There are no statistics that back up what I am about to write, but then, when did that ever stop me before? This piece is about food banks and is based upon three years of volunteering and the observations I have made along the way. Here in Melchester, the fictional location of the food bank in which I serve, I feel that the geographic we serve has changed. In some cases, quite dramatically.
During my early years, I saw quite a few people who were in work, both part time and full time. The main reason they came to us, like the other people who come to see us, was because of a one-off financial emergency. It is important to say that because we are not there as some kind of regular income top-up. In effect, we are another emergency service. Along with senior citizens, people who are in work have become the rarest of visitors.
At our food bank, pensioners are rarely to be seen, although a good view of us volunteer there. Someone put it to me that it was probably because pensioners were “too proud”, which I would reply is complete bollocks. The reason why so few, if any, pensioners ever come to see us is because they don’t need to. They might not all be living life high on the hog but in my experience most pensioners are not struggling. (This is not to say that all pensioners are wealthy, but for various reasons we never see them. If you exclude the mythical ‘pride’ aspect, there are few other explanations.) And now the numbers of those who are in-work and coming to see us have, in the eyes of this man anyway, gone off a cliff.
Bearing in mind I am dealing in the world of anecdotes, this is not evidence-based reasoning, but even on that basis I don’t think I’m wrong.
The huge rise in food poverty, along with all other kinds of poverty, increased from 2010 when, as I never tire of saying, David Cameron’s vicious austerity government, propped up by the unprincipled Liberal Democrats, tore the heart out of public services and people’s living standards. That and the deliberate government underfunding of Universal Credit, a deadly combination. But there were, at least in my first three years, working people coming through our door. I believe things have changed.
At first, I saw teachers, nurses and other health workers, postal workers, supermarket workers and those recently made redundant from work. Not now, though. Instead, coming through our door are the predominantly long-term unemployed, those who have for one reason or another have never been in ‘proper’ jobs, those damaged by alcohol and drugs, those with severe mental health conditions and recent asylum and immigration cases. (Now, if you’re inclined that way, don’t get too exercised by latter. Invariably, they are short-term visitors to the food bank because as soon as most of them are allowed to work, they do, and some have with good education qualifications and skills.)
I know I have to be careful what I write because I don’t want to go out offending people, particularly the residents of Melchester. I firmly believe that the vast majority of our callers, nearly all of them, are genuine. No one wants to be at a food bank when all their money – and probably hope – has gone. My feeling is that the sense of shame and embarrassment hangs heavy over a great number of people who use us. You would need a heart of stone to believe otherwise, almost certainly in the face of all available evidence. The big difference, maybe a long term casualty of Cameron’s austerity, is the sheer number of broken people we get to see. People who are homeless, others who are homeless in all but name, like so-called sofa-surfers, and the disparate and desperate people I described above. Our waiting area here in Melchester looks, to be at least, very different from the way it used to look.
I am looking for reasons why. Are some people in work doing better, or slightly less worse, because of the steady but consistent rises to the minimum wage? It’s a simple fact that pensioners are doing better than they used to because of the generous and unsustainable triple lock. But maybe the group at the very bottom, described by some as an underclass; is it bigger and more widespread than it ever was? Are we seeing the beginning of a new glass floor, rather than the glass ceiling we’d all prefer? My simple, clear answer is this: I don’t know. What I feel, and I know that’s a whole different thing, is that, yes, the section of society that’s more broken appears to be – and I don’t like putting it like this, but how else can I do it? – bigger, taking in more and more people who used to get by. I am not sure they are getting by today.
I was going to describe it as the evidence of my own eyes, but even that isn’t really right. It’s the opinions being informed by what I am seeing with my eyes. I just happen to feel there is something going on here, a shift in the direction of food poverty and a growing number of people who are broken in ways and numbers we maybe haven’t seen before.
If I am right – and it is a big ‘IF’ – then I am not sure how we as a society can fix this. We have part-fixed pensioner poverty by way of the triple lock and we have part-fixed low pay by way of the minimum wage. But what about broken people? Those with no jobs and in many cases no chance of getting jobs, those with deteriorating health and worsening disabilities, those with declining mental health who are front and centre of what we do. No one is fixing them, no one is even trying to. Politicians are fighting each other over which can make the poorest people even poorer. If you have little money to live on, have a go with nothing at all.
I think often enough that we are mere sticking plaster and increasingly I am not sure we are even that anymore. I ‘sense’ and I ‘feel’ are not, I accept, alternatives for facts, but I sense and I feel that food banks are changing and could well become the frontline for truly broken Britons. Maybe we already are? If I am wrong and nothing is changing, well what else is happening? If we’re no longer helping the working poor or the pensioner poor, who are we serving? I’ve given my answer, my suggestion. Do you have a better one?
