Nancy Taaffe, Waltham Forest Socialist Party
‘Feed the kids you Tory rats’. So proclaimed a wall in Manchester after the Tories ignored Marcus Rashford’s call for free school dinners.
The issue of hunger – whether it’s food banks, or people skipping meals to pay electricity or gas bills – looms large. Hunger stalks Tory Britain.
So the announcement by London Labour mayor Sadiq Khan of free school dinners for an extra 270,000 state primary children in London for one year is welcome.
I remember, as a single parent of two primary school children in the mid-noughties, I never claimed free school dinners for my children, although I knew I was probably entitled to them.
Stigma
My instinct to protect my children from the stigma and cruelty that can accompany early school life, was strong. I scrimped and saved, and never claimed a penny.
Instead of being limited to primary pupils for just one year, free school meals should be permanently extended to all school students, and throughout the holidays.
That would ramp up the pressure on other politicians, and address the very real issue of stigma that parents like me face.
But Khan’s temporary announcement is not eating into any of the profits of the rich and big business. It’s coming out of our pockets.
London’s school dinners’ announcement is funded by increases in council tax and business rates. So the little people in the capital pay.
Despite the pandemic, the super-rich in Britain managed to spent around £2 billion on ‘super-prime’ property – homes costing more than £10 million. If Khan added his voice to sequestrate that money, alone it could pay for free school meals for every pupil in the country for the next 15 years!
The cost-of-living crisis is putting capitalist politicians under pressure. London bus drivers and tube workers have taken strike action against pay, job and pension cuts by the mayor and transport companies.
Local communities in London are up in arms against a disastrous housing policy, which has intensified the suffering of the poorest, along with local anger at things like LTNs, incinerators and the extension of ULEZ.
Corbyn
Khan was one of the first out of the traps to attack Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, and Corbyn’s programme, which included free school meals. Labour councils are refusing to collectively implement even Khan’s limited school meals plan.
There are no local elections in London this year. But, around the country, Socialist Party members are standing as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in May’s local elections.
If TUSC councillors are elected, at the first opportunity they would put forward a vote in the council chamber for immediate emergency measures for the council to take against cost-of-living suffering, saying “no one to be cold, no one to be hungry, no one to be homeless”.
