Delivering justice
The privatised Royal Mail is facing its first national postal strike in a decade after a huge turnout of staff voted overwhelmingly for action. It was backed by 110,999 members of the Communication Workers Union with 97% of them voting to strike.
Of course, we’re all worried about empty Christmas stockings if the strike targets the festive post. But it’s hard to stress how important it is to keep our postal service a decent place to work when rival delivery companies are in a race to the bottom on workers’ rights.
Our posties deserve a Happy Xmas too. JACQUI Dowling is singing with the choir at Sheffield Cathedral, wearing a bright T-shirt that says ‘Food Glorious Food’.
People have come to sing and worship here for over 1,000 years. But today’s choir are linked by a different modern institution – the foodbank.
Britain’s first foodbank choir are not singing for their supper, but raising awareness of the End Hunger UK campaign. And there’s also something deeper at work – the solidarity of song.
Jacqui, a 51-year-old mum of three, says she used to think choirs weren’t for people like her. “When I was younger, I really struggled, I know what it’s like not to be able to buy enough food for your kids,” she says.
“I caught my daughter trying to pull her tooth out once – she said she wanted to get £1 from the tooth fairy so she could give it to me. How heartbreaking is that?”
Toni Lawless, 46, is performing a solo today.
“I’ve been homeless myself in the past, so I know what it’s like to be hungry,” she says.
As the choir sing an emotional song about going hungry, Jamie Davies holds up a homemade banner that simply says “Universal Credit isn’t working”.
The Bishop of Sheffield, the Right Revd Dr Pete Wilcox, says: “It is an outrage that in our United Kingdom – one of the most prosperous nations on Earth, one of the most prosperous nations in history – hundreds of thousands of people every week live in food poverty, unable to feed themselves in a way that is healthy and reliable and which does not involve making fundamental choices between food and clothing, food and fuel, food and shelter.”
Backed by dozens of protests including at an orchard in Cornwall, a Welsh castle, the Peterloo Monument in Manchester and Tower Bridge in London, the End Hunger Yo says choir beats the stigma
UK coalition is calling for a Government-led plan across all departments to free millions from hunger. Meanwhile, Trussell Trust figures show half of the public has taken action themselves on hunger in the last 12 months, with more than a third donating to a foodbank. The Government is sadly lagging behind the electorate, doing nothing to help the issues repeatedly shown to cause UK hunger – a torn and brutalised welfare system and poverty wages.
“Hunger in the UK isn’t about food. It’s about money, and people not having enough of it,” says Emma Revie, chief executive of the Pictures: JOHN GLADWIN Picture: BEN LACK HARMONY Choir perform at End Hunger UK event at Sheffield Cathedral Jacqui, Madison and Jamie, and tot Olivia
Trussell Trust. Niall Cooper, chairman of End Hunger UK, puts it another way: “The UK has no shortage of food. The problem is one of incomes.” The moving and hopeful Food Glorious Food choir symbolises some of the contradiction of our national hunger crisis. Foodbanks exist because the ‘Big Society’ has been deliberately used to replace Britain’s social safety net. But, while they shouldn’t exist, they are often extraordinary and lifechanging – providing not just food, but often a new family.
A few days, ago, we caught up with the choir at rehearsals at the Gleadless Estate, home to 4,000 residents and a well-used foodbank. Cradling his baby daughter Olivia, Jamie was singing Let It Be. Like many beside him – mums, pensioners, neighbours, friends – he never thought he’d perform in public. “I love singing and so does my daughter,” he said. “She never stops trying to join in.” He and his partner, Madison, 31, moved to Sheffield when Olivia was just 10 days old. They didn’t know anyone, and while they were getting settled were transferred over to Universal Credit. Like lots of families they were left struggling on £20 child benefit a week.
Then a leaflet advertising the local foodbank came through the letterbox. “They fed us, gave us baby food, nappies, even a buggy, but more than that we got to know everyone, we met all these lovely people,” Jamie said.
“Using a foodbank, it doesn’t make you feel good, you feel ashamed. But singing is the opposite, it makes you feel like a different person, like you’ve got more to offer.”
Mum Clare Day, 39, visits the foodbank as a service user and a volunteer. A former retail worker, she now relies on disability benefits. “Like a lot of people, after I’d paid all my bills I didn’t always have enough for food,” she said.
“If you’ve never used a foodbank you don’t realise what it means to people. It isn’t just people on benefits, it’s used by a lot of people who are working.
“The first time you come, you feel like everyone is looking at you. But the people here lift you up.”
While volunteers began cooking up a three-course lunch in the kitchen, choir leader Yo Tozer-Loft, 49, said the choir helps counteract the stigma of the foodbank. “It’s about people’s overall wellbeing,” she said. “Singing together is a communal experience – our hearts actually start beating together when we sing together.
“Here, people aren’t foodbank users, they are singers.”
■ www.endhungeruk.org
It’s communal – our hearts beat together when we sing together