Volunteering at our local food bank here in the fictional town of Melchester, I see poverty at first hand. Not everyone who comes to see us lives in poverty because, lest we forget, the purpose of food banks is to deal with emergencies, where people have nothing to eat. Having said that, it is obvious that a considerable number of our friends who visit us live in poverty. I have seen poverty throughout my working life and experienced it personally as child, being brought up in a one-parent household and spending a lot of time with my grandparents who had an outside toilet well into the 1980s and no bathroom at all. Poverty upsets and angers me and the more I learn about it, the more upset and angry I become. In a Guardian article by the former prime minister Gordon Brown, the levels of poverty in the UK today are truly appalling. Just look at this:
- One million children in the UK try to sleep without a bed of their own.
- Two million households live without cookers, fridges or washing machines, and many are without toothpaste, soap or shampoo.
- Three million children go without meals because their families run out of food.
- The Conservative governments from 2010 to 2024 pushed 4.5 million children into poverty.
Brown points out that child poverty rates, by the government’s own definition, are the worst in modern times, worse even than the Margaret Thatcher/John Major era. And if nothing is done by 2029 almost five million children will live in poverty. Because of the depth of the mess left by David Cameron and his pals in the Liberal Democrats, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, the new Labour government is struggling to even turn this ship around, never mind to bring about reductions in poverty. In fact, things are getting worse. The anecdotal information I get tallies with official statistics. Frankly, I don’t understand how we, as a society, can apparently just sit back and do nothing while children live in poverty and go hungry.
While my mother shielded me from food poverty by simply not eating herself so I could, something I was not aware of until much later in life, that is not something I see in today’s generation when I am volunteering. Hardship is written across the faces of adults and children alike. While there may be the odd person “trying it on”, it’s not something I come across. I see people with no money, no food and no hope, where a normal week involves just about having enough money and food to get by until the next wage slip arrives. This is not living in the sense that most of us would recognise it. It is existing. There are many things that can exercise us about the modern world but poverty in this, a relatively rich country, is a national disgrace, an obscenity.
I referred earlier to Margaret Thatcher who remains, long after her death, the instigator of everything that is wrong with our country. She created the ‘greed is good’ attitude, the belief that you can have it all and you don’t have to give a toss about your neighbour. She sold off council house stock to buy votes from working class voters and never replaced it, causing the housing shortages we endure today. She stripped employment rights from millions of workers, not least by castrating trade unions, enabling the rich and powerful to exploit them by paying poverty wages. I could go on, but what I will say is that her poisonous legacy still hangs over us and food banks are part of it. If there is a hell to go to, I hope she is in it. Even though the Labour government from 1997 to 2010 turned back the clock and things got better, much better, but as soon as the Tories got back in they not only reverted to type, they made things worse. 35 food banks in the country when the Conservative/LibDem government came into power in 2010, 2800 when the Tories were booted out in 2024. This is not a coincidence.
I do not envy Keir Starmer’s Labour government, buffeted as it is from all sides of politics from the far right, including the nicotine-stained man frog Nigel Farage and his private company Reform UK Ltd and Kemi Badenoch’s far right Tory party, to the far left where Labour’s former leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose sheer incompetence enabled Boris Johnson’s landslide election victory in 2019, now has his own political party which he can’t even think of a name for. But now is not a time for tinkering around the edges. It’s time for wholesale changes.
Gordon Brown urges Labour to tax the betting industry and he’s right. They are hugely undertaxed and, worse than that, make their fortunes from problem gamblers who are often from the poorest sections of society. Come to wealthy, leafy Clifton in Bristol and you are unlikely to find too many bookmakers. Visit the less wealthy areas and they are everywhere. And why not tax the seriously rich, the land-hoarders, those with second (and more) homes on their properties? Visit vast swaths of the country and you will find whole towns and villages with next to no one living in them, thanks to the wealthy buy to rent brigade. But why, I hear you ask, do we need to tax the rich to help the poor?
My only answer is that in the UK, we are not a meritocracy. Money follows money. Many people on low incomes are not totally stupid, living chaotic lives, by design. It’s because they were born that way. I managed to clamber out of poverty, partly through hard work, partly through luck. Not everyone gets that kind of luck. I do not believe that we should have some kind of communist equality, but wouldn’t this be a better place if there was more equality of opportunity? Sure, that would involve some redistribution of wealth, but the filthy rich would still be filthy rich and the poor might at least have a chance in life?
We were so busy at the Melchester food bank yesterday, it took a few hours for the adrenalin to subside. I worked hard and my reward, as usual, is the knowledge that for the next few days at least, people will be able to eat. (I hasten to add that I don’t do what I do for reward – I take my own tea bags for my shift, I’ll have you know – but I hope you get my drift.
I would like to think that government action will put me out of a job at the food bank. That those who can work will be able to find decent, well-paid jobs and those who cannot have access to a benefits system that is fit for purpose, which it certainly isn’t today.
I have been there, done it and every week I literally wear the T shirt for my shift. I am proud of my work and ashamed of my country. With 4.5 million children in poverty in 2025, how could anyone be proud to be British?
