A political opponent of the Scottish Socialist Party once quipped: ‘Elect six Trotskyites to the Scottish parliament, and the most radical thing they can come up with is a demand for free school meals’.
That jibe was delivered from the right, as it happens. But it’s exactly the sort of sneering remark one can readily imagine hearing in the faux prole tones of that certain breed of public school-educated far leftist who has succeeded in memorising the Transitional Programme word for word. Free school meals? And you lot call yourselves revolutionaries?
Actually, when the SSP first started campaigning on the question in 2001, I thought it was quite a politically savvy thing to do. This is just the sort of concrete policy that many working class people will instantly see as making a difference to their lives.
It’s not just a question of the cash, as the SSP pointed out; there is also the very real issue among cool-conscious teenagers of the stigma attached to qualifying for a ‘handout’. Growing up as one of only two boys on free school meals in a middle-class dominated Grammar School, I’m well aware of that one.
Top that off with increased recognition of the public health concerns surrounding obesity and nutrition, particularly on the home turf of deep-fried Mars Bars, and the case is compelling.
What’s more, New Labour and the Lib Dems - parties that would, in another time and place, have come up with exactly the kind of progressive reform the idea of free school meals encapsulates - were forced to oppose such a seemingly modest move. In 2002, they voted down an SSP bill to implement the proposal. It couldn’t possibly be afforded, you understand.
As ‘exposure demands’ that highlight the limitations of reformism in the eyes of the class go, comrades, it doesn’t get any better than that.
The SSP imploded in 2006 and lost its representation in the Scottish parliament the following year. Some of the circumstances surrounding the break up are shortly to be debated in a perjury trial, so I’ll say no more on this score.
But now the SSP are not around in Holyrood to take the credit, the policy is all of a sudden safe, at least in a dramatically watered-down version. So the Scottish National Party has today announced that all Scottish kids will from 2010 get free school meals for their first three years in primary school.
I'm guessing that the SNP - ever the opportunists - are doing this to bolster their social democratic standing ahead of the Glenrothes by-election, rather than out of any genuine conviction.
Meanwhile, New Labour has established a free school meals pilot scheme in Hull, and unions and even some Labour MP are pushing the call. But the role of the SSP in getting things rolling is systematically being airbrushed out; there’s no mention of it in the BBC’s coverage, for instance.
Most unfair, say I. Those SSP members who initiated and pushed the policy should take a bow. And socialists across Britain should be very proud of them. Small as the step may seem to a brand of politics committed to world revolution, it is one of the far left’s most significant practical achievements for many years.
Posted at 12:22, 2 October 2008
Comments (31)
This is one of those left v's left arguments about whether universality in provision actually holds true to the maxim 'to each according to their need'. I had free school meals for the entirety of my school years, albeit at a Scottish state secondary, and never once felt stigmatised by that. I recognised, as I believe most children do and through various experiences, that my parents were poorer than others and therefore could not, and did not have to, provide me with funds for lunch. I don't believe that there's much validity to the stigmatisation argument although do put more stock in the healthy eating argument. I'll leave where I started though by posing the question, should the tax paying low-income earner have their tax pounds spent on helping provide free meals to kids who will probably now just spend their daily allowance on sweets and chocolate or other such un-healthy additions to their daily intake?
Cheers Dave.
This is a huge victory (even if watered down from our proposal to give them to all school students)and it means a lot to the people who have fought for this from the outset.
When the campaign for Free School Meals started I was the manager of Lothian Anti-Poverty Alliance and we backed the policy for exactly the reasons you set out. I was on the campaign committee along with CPAG, the Poverty Alliance, UNISON, the STUC, health professionals and Tommy Sheridan. That sort of involvement made it very difficult to argue against (it didn't stop New Labour but it damaged their credibility) and hence the SNP's conversion in the longer term.
I'd been a socialist since I was in my teens but had dropped out of party activity (SWP) in the early 90s. This campaign drew me back in as, like you, I saw it as a shining example of making a practical and positive difference in the lives of the class I'd come from.
A lot of people are due some kudos(including, though it pains me to say it, Sheridan) but Felicity Garvie (Tommy Sheridan & Rosie Kane's Parliamentary Assistant) and Frances Curran who both did the running with the campaign from 2003 should get the main credit.
should the tax paying low-income earner have their tax pounds spent on helping provide free meals to kids who will probably now just spend their daily allowance on sweets and chocolate or other such un-healthy additions to their daily intake?
Yes. But only because they shouldn't be paying the tax in the first place if they are genuinely poor. The Middle classes+ are paying the tax. In return they get a meal for their kids and also pay for someone else's.
All kids having a meal, together, supervised, daily is something that I believe to be of benefit to all.
So..the wealthy kids will have money for sweets. So what? they already have money for sweets.
At least every kid will have lunch. Maybe Jamie Oliver will even make it an edible one.
On this point, in my local area paid for school meals are stopping because food costs have risen hugely as we know, yet the government payment for meals, despite all the huge publicity and the riding the popularity of Jamie oliver, has remained the same.
It is now uneconomical for restaurants/pubs to supply school meals as it now COSTS them to do it.
Originally it was a break even exercise to show local support. but when it costs.. who will do it?
Good on announcing initiatives, bad on making them work.
Daily allowance? Oh, she means 'pocket money'.
Our dear comrade Bill Scott says it right in terms of those who worked so hard to campaign for free school meals but he misses one out.
Himself.
Bill was a powerhouse behind the free school meals campaign, travelled Scotland to meetings, geeing people up, writing a never ending stream of crucial policy documents and of course as a part of the massive campaign around the consultation for the second bill.
So, take a bow Bill Scott, free school meals cadre !
Would be interesting to know how many of those on FSM's are actually entitled to them, I've met more than a dozen mums who get Child Tax Credit and therefore free meals for their children while they have an untaxed partner who earns more than enough to pay for all the lunches.
That jibe was delivered from the right, as it happens. But it’s exactly the sort of sneering remark one can readily imagine hearing in the faux prole tones of that certain breed of public school-educated far leftist who has succeeded in memorising the Transitional Programme word for word.
What on earth are you on about? Someone to the right of the SSP actually said this - so you devote half a paragraph to caricaturing someone to the left of the SSP who "one can readily imagine" saying it, even though they didn't. Pure Orwell, and not in a good way.
BrightonGuff - Entitlement to the Child Tax Credit does not, on its own, currently entitle your child to free school meals. You also have to have a joint income of less than £15,575. Hardly a prince's ransom. So either you or your many no doubt imaginary friends are telling porkies.
5.5 children are living in poverty in Great Britain just now and the numbers are about to increase exponentially when the credit crisis hits the real economy. Two-fifths of those children live in households where someone is in paid work.
Stigma is greatest in schools outside areas of concentrated deprivation where entitlement and take-up is highest. That means that if you are unlucky enough to be a child going to a school in a more "affluent" area outside a sink estate its least likely that your parent(s) will claim the meals that you are entitled to. On average where entitlement falls under 50% so too does take-up.
BrightonGeoff: "met more than a dozen mums who get Child Tax Credit and therefore free meals for their children"
Except that being on working tax criedt doesn't entitle you automaticaly to free school meals.
Typical SNP. Steal a good policy and water it down. Still, it's good to be recognised and some kids will benefit. The only remaining issues are all the rest of the kids, especially older kids where stigma is much more easily applied and much more cutting, and the nutritional standards, because if the current programme of SNP cuts is anything to go by the free school meals will turn out to be a crust and a glass of water.
I can't remember anyone significant on the left attacking the SSP's school meals campaign either - so why go to the trouble of imagining it . "one can readily imagine hearing in the faux prole tones of that certain breed of public school-educated far leftist " - your having an argument with someone who mostly exists in your head .
Hi Bill and Andy
Andy - I wrote, Child Tax Credit not WFTC.
Bill - Yes, those in receipt of current CTC who declare an income of less than £15,575 fill in one form available from their child's school to receive FSMs. However there are some parents, despite yr denials, who receive well in excess of £16k and continue to receive FSMs. In the cases I am aware of, mum is not in paid employment. Dad's income is not declared - yet he drives a brand new 18k car for instance.
I do not post here to deny the need for FSM for those who cannot afford £1.90 a day for a school lunch or to waste time.
There is a real world out there of rich tax evaders and comfortable welfare scroungers.
Interestingly CTC when integrated with WFTC does not allow parents to claim the FSM. From my understanding if your working over sixteen hours a week and your salary is low enough, you get the WFTC and the CTC is included (if you have children) - but you can't claim the FSM's on top.
I'm not sure how this is worked out. My income is £11k a year net. WFTC provides an additional £4k approx a year top up.
That was the thrust of the campaign when it was launched by CPAG in 1998 and picked up by the SSP via CPAG Scotland. While those working on the campaign wanted free school meals for all children but the director of CPAG would only allow a campaign to include those on WFTC. The issue is a very clear one - irrespective of the income of the parents all CHILDREN and YOUNG PEOPLE should have access to a FSM. The CPAG research showed that stigma is still strong and leads to bullying etc and that it is not guaranteed that better off parents give their children enough money for dinner. A good campaign with real material benefits for all children and young people but in particular for those living on low incomes. I agree with Dave on this one.
Solomon,
please, try and read the totality of what Dave writes, he was jesting, that's what he tends to do, it proves that not all socialists are humourless dregs from the english Public School system
but back to the topic, well done the SSP, as an old recipient of free meals I can say that they came in very handy, it is hard to concentrate on learning if you're hungry or not getting the right type of food
and as bill pointed out there is a stigma connected to them, there shouldn't be but some people feel it
well done those fine socialists in Scotland, what's next on the shopping list?
When I was at school the free dinner tickets were given out at registration. We don't do this anymore - so the whole stigma thing is wide of the mark. I think universal free school meals are a reasonable idea but not for this reason. And...
particularly on the home turf of deep-fried Mars Bars
Perhaps you think we wear kilts and hunt haggis too? C'mon man - enough with the stereotypes already...
BrightonGuff: Which is what I said - it's those with only CTC but no WFTC and under £15, 525 joint income that can qualify. I didn't say that this was fair but how the rules work - the rules are seldom logical.
Strangely enough your income can increase to well over £15,525 but your kids will remain in receipt of Free School Meals because Child Tax Credit entitlement is worked out in arrears based on the previous year's earnings.
So it's entirely possible that none of your "dozen" mums are "comfortable welfare scroungers". Just previously low earners whose fortunes have improved. Or previously decent earners - hence the car - whose income has drastically fallen. This is just one of the anomalies that giving all kids free meals, as of right, would do away with - that and removing the nasty suspicions of tossers like you.
The Government's own figures demonstrate that hundreds of thousands of parents whose kids are entitled don't claim - and when we did research on it 90% of people said that it was because of the stigma. So hundreds of thousands of kids are going hungry because of poverty and shame. But hey don't let the facts stand in the way of your prejudices.
I had free school meals for some of my time at school, always felt a sense of pride that I was poor, especially as intellectually I used to kick the ass metaphorically of the middle class people at my school.
Bill
I said nothing about 'fairness'. None of the mums I referred to fit yr category, they were open about their circumstances. My comments are not based on suspicions or prejudices.
I can also confirm that the stigma remains; someone I know aged 11 asks his mum for money for food as he does not want to go to the canteen cashier, in front of his friends, and say my name is X and I am on the free list - and that is in a school in London where many will get FSMs.
Well done all we have obtained this victory. I have discussed elsewhere on how I think we should do demands on the big issues but I also think we can get a big resonance on the smaller issues - e.g. I'd imagine the 'Free Public Transport' campaign I caught sight of in Leeds last week could be very popular.
I have often also thought the English left should make more of 'they get X in Scotland and Wales, so should we' - you'd imagine that might play particularly well in Carlisle, (Newcastle, Chester?)
When I heard this on the news this morning the first thought that came to me was, "well done Frances Curran and the SSP!" Shame on those who walked away and split this super party. "Southpawpunch" - there has been a plethora of SSP "Free Public Transport" posters and stickers in Scotland over the past few months (even here in middle class Bearsden), so perhaps this fantastic idea will become mainstream soon...
Hey Shuggy,
The Scottish Government's own figures show that in 2007 less than half (48%) of Scottish primary schools had an anonymised system for the receipt of free school meals.
In Glasgow, Scotland's largest authority with the highest prortion of children living in poverty only 20% of primary schools had an anonymised system. So when you say "we don't do this any more" you're well wrong.
Even where there are so-called anonymised systems it's still easy to identify the kids receiving free meals because swipe cards are used which more affluent kids can top up hereas the poorer ones can't afford to.
Oh yeah and to get back to an earlier point. As well as the hundreds of thousands of kids not claiming because of stigma - and it's those kids Save the Children asked when they researched this - there are hundreds of thousands of kids from low wage households whose parents receive WFTC who aren't entitled at all.
Any "socialist" who opposes free school meals for all children is condemning millions of kids from low income working class homes to the misery of stigma, the household to extra costs of about a tenner a week per child and/or losing out on at least one decent meal a day. You may think you're tough but why call yourselves socialist? Obviously being well hard is great for the workers' health which is why they drop down dead about 20 years before their affluent peers in Glasgow.
Universal provision is the only way to ensure maximum take-up, no stigma whatsoever and a healthier future for our kids. Which is why we won the argument. No thanks to the faux or idiotic proles on the far left who as Dave rightly says DID and continue to sneer at the idea. If they'd had their way we'd never have had an NHS as we'd still be waiting for the glorious day.
Working Tax Credit is also crap in the fact that the forms are so incredibly difficult, especially for those who don't have English or Welsh as their first language. And the advice centre I used to be on the management committee of found many people didn't claim becasue they were worried about having overpayments clawed back in the subsequent year.
I don't know how often this happens, but there was sufficient worry to deter some claimants.
There is also a problem that if you cannot finf a job employing you for 16 hours you can't qualify, and how does it make sense to force parents to go to work who would rather be looking after their children and pay starngers ot look after their kids instead
So when you say "we don't do this any more" you're well wrong.
I live in Glasgow and work in the Council's schools. All of them use the 'Fuel Zone' system along with the swipe cards. Your assertion that it is obvious who is receiving free school meals and who isn't is simply incorrect. Even if this were not so, I don't see any grounds for your implicit suggestion that anyone gives a shit. Don't waste my time quoting Scottish Government information - as if they had even a crepuscular idea about what goes on in our schools. I repeat, I think the idea of universal school meals is a reasonable idea but this stigma idea isn't one of them.
Well, I'm not a leftist, but I did write an article attacking the policy, many moons ago:Socialists, however, point to the continuing condition of our class as wage-slaves, and affirm that whatever the gains from free school dinners, the wages system will take away in another form with another hand.
The reason why lies in the very form of wage slavery. We are, collectively, compelled to sell our capacity to work – our labour power – in order to get access to those things which we need in order to live as members of our community – our food, clothes, housing, transportation and the like. The value of this labour power is the cost of maintaining and reproducing our capacity to work – and this entails the cost of keeping and rearing the next generation of workers, our children.
[...]
If the price of one of our necessities of life falls, this will be reflected by a decrease in the upwards pressure on wages. Without a corresponding relenting in the downward forces on wages, our real wages would begin to dwindle towards a new level (either through direct wage cuts, or by allowing inflation – that is a decrease in the value of money – to eat away at our spending power). Free school dinners would be an example of this process in action.
Good on the SSP (splintered faction, thereof) for pioneering a campaign that's won free school meals for 5,6 & 7 year olds in Scotland.
As to whether it's a "great victory"?
Well only in the context of the absurdly reactionary and miserly post-Thatcherite era in which any talk of free health care or nutrition for children immediately provokes a host of stingy reactionaries to froth at the mouth and utter strangled cries of "tax benefits", "vouchers", "entitlement", "cheat", "scrounger" etc... etc....
When I was at school, we all got free school dinners, right up to secondary age. We all got 1/3rd of a pint of milk a day and infants got vitamin C in the form of Rose Hip Syrup!
So it's a very, very limited victory indeed.
A bit like someone relearning how to walk after a nasty accident. Let's hope it spreads to England and Wales soon, along with abolition of student loans.
'Learning to walk again after a nasty accident' is a good analogy, actually. But we do need to learn to walk again.
Southpawpunch's point about English workers demanding that they get the same stuff that Welsh and Scottish workers are getting is a good one.
But as a socialist living in Wales I have to say there is a problem with the Nationalists and much of the centre-left being hugely parochial. The Nationalist Left want to use the small reforms they have gained to push a "break-up of Britain" line (despite the majority of Welsh workers opposing independence) rather than using this as a base to fight for socialist politics across Britain and to rally working class people to struggle at the base of society.
One has to say that the GLC and even Sheffield Council when led by David Blunkett (who was on the Labour Left in the 80s) were far more combative in fighting for (reformist) socialist politics and taking on Westminster than the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament.
I used the phrase the small gains the welsh nationalists have gained. Of course, most of the stuff like abolishing prescription charges, scrapping SATs and League tables etc. were actually implemented by Labour prior to their coalition with Plaid Cymru (who incidentally came close to a Rainbow Coalition with the Tories and LibDems, that would have seen Tory Ministers in the Welsh Assembly and only fell on the rocks when the LibDems pulled out)
Shuggy: "I live in Glasgow and work in the Council's schools. All of them use the 'Fuel Zone' system along with the swipe cards".
Well no they don't Shuggy, unless the 80% of PRIMARY schools in Glasgow which didn't have the swipe card system in 2007 (the last time figures were published) have subsequently introduced it. You may be getting mixed up with the situation in Glasgow's secondary schools where 100% do have swipe cards.
When I said "Scottish Government figures" I didn't go on to say as supplied by the local authorities themselves but if you want to look it up go here -
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/06/04134749/0
So unless a council official completely ballsed up the statistical return to the Scottish Government then it's correct and you're wrong.
And it's not an implicit suggestion on my part that anyone "gives a shit" about stigma it's an explicit one based on the views of the kids themselves.
Again look it up if you want but instead of relying on our own opinions - as you do - we referenced research by Save the Children (Breadline Britain) which asked children for THEIR views (i.e. not adults substituting their views for the children's) - 90% of the children interviewed by the researchers said they did not take school meals because of the shame involved in other kids knowing that they/their parents were poor.
We got exactly the same results from our own consultation exercise prior to the Bill being introduced - 450 individual responses (over 100 of them from schoolchildren themselves) and 70 group responses - with 9 out of 10 of them identifying stigma as the main reason for failure to take up entitlement.
However I've also already stated that stigma is least where the vast majority of other kids are entitled - 90% take-up in schools where 90% are entitled. So in one sense you are also correct that in some Glasgow schools (wherever deprivation is highest) stigma isn't a big issue.
But poor kids attending schools in more affluent areas are subjected to the most peer bullying and the majority of poor children do not live in areas of multiple deprivation and it's also there that take up is lowest. Please provide an evidence based explanation for that correlation if it's not related to stigma.
If you do work in the schools system then I pity the kids. It is people like you who are failing to recognise and protect the children in their care from insidious bullying. This undermines their self-esteem and, if they succumb to it, prevents them from obtaining at least one decent meal a day which in turn may affect their educational attainment, life chances and health including life expectancy.
That cruelty and blow to poorer children's self esteem and life chances is something I care deeply about even if you don't. Maybe you should read the research and come to conclusions based on actual evidence rather than your own pre-conceived,
or "observation"- the least reliable of research methods because of its subjectivity - based beliefs.
Free School Meals should be a right not a privilege. I had free school meals all my life and I never felt singled out or if I was I did not seem to care. I got free school meals because my mum was on "Family Income Supplement or FIS", many working single parents got free school meals and other benefits.
The issue about free nutritional school meals is about have better socialised attitudes to food, to ensure all children are treated as children. Most children do not have incomes it is their parents income that decides what benefits they will have. "Middle class" children are not asked to bring tables and chairs to school because their mum and dad can afford it - children should be fed good quality meals because they need them. I think Jamie Oliver has done a great job around school dinners however they also need to be free, just part of the school curriculum.
Bring on the Free School Meals and the SSP should not be written out of history in delivering this very small gain.