Hero and all round great person that I am, I’ve been volunteering at our local food bank for 18 months or so now. For the purposes of this blog, the food bank is set in Melchester, the town made famous by Thomas Hardy in his Wessex Tales and by the great footballer Roy Race, who made a record number of appearances for the local team, Melchester Rovers. I don’t work for money anymore, so why work unpaid in a food bank, sometimes twice a week? It’s all very simple. I loathe the idea of food poverty, I like to have a small part in, at least temporarily, averting the need for food poverty and, crucially, I really enjoy it. I am in no doubt that food poverty is widespread, but not everyone shares that point of view.
Inevitably, you see some of the doubters on social media and yesterday I saw a prime example of the cynicism some people feel and express. This is what one person was saying and others were agreeing with:
“Can’t buy baby milk? Put the beers back. Can’t buy nappies? Put the cigarettes back. Can’t afford new shoes and clothes for your child? Stop getting your hair, nails done or shouting the boys drinks. Stop buying all that makeup, your kid can’t eat it. When you become a parent it’s ok to have fun. You’re not expected to be miserable, but your kids should come first in every way. If this offended you, get your priorities straight. Kids don’t ask to be born. You made that choice for them, so put them first”
We then learn from the replies that this is what life at the food bank is like. Women – it’s always women who get the brunt of these memes and it’s almost always women who agree with them – who visit a foodbank are always smoking, having had their nails done and being plastered with makeup. If someone added that they also arrived in brand new 4X4s, wearing their Desmond and Dempsey pyjamas and guzzling Moët & Chandon, some people would doubtless believe that too. And that people believe it in the first place is disturbing enough. Yet, isn’t there an element of truth in it?
I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge the simple fact that a lot of food bank callers smoke, almost always tiny roll-ups. A small number of them are alcoholics. Some women – women yet again. Do you see what’s going on here, yet? – have clearly had grotesque collagen treatment on their lips but was this carried out as an alternative to feeding themselves and their families? I very much doubt it. The idea that people in poverty choose so-called beauty treatments at the expense of feeding their children is a nonsense in the vast majority of cases. I see grim misogyny at work here, aimed at the hard of thinking who are in this case, depressingly, women. (Hard of thinking men are also available in all walks of life.)
There’s also the lazy assumption that every person who uses a food bank is essentially the same person. A chain-smoking pisshead woman who puts her own appearance ahead of feeding her children. Let’s call this out for what it is: stuff and nonsense.
Do I really need to define the lifestyle and choices of everyone who comes to see us, because if I was to try, I’d be here all day and all night? Yes, overwhelmingly our main demographic is poor people, on low wages, pensions or benefits. Of course it is. That’s how Broken Britain is, following 14 years of brutal government imposed austerity. And there are more people using food banks than ever before, many of whom never dreamed that they would be in a position of having to get a voucher from a food bank partner in order to get something to eat. By that I mean, people who have always worked, still work, who have suffered an event – a sudden unexpected utility bill, an error by the DWP or a change of job causing a gap in income – and need help.
When I am doing my job, I don’t judge people. If someone pops out for a fag, uses a smart phone or has fat collagen lips, I don’t get all sniffy about it, as many on social media are prone to do. I don’t know what goes on behind closed doors, so to speak, so I don’t make assumptions. Neither, dare I suggest, should you.
If you think being in poverty is a lifestyle choice, then I suggest you give your head a big wobble. If you think some of the poorest people in the land are responsible for what’s wrong with this country and not the lying, thieving, multimillion, tax dodging elite, well, the red top newspapers are doing their jobs well, at least for those who run and indeed own the country. In my view, they are presenting the victims of food poverty as the authors of their own downfall.
Do I think that some people ‘try it on’ when they come to see us? I don’t know, I haven’t personally seen any evidence because you have to go through so many hoops just to get through our door, but even if they were, getting some tins of food, some long life milk and some toilet rolls hardly strikes me as sustaining some kind of lavish lifestyle.
The Melchester food bank, like all food banks, exists because people don’t have enough food to eat, or should I say they don’t have any food to eat. You can ridicule food bank users, if you like, demonstrating your heartlessness, ignorance and reliance on social media for ‘facts’ that fuel your own prejudices but that says more about you than it does food bank users.
