2p per chip, 20p per chipol THE GREAT SCHOOL MEALS MASSACRE

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More jobs have been lost in school meals than in steel — horror of Generals at the take the meal has fallen in state of malnutrition of primary schools throughout army recruits for the Boer the country from 75% to War, it was agreed that 50% since the government Boards of Education could ended the legal obligation on make provision for meals at local education authorities Arnold White in "Effici- April 1980. wrote: "Britain would only the school meals service sustain its empire. in the arose out of demands of the future if she ensured its working class fuelled by the new generation of children, depression of the 1930s and tomorrow's imperial army, the experiences of the made that the school meals rate declined, infant mortalservice today acts as a bed- ity rose and 36% of children rock for British imperialism. were considered unfit, with Indeed the height of the 80% anaemic.

School meals staff lobby Parliament. Len Murray is there - but what else has the TUC done? attack on Argentina in the probably appalling although Malvinas/Falklands corres- statistics are unreliable, if ponded with the height of not unavailable, since so few their most recent attack on women could afford medical the school meals service. treatment.

Subscribe! IN 1906, as a result of the school for the needy.

ency and Empire" in 1901 was properly nourished."

The claim can hardly be Tories recent imperialist Of course the imperialist armies need healthy working class bodies, then as now, as their "cannon fodder"

But the lesson we can draw from Arnold White is that school meals make an essential contribution to working class health.

Sections 9.53 to 9.65 of the DHSS Black Report *Inequalities in Health' (HMSO, 1980) gave hard '.MA evidence of this. It showed that the school meals service was needed, it got to the right children and should be extended, improved and "be provided in schools without charge" across the board.

The importance of school meals and milk for the healthy growth of working class children was reemphasised in September's British Nutrition Foundation Bulletin.

Pates: £5 for three nonths, £8:75 for ix months, and £16 or a year.

Bundle of five

sach week: £12 for three months.

Bundle of 10: £21 for three months.

Name..

Address I enclose £ To: Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8 8PL.

But the proportion who to provide school meals in The full establishment of Second World War.

In the 1930s the birth Women's health was Spending But it is clear that most women gave most of little food they had to families and neglected own needs.

Given the political upheavals of the 1930s around unemployment, and the shocking facts of working class poverty revealed on a mass scale by the evacuation of city children during the war, the Beveridge Committee, established in 1941, declared that "this is a time for revolution not for patching"

Well knowing that what capitalism gives it can also take away, the wellare state was based on the maior demands of the trade unions for half full employment and adequate insurance for male workers, for themselves and families and last but not least on the premise of providing a healthier workforce for capitalism.

The Beveridge Commission advocated the establishment of the welfare state on the basis that it should be free and universal, paid for by working class national insurance and tax.

These state benefits were to be financed through the redistribution of working class income from the healthy to the sick, from the employed the retired, from the single to families.

The major prerequisite was that it was never to be financed out of profit. • Butler's 1944 Education Act established local authorities' legal obligation provide meals across the board"

In the 1950s, the system seemed to be working in the boom, with wages generally rising faster than the burden of tax and insurance contributions.

In the 1960s and "70s, however, wages were eroded by inflation, resulting in higher wage militancy. In the early "70s, the first massive cuts in school meals took place in public spending cutbacks demanded by the IMF.

Prices up

Both Tory and Labour governments slapped up prices, cut back on the quantity and quality of food and the hours and jobs of school meals staff.

Labour Chancellor Healey had planned drastic further cuts in school meals if Labour had been reelected in 1979.

Neil Kinnock, Shadow Education spokesperson, still states categorically that he cannot and will not commit himself to a full restoration of the school meals service.

It is the present Tory government, however, that has really done the job on school meals, aided and abetted by the many Labour controlled councils who have carried out Tory policies and who see school meals as somehow easier to cut than other areas.

The plight of school meals staff, the destruction of the school meals service and the effect this has on children and the tens of thousands of women as workers in the service and as mothers using it, is by and large ignored.

It is ignored by the media, ignored by the trade unions and, shamefully, hardly touched on by the left.

More lost There are more jobs lost in school meals than in the steel industry - yet the Times doesn't even list them in the jobless column.

As many as 300,000 jobs are to be lost in the school meals service.

At the Annual Conference of NUPE this year, the Wandsworth dustmen had over an hour to speak on their strike, the Devon school meals steward representing over a thousand women on all-out strike at the time to defend school meals got less than five minutes!

In one school kitchen, staff were told, yes their canteen would close, yes there would be job losses (but then most women in school meals "salt of the earth" as tley are expected to lose the i jobs). But, they were told on the "positive" side, the closure and jobs loss would offer facilities for those youth who feel despair and futility at today's unemployment - by establishing a "Work for Tomorrow Job Creation Scheme" in their old kitchen, teaching them, among other things, catering skills!

Contempt There can hardly be a more vivid example of the contempt which is felt by policy makers nationally and locally for those who work in school meals.

In their eyes these

atal

women have no right to work, they are lucky to have been paid for the opportunity to get out of their homes all these years and perform their "labour of love' feeding the children of the country.

Anyone visiting today's school kitchens can witness this labour of love performed, at rapid speed-up, in hot, steamy, heavy working conditions.

The women are low paid (a general kitchen assistant earns £1.60 an hour). Admittedly they are better paid than in private catering -but so they should be, having been unionised nationally in what are potentially two of the country's strongest unions, NUPE and the GMWU.

The hours school meals staff get paid for are related to the number of meals they cook. With every price rise in school meals the take up number of school meals drops, so the women receive cuts in hours and wages.

But it takes approximately the same time to prepare, cook, serve and clean up 100 meals as 150. Most women in school meals are working time for which they are just not paid.

Impossible

In many cases is physically impossible to cook the meals in the time allocated.

There have been many variations on the same theme to bump up prices, savagely reduce the service and phase it out altogether, apart trom the legal obligation to some sort of school meal provision for those in supplementary benefit.

Mark Carlisle's 1980 Education Act which placed the decision on price fixing in the hands of local authorities, removed all nutritional requirements and any statutory obligations apart from providing specific free school meals.

It has enabled local authorities to pick on school meals as the easy option for cuts.

In the general free-for-all attacks, nearly all have put up prices (arguing 'viability') and introduced packed lunches, only to turn around and point to the fall in takeup of dinners, saying it's an "unwanted service" , "eating habits have changed" and using this as an excuse to cut further.

In Oxfordshire, for example, the free school meals qualification was changed and three thousand families below the official poverty line lost their free meals.

Cafeteria

They were faced with an outlay of £2.65 a week per child. Since the biggest employe is naved bot and the NHS, have drastically limited wages rises to less than 4% in the last year, it is easy to see why parents just cannot afford to use the school meals service.

Many local authorities have introduced the "cafeteria", , "a la carte" systems; these are fancy names for charging 2p a chip and 20p a chipolata.

Other forms of attack include the proposals to centralise cooking in one big kitchen, cook, freeze it and heat it up in microwave ovens.

The Lancashire School Meals Campaign (LSMC) has produced an excellent leatlet on this showing that reports and figures from local authorities should be subject to strict investigation by committees of workers and users of the school meal service.

Council costings are vague and in response to them LSMC come up with hard facts.

For example, Leeds MBC spent £3 million on technology to produce 30,000 meals. This quartered the staff employed in the central kitchen: yet the scheme stil only provides a quarter of Leeds school meals.

LSMC also show that 'cook-freeze' advocates assume that centralised bulk catering and new technology improve things. Yet a government report in the mid-60s acknowledged that the best food comes from small units, cooking on the spot.

Many local authorities would like to place the school meals service lock, stock and barrel into the hands of private caterers like Grand Metropolitan.

They only turn down such options because the tenders they put in are too high and because they want substantial modifications in kitchens and equipment -which they expect the council to pay for!

Centralise

Other county councils now desperate to meet increasingly stringent government spending cuts by April have become, to put it mildly, more blatantly and immediately destructive.

The most recent example, Gloucestershire, plans to achieve £2.15 million in spending cuts by proposals which include clos ing kitchens in all primary services in secondary e mools service in secondary school and providing packed lunches for about 6,000 children at present getting free meals.

Between 1,000 and 1,800 jobs could be lost as a result of the proposals and it would be the end of school meals for thousands of children.

In response about 1,400 workers supported a total stoppage ot school meat, cleaning and caretaker staff at schools throughout Gloucestershire which started on. Monday 20 September.

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Organiser, Thursday 7 October 1982 Page 14

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and with hardly a word from the media and the unions. Mary-Ann Todd looks at how school meals were built up — and how they are being cut

Next week: the fight back