Visiting the bank

A couple of years ago, in my role as a worker for a dysfunctional internationally renowned corporate style charity, I would take clients to food banks in the constituency of local MP Jacob Rees-Mogg. Although I was so impressed by the enthusiasm and commitment of the Trussell Trust volunteers who staffed the banks, I was desperately sad for those whom I accompanied. One man said: “I have never felt so humiliated in my life. I feel like I am begging.” I assured him, somewhat unconvincingly, he was doing no such thing. Leaving the bank with a small box of essentials, a wave of disenchantment washed over me. How had our country come to this?

Some months later, Rees-Mogg poured fuel on the fire with these words: “To have charitable support given by people voluntarily to support their fellow citizens I think is rather uplifting and shows what a good, compassionate country we are. Inevitably, the state can’t do everything, so I think that there is good within food banks. The real reason for the rise in numbers is that people know that they are there and Labour deliberately didn’t tell them.” Words failed me at the time. They still do.

One man I took to a food bank was already choosing between heating and eating because he could not afford both. He was not some ‘scrounger’ as the Sun or the Mail might call him. He was severely disabled and wholly incapable of any form of work. It was all he could do to get in and out of my car to get to the food bank. If there was some truth in some of Rees-Mogg’s comments, there were also blatant lies.

Yes, it is good that volunteers “support their fellow human beings” because they don’t want them to starve. Yes, “there is good within food banks” because otherwise – yes, you’ve guessed it – people would starve. These qualifications are necessary because Rees-Mogg’s comments require them. The idea that Labour “deliberately didn’t tell (people)” that food banks existed was a filthy black lie.

Food banks increased dramatically under the Tory government of 2010 to 2015 in which some Lib Dems had jobs. They came about as a result of a deliberate political choice, to load the bulk of austerity on the very poorest people. Even in a small, rural Somerset town, there were more than a few people using the food bank. In the big cities, the numbers were frightening.

In 2019, things are even worse. The Trussell Trust reports that because of the loss of free school meals, extra childcare costs and benefit payment delays, around a million children face going hungry. In a so-called civilised country, a million children face going hungry. So bad, I said it twice.

This week, we will have a new prime minister, almost certainly Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson, whose priority, as it was of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition, is to cut taxes for the better off. I understand the argument that “People should be allowed to keep more of the money they earn” but I also understand the argument that there are a million children whose families don’t have enough money to feed them. It will say a great deal of Johnson and his new administration as to which choice they make.

Two years ago, Tory hardline right winger Dominic Raab said food bank users were not “languishing in poverty” but merely had “cash flow problems.” If he had said “not all food bank users were languishing in poverty”, he might have had a case, but even then, how do you describe someone attending a food bank who has no food? Living a life of temporary non-luxury? Call it a play on words, call it semantics, call it what you will. The reality on the ground, the reality I experienced when helping people get food to eat, bore no resemblance to Raab’s description. As yet another grammar school and Cambridge University educated posh boy, I do wonder if the likes of Raab have any idea about the lives of working class people.

A million children relying on food banks shames our country. It does not have to be like this. It’s as a result of choices made by the electorate and by politicians, politicians who find their very existence “uplifting”.

If you don’t believe me, visit a food bank. It’s a sobering experience and one that could change your point of view forever. It certainly changed mine.