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. Contact: ostockman@sandsfilms.co.uk
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. Contact: ostockman@sandsfilms.co.uk
Category
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LearningTranscript
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!