The Right to Food

Felicity Dowling writes: A society that denies us the right to adequate food when there is sufficient food available is truly a broken society.

Left Unity is highlighting reasons for resistance and reasons to protest throughout this Autumn and the Right to Food is high on our agenda.

Humans are being denied access to food. That is the situation in Britain at present. Hunger and malnutrition is real and causing lasting damage. Everyone has a right to food. The right to food is in international law in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

11 million people in the UK are experiencing food insecurity according to Ian Byrne MP for Liverpool West Derby who is leading the Right to Food Campaign.

Left Unity calls for trade unions and community groups (and such of Labour that is not politically petrified) to make hunger, and tackling hunger both short and long term, a loud and strident campaign.

We are humans, we live in an interdependent society and all of us must eat.

We have the right to an income that lets us eat good nutritious food. Our employers must pay us enough for such basic needs. Social security payment must be enough to allow this too

All our children must have access to good food at school as well as at home. 3.6 million children live in poverty and of them, most have working parents.

Children must have this food. It not that they should have it, its not a moral issue, food is a physical necessity. A child’s health happiness and education depends on it. A hungry child can’t grow properly, finds it hard to learn, hard to manage emotions and is often going to pay in health terms throughout their life.

Childhood hunger must become utterly unacceptable in this country.

Free school meals for all is a simple demand and not unachievable.

This lack of food in school is a bitter reality as Wendy explains here.

Left Unity calls for a three-pronged attack: firstly, the trade unions to take this up with energy, enthusiasm and action. Trade union members reading this should raise it in their union branches and email their headquarters.

Secondly, Left Unity calls on all our supporters to continue to work with solidarity actions on this issue, such as Fans Supporting Food Banks who tweeted this weekend.

Hunger isn’t Red, Blue or Green; it doesn’t have a race, religion or a gender; it doesn’t discriminate. Hunger doesn’t discriminate, it can impact on us all.