If we cherish a desire for a fairer and more equitable society, then now is the time to ‘Persist until something happens!’
“We must make sure that the government do not see the kindness of the British public as an opportunity to continue their shameless and wanton negligence of their responsibility to the nation’s children.”
Nadine Batchelor Hunt, Freelance Journalist (writing in the Huffington Post).
To witness the outpouring of public generosity this week following the rejection by the government of Labour’s motion to continue free school meals during school holidays was heartening. Marcus Rashford’s campaign has rightly stirred the hearts of the people and demonstrated that as a nation we have the capacity to be generous and the ability to empathise with the plight of others.
At the other end of the scale, we have seen an outpouring of vitriol and animosity towards those who are in dire need of support as the consequences of Covid-19 continue to play out in the lives of working people and the myriad small businesses whose livelihoods are at stake.
It has revealed a toxicity at the heart of government which is shameful and an equally poisonous response from some people who have been blinded by an orthodox economic narrative peddled for decades that the poor deserve their poverty and that if only they worked harder they could be rich and successful too.
One can only describe these outpourings of hate as not only vicious and deserving of contempt but also a denial of the daily realities for so many people. Daily realities not of their making. People whose lives have been sacrificed on the altar of economic rationality, the consequences of which have been devastating in terms of income and standards of living.
During this week Tory MPs have excelled themselves. Nick Clarke, who proposed that child hunger could be alleviated by learning to cook, budgeting or selling assets. Ben Bradley, who suggested provocatively in a response to a tweet that school meals had been effectively a direct payment to brothels and drug dealers. And Selaine Saxby, who intimated that hospitality firms should be punished for their charitable gesture in offering food for children by denying them future government help.
The cockroaches continue to crawl out of the woodwork. It beggars belief that the Conservatives, in presenting their arguments for not feeding children, have suggested that they can’t ‘nationalise’ children, create ‘dependencies’ or ‘wreck’ the economy. This was yet another example of a twisted economic ideology being used to justify its action or lack thereof. An ideology which rejects state provision and a cooperative vision, revels in the sham holy grail of balanced budgets and idolises the god of the market and self-reliance.
Only this week, Rishi Sunak warned that ‘saving lives’ must be balanced against protecting the economy. He said that there would be hard choices ahead. However, when the economy and the people are inextricably linked, indeed two sides of the same coin, the illogic of that position is irrefutable. There are no hard choices to make between lives and the economy. The UK is a sovereign currency issuer with the power to spend to do both, indeed not to do so would potentially destroy both. It is a political choice to allow children to go hungry. It is a political choice to deprive people of sufficient monetary means to get through this crisis. It is a political choice to adhere to a lethal ideology which promotes balanced budgets over human health.
As Tory MPs led the charge to defend their decision to vote against the proposed extension of FSM vouchers, some, taking their lead from Tory comments, piled in on social media. Helen Thomas was lambasted on Twitter after suggesting that parents who don’t cook their meals from scratch were ‘lazy’ and should ‘forage for apples’ if they can’t afford food. ‘Food is inexpensive, homegrown is cheap’ she declared.
Not only has the oft-repeated narrative of ‘lazy scroungers’ done a huge amount of damage to our sense of collective responsibility and empathy for others, it has cleverly disguised the true causes of poverty and inequality. The blame game has led to a divided society which has served governments well, until now at least, as the collective conscience is aroused and critical voices are raised.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child makes it clear that the state has a responsibility to ensure that children have sufficient to eat.
Article 24
Children have the right to the best health care possible, clean water to drink, healthy food and a clean and safe environment to live in.
Article 27
Children have the right to food, clothing and a safe place to live so they can develop in the best possible way. The government should help families and children who cannot afford this.
It is a stain on government when 72% of children living in poverty are in working households, the social security safety net fails to deliver adequate support and families are denied the real living wage that would enable them to take responsibility, feed their children with wholesome food and bring them up in a safe and secure environment. The greatest tragedy is that the government, through its policies, allows unemployment or underemployment to persist as a trade-off against inflation which at the same time allows exploitation of working people to flourish in the form of low wages and insecure employment.
The consequences have been devastating.
As Ben Bradley boasted in an arrogant tweet about the government’s record and its dual responsibility to support the vulnerable by helping people to help themselves whilst at the same time being fiscally responsible by ‘balancing the books’, Marcus Rashford tweeted back that:
‘The economy already pays a high price for child hunger. If children were fed properly you would increase educational attainment and boost life chances’.
Child hunger is an avoidable tragedy. The special rapporteur Philip Alston commented last year in his UN commissioned report that the UK’s social safety net had been ‘deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos’ and added that ‘ideological’ cuts to public services during the 10 years of austerity beginning in 2010 had had ‘tragic consequences’.
The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the degradation that has occurred as the government has, over a decade, relinquished its responsibilities and deliberately presided over the huge increases in poverty and inequality whilst at the same time it vaunts its success painting pictures which don’t bear out any reality.
It is gratifying to see the very public response to the government’s decision not to support free school meals in the future and promises of real action. However, it is equally depressing to see a left-wing labour social media page describing it as ‘socialism in action’. Whilst it is vital that we hold the government to account for its negligence, charitable action does not make it socialism, however vital it is to show solidarity through cooperative generosity.
One of the roles of the government is to serve its citizens by providing the vital infrastructure which creates a stable and fair society. The fact that it hasn’t should be demonstration enough that we should be under no illusions about the intention of government, which is to wash its hands of the public and social infrastructure which we the people through an elected government created in the post-war years.
Charities and the voluntary sector are increasingly being invited to deliver a variety of public services, and food banks and homelessness charities are being normalised as if the lie of the scarcity of money demanded those things. A climate of acceptance has slipped in almost unnoticed as we donate money or put a tin of beans in the food bank box in the supermarket, which in its turn promotes its generosity in providing unsold food to those same charities. It is a vicious circle of acceptance.
It should be increasingly clear that the intention is to return us to re-embracing a version of those former Victorian values where a deserving poor received help as long as they complied with the rules and regulations laid down by the do-gooders of society.
Another role of the government is to protect its citizens in normal times and in times of crisis. Its task as an elected body is to manage the economy in the interests of all, not just the small section of it who have for too long and increasingly been the recipients of public money. If the government can find the money for an ‘Eat out to help out’ discount and if it can find the money for a pay increase for MPs or to subsidise their food and drink in the House of Commons, then it can find through the same political will the means to deliver a fairer society. One which both takes care of its citizens through sufficient spending to ensure full employment and ensures at the same time that the real but finite resources we have at our disposal are shared more equitably across society.
We seem to have forgotten that the government is us and as a result democracy has never been in more peril than it is today. Whilst it is right to applaud the generosity and empathy of people who have shown they care, we should do so by highlighting, too, the failure of the government to step in as only it can as the currency issuer to serve not only the interests of the most vulnerable citizens but also to ensure that the economic consequences of Covid-19 are alleviated by targeted government action.
If we cherish a desire for a fairer and more equitable society and care about the future of our children, then this is the moment for us all to hold the government to account by standing together in solidarity. It is not the job of socialists or indeed anyone who cares about the sort of society we live in to be part of the mitigation for a cruel and toxic agenda.
Upcoming Event
Phil Armstrong in Conversation with Neil Wilson – Online
November 15 @ 14:00 pm – 15:30 pm
The GIMMS team is delighted to host its next ‘in conversation’ event at which Phil Armstrong will be talking to Neil Wilson
Neil is an expert in finance and information systems and one of the UK’s leading thinkers about MMT. After more than 30 years in the systems business, Neil learned the hard way that operations rarely follow the manual. Moving from network crashes to financial crashes, Neil was intrigued as to whether the economy could be fixed with a reboot – which lead him to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). His work challenges the high-priesthood of Important Grey Men who refer to people as ‘resources’ and who believe debt is bad for government and good for you.
He dreams of a world where everyone who wants a living wage job can find one, close to their home, their friends and family.
You are invited to join us for this informal event which we are sure will be both stimulating and insightful.
Register via Eventbrite
Event recording
Phil Armstrong in Conversation with Warren Mosler
Phil Armstrong spoke to Warren Mosler for GIMMS on 17th October 2020.
This interview is also available via the MMT Podcast here
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