Mirror guest columnist Jack Monroe on going hungry and not even being able to give her son a Christmas present
On Christmas Day 2011, I remember how I sat on my sofa by myself, willing the day to pass as quickly as possible.
I was alone in a freezing cold flat with no television, no presents and no food in the fridge – it had been turned off at the mains. I had no tree, no decorations, nothing to mark the day as different.
I was unemployed, broke, and broken. I hadn’t bought a single present for my one-year-old son and, instead, let him go to his father’s for the day, knowing I could not give him a Christmas myself.
This year, I’m lucky that things are different for me. But I am outraged that 60,000 other people are facing the same situation.
How can it be that 20,000 children face Christmas 2013 with empty cupboards and no presents?
And why is that figure three times the number that faced a hungry Christmas last year?
I don’t think this is acceptable in the seventh richest country in the world – and I’d really like to know the reasons why it’s happening so we can stop it.
That’s why today I’m launching a petition via Change.org calling for Parliament to debate the causes of UK hunger – and to ask why, in modern Britain, food-bank use is escalating so rapidly. I’m backing the Daily Mirror and the union Unite’s Give Our Kids A Christmas appeal for the Trussell Trust.
The campaign is raising money for food banks – but the petition is just as important if we want to stop people going hungry. We have to do more than feed people – we need get to the root of hunger.
I can remember what it was like to turn off the fridge because it was empty anyway. To unscrew the light bulbs to reduce the temptation to turn them on. To walk everywhere in the pouring rain in your only pair of shoes, with a soaking wet and sobbing toddler trailing along behind you, as you go into every pub and every shop within walking distance and ask them if there are any vacancies.
I can remember dragging myself home to not quite dry out in my freezing cold flat and sitting in my coat and hat until it was time for me to go to bed.
There are other memories too. Pouring a carton of chopped tomatoes over a handful of pasta – and trying not to throw it at the wall in frustration as your young son tells you: “I don’t want it Mummy, I want something else.”
But there isn’t anything else until you get to the food bank in two days’ time.
I spent countless mornings sitting across the breakfast table from my son, envious of his small portion of cereal mashed with a little bit of water or his slice of toast with jam.
“Where’s Mummy’s breakfast?” he asked. Mummy wasn’t hungry. Mummy wasn’t hungry last night either and you wonder how long it will take him to notice that Mummy isn’t very hungry at all any more.
My little family spent two Christmases hungry. I didn’t tell anyone – I was afraid I would lose my son to social services if I admitted how we were living. I had given up a good job working for the fire service because I couldn’t make the childcare hours fit with being a single parent and I’d applied for hundreds of jobs since.
I had sold almost everything I owned and was still desperately searching for work, struggling to feed us both on the little that was left after paying the rent and bills.
It took me 18 months to find work and to be able to feed myself and my son three meals a day again.
I was referred to my local food bank by a Sure Start children’s centre that I attended with my son on a Wednesday, after staff noticed that we always had seconds and thirds of the free lunch. I was reluctant to go at first, reluctant to admit that I had hit rock bottom – but I couldn’t afford not to. So one morning in October 2012, I finally went.
Some people might think that anyone can turn up to a food bank, but the reality is that you need to be identified as being in need by a social worker, health visitor, childcare provider, your doctor. Someone needs to recognise that without their intervention, your family is going to go hungry.
A lot of people don’t go, because of the shame and because – I’ll tell you from experience – it feels like begging. No matter how kind the volunteers, how discreet the carrier bags, you have to look someone in the face who knows you are desperate and not coping and that your life is falling apart.
But going there was a positive thing. The food bank wasn’t just a box of food – they signposted me to other agencies that could help me, they listened to me and talked through the frustration and desperation of being a single parent struggling to provide for my child.
This Christmas, my son and I will have food on the table. But 60,000 others won’t. It’s not just the festive season – 350,000 people received three days’ worth of emergency food from food banks between April and September this year. Yet supposedly the economy is recovering, and banker’s bonuses are back?
Please join me, the Trussell Trust, the Daily Mirror and Unite by signing this petition calling for a Parliamentary debate. Make politicians confront what is happening. We need to stop turning a blind eye.
In the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”
Sign our petition at change.org/food banks and tweet about it using the hashtag #jackspetition .
How you can give
Find out how you can donate to the Give Our Kids A Christmas appeal by going to dailymirror.co.uk/christmasappealOr Text FBOX99 £1 or £2, £3, £4, £5, £10 to 70070
eg, Send ‘FBOX99 £5’ to 70070.
Mirror
