Respect unfairly in short supply for families needing food support - Jayne Dowle

And not from the comfortably-off middle-class mummies either; they are usually the first to buy a few extra tins for the food bank, out of guilt if nothing else.

No, I’m talking about women who either are, or have been, at the sharp end of poverty. In working class communities like mine, I’m seeing a complex challenge to the blithe assumptions that underpin the Government’s obdurate stance on providing food for hungry children.

As one friend put it bluntly, “there’s no excuse, ever, for not feeding your own kids”. If you think the PM is hard-line, you should see some of the other comments. It would be enlightening for Mr Johnson and his Ministers to give this under-the-radar attitude serious consideration.

The argument over school meals – and school holiday meals – has turned into a lever opening up a much wider divide over class. It is not good enough for the Prime Minister, and his spineless colleagues, to disengage.

In fact, it is irresponsible leadership to stand back and watch the clock tick back to a time before the welfare state. I speak with empathy here; my grandmother was born in an almshouse in Doncaster because her father had to tramp from village to village in search of work. She grew up poor. One brother died. She contracted measles and almost died.

To paraphrase the words of the late social commentator, Barnsley-born Harry Leslie Smith, grandma didn’t want her past to become her family’s future. She escaped, went into service and supported Labour all her life. What would she have made of 2020?

The Government’s default position is seemingly that families which find themselves unable to feed their children in the school holidays are lazy, feckless and loathsome. I am yet to hear either the PM or a single Minister – I’m looking at you Matt Hancock, who surely should have both the physical and mental health of the nation uppermost in your mind – say anything to persuade me otherwise.

Sadly, despite the outpouring of public support for England footballer’s Marcus Rashford’s end holiday hunger campaign, too many people agree. These are the smug ones who have never known what it feels like to hunt round the yellow labels on the supermarket shelf looking for the cheapest and most nutritious thing to eat. I have. And I still do.

These lucky people have been fortunate that their lives have never taken a serious wrong turn, nor have they found themselves long-term unemployed, or suffered a life-changing accident or a serious and disabling illness. Or indeed, had a child with complex medical needs, impossible to balance with holding down a secure, well-paid job or running their own business. You know who you are. Hang your heads in shame and pray that fate never deals your family a sudden and unexpected blow.

I treat you with the same contempt that Boris Johnson reserves for 22-year-old England footballer Rashford, whose social justice stance has blown apart the hypocrisy of politicians who rely on public money to cover their own subsidised Westminster victuals.

I’d rather talk about the women who want to give both the Government and the most feckless of parents a piece of their mind. These women are bringing up, or have brought up, children on their own. The youngest one I know is only 18, the eldest well in her 60s. Between them, they span generations and governments, yet their experience of parenthood is universal.

Yes, sometimes they have needed financial support from benefits and food banks, but this doesn’t mean they are content to sit back and let the state keep their families forever. They don’t actually want those hand-outs, or pity. And make no mistake, these are women with big hearts.

They also understand that some parents are simply unable to work or lack the mental wherewithal to manage a household; they will always throw another few potatoes in the pan and feed anyone’s hungry child. They speak from frontline experience. And this gives them the absolute right to question why other families find priorities other than food for the funds that they do have.

Their voices, however, are rarely heard. I warned you it was complex. I feel inordinately proud to know them. The sad thing is that the Prime Minister never will, because he has created his narrative now and even if he is forced into a humiliating U-turn on school holiday food, he will stick to it.

Parents on low incomes and/or benefits are not always asking for ‘more’. What they really need is respect. And that, from this Government, led by this Prime Minister, at this time in the middle of the second wave of a global pandemic, is what is really in short supply.

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