WPB calls for free school meals for all children
The Workers Party of Britain is campaigning for Britain’s children to receive free, nutritious school meals for ALL students at breakfast and at lunch. It is time to end the obscenity of hungry children in our classrooms once and for all.
Statistics released this year by the Department for Work and Pensions show:
** There were 4.2 million children living in poverty in the UK in 2018-19 (before covid). [i]
** This was an increase of 100,000 children in just a year.
** This means that 30% of Britain’s children, very much on the wrong side of the EU average of 22.5%, were living in official poverty, and the situation has got and will continue to get worse. [ii]
The Workers Party of Britain backs the demand of Manchester United and England football star Marcus Rashford, who has launched a petition asking the government to provide free school meals based on a means-tested criteria.
Whilst being opposed to means testing, the Workers Party will not stand idly to the side of such an important campaign, which has the potential to bring much-needed relief to millions of working-class children and their families.
We pledge to fight in every town and city where we are able to organise for free school meals, and to work to encourage campaigners to abandon their insistence upon means testing.
SEE ALSO: WPB calls for a 5% one-off tax on fortunes exceeding £10m
The socialist movement in this country has been demanding the provision of free meals for schoolchildren for more than 130 years. It was first raised as a demand in Britain by socialist pioneer H M Hyndman and his Social Democratic Federation (SDF).
What a sad indictment of the capitalist system that our 21st-century society continues to be blighted by the same social ills as those that were endured by our forebears in 19th-century Victorian Britain.
Now, as then, workers must organise themselves inside a political party of the working class to fight for and win their demands.
We urge all workers and socialists to join with us.
On behalf of the National Members Council of the Workers Party of Britain,
George Galloway – leader; Joti Brar – deputy leader
NOTES
[i] Child poverty facts and figures, Child Poverty Action Group, July 2020.
[ii] Children at risk of poverty or social exclusion, Eurostat, October 2020.
“The first political battle I ever fought was at the age of thirteen when as a free school meals child myself I noticed that our dinner tickets were a different colour from those who paid. Ours were pink and theirs were grey.
“As we stood in the queue and when we handed over our tickets we, the poor children, were instantly identifiable. I organised a strike and a picket of the dinner hall. In four days we won a complete victory.”
— George Galloway