After the worldwide financial crash of 2008, people would have been shocked and saddened to discover that 26,000 people were forced to use food banks. How could a rich country, such as this, require people to visit a place of last resort in order to avoid the possibility of starvation? The electorate punished the Labour government a year later, ejecting them first for a hard right austerity Conservative government in which some Lib Dems took jobs, and then five years later for full fat Conservatism. In the year ending 2023, the Trussell Trust gave food parcels to 2.9 million people. Have you spotted the connection yet?
Elections will be affecting us at the Melchester food bank next week because the premises we use will become, for one day only, a polling station. We couldn’t just take a week off because food poverty doesn’t go away if we’re not open. So we’re being brought forward a day. I am sure this will make no difference to our callers who are referred by partners, all of whom will be aware of the change of days.
At the moment, we have the relative luxury of being well-off for volunteers. This means that when people come to visit, they are seen promptly and better still for them given their emergency food parcels more promptly still. We have a tick list of products and people tell us whether or not they want the items. It’s as simple as that. I am confident that the vast majority of callers are genuine, something which is shown when you offer someone a product they already have and they readily admit it. “Let someone else who needs it, have it” is the kind of thing they’ll say. It happened several times today and I always find it touching.
I treat the food bank a bit like work, in that it’s permanently in my diary and where possible I arrange stuff around it, treating time off almost like annual leave. This is not me being a hero and a martyr, although I obviously am both, but it gives me routine and certainty and in my life I need both. My colleagues, who are some of the most remarkable people I have ever worked with, must do the same, or similar, because they are usually there, too. When they take time off, I am always taking the piss saying they will get their pay docked, which is not a real threat since we get literally nothing for being there. Given that we are reliant on the generosity of ordinary folk, it would be taking the piss to take anything by way of remuneration and I don’t.
When we are closed next Thursday, I do hope the people there in our places, which is to say voters, reflect on the last 14 years during which food poverty has increased dramatically and realise this is no coincidence. The numbers speak for themselves. And things just don’t have to be this way.
