Community Restaurants to Universal Rights: food as an intersectional struggle

The third of the Food and Work Network’s (FAWN’s) series of ‘knowledge exchange’ workshops took place at Liverpool Hope University in February 2023. Funded by the British Academy-Leverhulme Trust, this workshop brought together academics researching aspects of the food system in the UK, along with trade unionists and community activists with lived experience to share their knowledge and insight into how access to food can be problematic. 

“Although there is now much greater awareness that access to food for many people in the UK is not straightforward, FAWN will maintain its focus on what can and must be done to improve access to food.”

Morning presentations – Collective Food Provision

 We invited presentations from researchers and community activists about collective food provision where the examples featured had broken away from culture-commodified consumption on an individualised and atomised basis.  All had avoided paternalistic models that reduced service users to passive recipients of a 'one-size-fits-all' model or relied on unpaid domestic work of women in the home. 

Ben Selwyn of Sussex University addressed the alternative vision of community restaurants set out in his paper for Socialist Register.  Key to the success was presenting meals which, whilst affordable, appealed to a wide section of the community – avoiding any social stigma.  

Bryce Evans referred to his research on the relative success of government-sponsored collective food provision in the 1940s and argued that – whilst not perfect – these schemes could be learnt from today. 

A current food provision project – championed by Ian Byrne MP – used school kitchens to open ‘pop-up’ restaurants in lower-income areas, enabling families to eat out together. It was noted that progressive alternatives could learn from McDonalds, Nando’s and Ikea by repurposing clean, accessible and reliable places for social eating in our local high streets. 

Alex Hannah from Liverpool-based Farm Urban showed how they provided access to fresh, sustainably produced nutritious food like low-priced salad leaves and ‘hot greens’.  

Then West African cook Betty Vandy from another Liverpool project, Bettylicious Cooks explained that food banks don’t always offer ingredients appropriate to people’s own cultures and diets. Betty reminded us that food is not just a matter of calorie intake. The whole experience of cooking, eating, and developing specific cuisines is core to building a sense of community and cultural identity. Her project helps people to source ingredients like plantain and yams, and learn West African and Caribbean recipes and cooking methods. Betty is not only generating a thriving community project built around delicious and affordable plant-based foods but has restored a sense of agency and pride in the serving of food.   

We heard from Farrah Rainfly who told us about Lifeafterhummus Community Benefit Society a project based in Somers Town in the London Borough of Camden with a large Somali and Bangladeshi population. Working with local institutions like University College London and University College Hospital, the community manages to efficiently redistribute food which would otherwise go to waste. 

Our final morning session featured Sara Bailey from the Open University who drew on her research about the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate how the entitlement to food is systematically denied to ethnic minority communities. Despite the requirement for official Equality Impact Assessments, she showed how public policy is routinely used to practically discriminate on racial and ethnic grounds.   

Afternoon presentations – Intersectionality 

The afternoon session focused on the need for intersectional approaches to food insecurity. 

Intersectionality acknowledges that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression so we must consider everything and anything that can marginalise people – gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, economic status etc. 

Elaine Swann from Sussex University used feminist and critical race theory to offer a conceptually-rich account of organising in the diverse community of Tower Hamlets in London. 

We ended with Jasber Singh from Coventry University, a researcher who examines the impact of the Government’s policy of allowing refugees and asylum seekers ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’, He considered the question of how basic human needs are denied to people deprived of citizenship, and how hunger and destitution are used deliberately by the Government to create the 'hostile environment'. The issues of racial justice and indeed the fight against the impoverishment and exploitation of the Global South are inevitably raised by any campaign which seeks to uphold the Right to Food as a universal human right.   

What’s next from FAWN? 

We used the workshop to launch our new website; please share it with anyone that might be interested in our work. 

The next workshop will take place in Sheffield in April 2023. That will focus on child food insecurity and all aspects of food worker organisation from ‘farm to fork’. 

 Although there is now much greater awareness that access to food for many people in the UK is not straightforward, FAWN will maintain its focus on what can and must be done to improve access to food. Whether that is about recommending structural changes, highlighting the role that practical on-the-ground assistance can play, or arguing that the fundamental issue of making work fairer and better paid is the best way to accomplish the Right to Food.