How Food and Solidarity Took an Idea and Turned It Into Real Action
How Food and Solidarity Took an Idea and Turned It Into Real Action
Sometimes change doesn't start with a big plan. It starts with people talking about what they're seeing every day, and deciding they can't ignore it anymore. That's how this campaign began.
It Started at a Members' Meeting
At a regular Food and Solidarity members' meeting, child poverty came up again. Members talked about how the two-child benefit cap was affecting families, and how immigration rules like NRPF (No Recourse to Public Funds) meant some families couldn't get help at all.
Someone suggested: what if we actually organised around this?
A proposal was put together, and the idea was discussed and voted on at a meeting, with members agreeing to launch a child poverty campaign in Autumn 2024, shortly after the new Labour government came into power.
What Was at Stake
In Newcastle, two in five children live in poverty, around 12 in every classroom. Across the North East, nearly 190,000 young people are growing up poor.
The two-child benefit cap denies financial support to families with three or more children, and No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) locks migrant families, including many in Newcastle's west end communities of Elswick, Benwell, and Arthur's Hill, out of any safety net entirely.
These aren't abstract policies. They're everyday life in Newcastle's inner west end.
Turning the Idea Into a Plan
After that decision, Food and Solidarity held campaign strategy meetings that were open to all members. These meetings ran through:
- What the campaign should focus on
- Who had the power to make decisions
- What demands needed to be included, especially NRPF, because many members were directly affected and NRPF was missing from a lot of the national conversation on child poverty
- Rough timelines for action
This helped move things from "we're worried about this" to "here's what we're going to do."
Building Support Inside Food and Solidarity
Before going public, the focus was on making sure the campaign actually reflected the membership.
The campaign kicked off with a photo petition. The aim was to get around 70–80% of the 300+ members involved, each representing a household, most of who lived in the west end. Food and Solidarity is a membership organization where the vast majority of members represent households in Arthur's Hill, Elswick, Benwell (NE4), and Cowgate (NE5), areas with very high poverty.
When a large majority of members mobilize together, it demonstrates real collective power from the community most affected. Members who helped plan the campaign spoke to others:
- While packing food parcels
- Over the phone
- When delivering parcels to disabled members' homes
@foodandsolidarity Wouldn’t you want THIS in your community? 🔥 We’re Food and Solidarity, a democratic membership organisation fighting food insecurity and housing injustice through direct action, not charity. ✅ Weekly food distributions ✅ Eviction defence ✅ Housing disrepair campaigns ✅ Child poverty action We’re expanding beyond Newcastle and the west end, and YOU are needed: COMMENT "JOIN" below to become a fee-paying member → Build collective power in YOUR area → Launch a local group with our support → Confront landlords and fight injustice Your membership fuels: ✊ Tenant defence 🥕 Weekly food solidarity 🏠 Housing disrepair campaigns www.foodandsolidarity.org/join Link in bio to learn more. #CollectiveAction #HousingJustice #FoodSolidarity #DirectAction #CommunityOrganising #FightPoverty #MembershipMovement #TenantRights #LocalAction #JoinTheFight ♬ original sound - Food&Solidarity
Once members had signed the petition they were asked to speak to other members to encourage them to sign. By the end of this stage, around 60% of members had added their photo to the petition and more members came on board to get actively involved with the campaign.
That level of support made it clear this wasn't just a small group pushing the issue, it was the community itself taking action.
The petition wasn't signatures, it was photos of members. These photos made up a huge banner that showed the diversity and presence of each member, more often than not the representative of a large family, carried to multiple actions throughout the campaign. When decision-makers saw hundreds of faces from their own communities, it was impossible to ignore.
Taking the Petition to People in Power
Once the petition hit its target, members took it to local decision-makers.
The first stop was Kim McGuinness, Labour Mayor of the North East Combined Authority. She has spoken publicly about the need to tackle child poverty, but when presented with the petition, she declined to publicly support the campaign's demands to end the two-child benefit cap and NRPF. A meeting was offered after the budget.
Next, members brought the petition to an open Newcastle council meeting, hoping to speak directly to councillors and reaffirm the council's stance on child poverty. Councillors had previously voted in support of ending the two child benefit cap while the Tories were in power, but many elected Labour politicians were now backtracking on this position.
Despite the meeting being advertised as open to the public, the police were called, and the meeting was declared a closed meeting, denying members an opportunity to speak to councillors directly.
Not put off, members sought out a meeting with the Cabinet member for Children and Families, Lesley Storey, who came on board to sign the petition. She wrote to Keir Starmer in support of our campaign demands.
These actions generated both local and national media coverage. The Big Issue and Chronicle Live covered the campaign, helping shift the public narrative in Newcastle. The coverage combined with direct action created sustained pressure, politicians couldn't avoid the issue.
Creative Direct Action
After Kim McGuinness refused to meet with members before the Autumn 2024 Budget, Food & Solidarity staged a creative "Fun Run" outside her office in October 2024. All but one member wore identical Kim McGuinness masks while one member dressed as Keir Starmer chased them around.
The message was clear: Kim McGuinness was running scared of Keir Starmer instead of standing up for the North East's children. Members demanded she stop running from leadership and take real action to scrap the two-child benefit cap and NRPF, not another taskforce or talking shop.
Just before Christmas 2024, members organized a march to Karen Kilgour's constituency surgery, demanding she publicly back the campaign. Despite previously supporting the abolition of the two-child benefit cap and NRPF during the Conservative government's tenure, she refused to confirm the same stance under a Labour government, focusing instead on condemning past Tory actions rather than addressing Labour's continued complicity.
Coordinating Beyond Newcastle, Escalation and Mid-Term Wins
At the same time, Food and Solidarity was building connections with groups across the UK who were interested in campaigning on child poverty. As the Spring 2025 financial statement approached, Food & Solidarity coordinated actions with Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty (EPAC).
On March 21, 2025, protesters in Edinburgh besieged Labour MP Ian Murray's office with a banner reading "If You Exploit Us, We Will Shut You Down." The office remained closed throughout the demonstration. The next day, March 22nd, Food & Solidarity held a picket at Newcastle MP Chi Onwurah's office.
The Newcastle action was particularly creative: members set up a Food & Solidarity ballot box outside Chi's office, handing out Greggs pastries and fruit, and asking people passing by what policies they actually wanted to see. 93 people cast ballots, with 56 policy suggestions, ranging from free school meals for all children to taxing the rich to free public transport. The message was clear: people weren't voting for continued austerity.
Though Food & Solidarity spoke with many other groups across the UK, coordinated action primarily happened between Newcastle and Edinburgh. Still, this showed these issues weren't isolated to one city, they were national, and resistance was growing.
From Action to a Council Decision
As the political landscape shifted, Labour lost its majority on Newcastle City Council. Food and Solidarity then worked with Green councillor Nick Hartley and Newcastle Independents councillor Tracey Mitchell to write a council motion backing the campaign's demands.
Labour attempted to block it. At the final council meeting before the budget, the vote to allow time for the motion passed by just one vote. Then the motion itself, calling for scrapping NRPF and the two-child benefit cap, passed unamended, also by only a few votes.
Alongside previous actions, this placed additional pressure on the Labour leadership to change their stance and finally, a huge win! The two-child benefit cap was abolished in the Autumn 2025 budget.
NRPF remains in place nationally, but Newcastle City Council and key local leaders now publicly support its abolition. The fight continues.
Campaign Timeline
- Autumn 2024: Members vote to launch campaign
- October 2024: Photo petition delivered to Kim McGuinness and Newcastle council; Kim refuses to meet before Autumn Budget; Fun Run staged outside her office
- December 2024: March to Karen Kilgour's constituency surgery before Christmas
- March 21-22, 2025: Coordinated actions in Edinburgh and Newcastle around Spring financial statement
- April 2025: Kim McGuinness releases statement backing abolition of two-child cap
- Summer 2025: Labour loses council majority; motion drafted with Green and Independent councillors
- Autumn 2025: Council motion passes vote; two-child benefit cap abolished in budget
What This Shows
This campaign didn't jump straight to a win. It moved step by step:
- From a conversation at a meeting
- To planning together
- To majority members' support
- To public action and pushback
- To coordination across cities
- And finally, to policy decisions being made
This is a clear reminder that direct action works, especially when it's rooted in lived experience and collective effort.
Get Involved
If you want to get involved in Food and Solidarity's work, join us today. Together, we can continue fighting for justice and ending poverty in our communities.
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