Deidre Woods (Independent Food Aid Network, IFAN)

Sands Films

Speech delivered at Sands Films Studio event for THE MAN WITH THE PLAN on 12th and 13th April 2025.  A Campaign film produced by Sands Films studio in London.  The Man With The Plan is a new film about William Beveridge, written and directed by Christine Edzard and starring Simon Callow.  https://www.sandsfilms.co.uk/the-man-with-the-plan.html  Contact: ostockman@sandsfilms.co.uk

Transcript

00:00Dee Woods is an award-winning cook, community food educator, an urban agriculturist, a journalist, a broadcaster, researcher for over 25 years, experience working in diverse communities.

00:15In 2016, she was awarded the BBC Food and Farming Awards Cook of the Year.

00:27She is also a visiting research associate at CAWR, which is the Coventry University, a member of the GLA Food Board.

00:36Look, she knows her stuff. That's all you need to know. Please welcome up here, Dee Woods.

00:41Thank you, everyone.

00:57And, you know, I'm truly honoured to be here as someone who's an expert by experience,

01:07someone who's experienced the slow violence that this current government and previous governments have inflicted upon people.

01:24Marginalised groups, women, children, disabled people, racialised peoples, our elders.

01:32All right? No one, no one should go hungry in the sixth richest economy in the world.

01:42So the 1942 Beverage Reports was a foundational document in the development of our British welfare states,

02:06and it laid in groundwork for our post-war social security systems, which included the NHS, all right, and other welfare provisions.

02:18So it didn't focus explicitly on food systems or food insecurity,

02:25but its principles have direct relevance to all our current debates on the right to food and household food insecurity.

02:38And it is household food insecurity and not food poverty, because we throw away so much food in this country.

02:46All right? And what is recovered is only a tiny percentage of what is thrown away.

02:58And it is conflated with our right to food, right?

03:07Everyone in this room, no matter of your status, right, whether you're a citizen or not,

03:13everyone in this room has a right to affordable, healthy, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food.

03:29All right, so Beverage identified his five evils.

03:35And want or poverty was seen and still is a key driver of deprivation.

03:45I mean, we have deprivation in this country, right?

03:49And hunger is a symptom of that deprivation.

03:53That's right. That's what I've been saying. That's it.

03:56So to reduce household food insecurity,

04:03we need to reduce poverty.

04:16Universalism versus mean-tested.

04:20All right? Universalism is a key principle of beverage.

04:25All right? And everything here is means-tested or left up to community.

04:33All right? Our government as duty-bearers is failing us, the people.

04:44All right? We, the right holders, we, the people,

04:51all right, are being failed daily by our government.

04:56All right?

04:56We need universal free school meals as a social protection.

05:02All right? We need basic income for everyone.

05:10And that is another solution.

05:16All right? We have to tax wealth and not hard-working people

05:21who can barely make ends meet.

05:25All right?

05:26All right? We need a right to food enshrined in legislation.

05:33All right? We've signed up to it internationally in law,

05:39but refused, categorically refused.

05:42Our government refuses to enshrine it into law.

05:47We need an integrated national food policy.

05:55All right? We have no food policy.

05:58We haven't had any food policy since World War II.

06:03Everything has been left in market.

06:08Neoliberal.

06:09Neoliberal.

06:10Yep.

06:12All right?

06:12Neoliberal policies, all right?

06:15Transnational corporations, big supermarkets, big pharma,

06:21big farming, all right, who extract and oppress for profits.

06:28Food is for people.

06:30We don't have any proper agricultural subsidies anymore, right?

06:46We have a food system that is failing us, right?

06:51We still have a plantation economy where we depend on either food coming from elsewhere

06:58or labor by migrants, right?

07:03We need proper labor rights as well in this country for everyone.

07:14And we need more power devolved to us, we the people, right?

07:21At local level and at national level, all right?

07:26Power to the people.

07:28Yeah, power to the people.

07:30Power to the people.

07:32All right?

07:32That is the only way to restore our dignity and our agency

07:38instead of being under a nanny state, yeah?

07:43Where things are done to us, where we are feeding people.

07:47No, we have rights to exist as sovereign people,

07:55as self-determined people,

07:59as ourselves and collectively.

08:04With dignity.

08:05And with dignity.

08:07Most importantly, with dignity.

08:09And in our current political climate

08:21of the far right,

08:25of increasing racism,

08:29we need to dismantle these systems.

08:35Windrush should have never happened, right?

08:38Those windrush policies,

08:40those racist legislations should have never happened, all right?

08:45Austerity should have never happened.

08:53And our government is very good at saying

08:58that we will do certain things

09:00and make a commitment to certain things.

09:03But these systems of ableism, patriarchy, racism are so...

09:11And class!

09:12Cannot forget class, all right?

09:14Are so deeply embedded

09:16in all our institutions.

09:20But we know the answers.

09:24We have the solutions.

09:26And that is why we need a new social compact, all right?

09:31We need our governments at all levels, right?

09:37To include us in any sort of policy making.

09:41And we need to centre the most marginalised,

09:45the most impacted within that.

09:49Hunger is a political choice.

09:52Hunger is not about immigration, all right?

10:05It's not about people taking away anyone's jobs, all right?

10:09It's not that the government doesn't have the money.

10:13It spends it on weapons instead.

10:15Exactly, right?

10:17And continues to oppress and destroy other parts of the world, all right?

10:24It's time for us as British people to stand up and say no more.

10:30We need to rise up.

10:32Thank you, sir.

10:33We need to rise up.

10:52Hey!

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