalism that creates the working class). In the UK that requires reappropriating land from the aristocracy and doing so by force and occupation. They not only have names and addresses but they have thousands of acres of land ready for the taking. 

FOOD CO-OPS + FOOD BUYING GROUPS + COLLECTIVE DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD 

Before we are able to take back control of the land in the UK, we need to build forms of mutual aid and solidarity that mean the working class are able to reproduce ourselves and survive outside of the market, rely less on the wage, charity and the state. To be free of the dole office and the supermarket is the ground zero of a Plan C strategy to Abolish Food Banks. While mutual aid projects are in no way sufficient in and of themselves, nor are they inherently radical, we are not the first people to grasp their necessity. Cooperation Kentish Town is one example and there are many more. We need to break the monopoly that the Trussell Trust has on providing food for those in need. We need to break the stigma and shame of collectively organising and distributing food to working class people. We need to bring those who are unable to currently buy food into the same room and projects as those who are looking to produce, distribute and consume food differently.

To abolish food banks we need to target supermarkets. Ending low wages and zero hour contracts for supermarket workers, ending tax avoidance and ending corporate sponsorship of everything from schools to food banks. While the shelves are full of food there should not be single hungry person in the UK. Alongside base building and unionisation across the supermarket stores (horizontal power) and along their supply chains (vertical power) collective direct action is necessary to achieve our aims and to escalate our struggle. Mass supermarket reappropriation of quality food and household items - with scaleable direct actions with clear guides - i.e only appropriating £160 (the max for theft charges to be minimal) - need to be well planned and organised primarily outside of London. We need to make the political argument to local XR groups with activists committed to direct and arrestable actions that shutting down central London might “feel” like the right strategy (let’s face it, who hasn’t organised a central London demonstration lately) but it reproduces a spectacular form of politics that doesn’t grasp the hellscape we are facing. The Tories, just like the coal barons are not going to “act” against their financial interests and civil disobedience needs to do more than be “disruptive”.  

FOOD SOVEREIGNTY: EVERY LITTLE HELPS  

The UK currently imports 50% of our food, and our domestic agriculture is dominated by industrial agri-business - so any actual reduction in fossil fuels will have significant impacts. Without fossil fuels we won’t be able to import food nearly as much food so we will need to drastically increase the level of local agriculture and farming. At the same time, our current farming practices need to transform - and quickly. Currently agriculture, meat and dairy farming in particular, and food production in the UK is overwhelmingly dominated by multinational agri-businesses that use farming methods that are fossil fuel intensive, have a devastating effect on the soil, waterways and overall levels of pollution and have meant the loss of customs and knowledge about seeds, cultivation and growing processes that were once widespread across small-holdings and farms. Working conditions in agriculture and food production are some of the worst in the country (mainly because of the role of supermarkets, and the need for workers to have access to Cheap Food). 

We need both immediate and longer term plans and projects to build counter power and autonomy in how we produce, distribute and consume food.  Finally, here's some brief ideas as 'food for thought'.

• The WWII “Dig for Victory” campaign that transformed urban gardens needs to reimagined and relaunched with collectivised  tool sheds, seed banks, taking down fences to create larger gardens. 
• Reclaiming and repairing land in urban space for community gardens 
• Working with existing organic and worker-run farm and helping small hold farmers to move to organic farming methods
• Buying land collectively and establishing co-operative farms
• Reclaiming all golf courses - considering that they are the playground of white, male middle to upper old men - it will be fun. 

(Header Image by mnplatypus from Pixabay)