The Food Problem & the GLC
By Tim Lang
As a development economist, it is perhaps no surprise that Robin Murray took such an interest in food matters. In the 1950-70s, political engagement with food had slipped down the agenda from its frontline status in and immediately after World War 2. Then it was part of the major reconstruction in the post-war settlement. There was to be a massive investment into rebuilding agriculture to stabilise food supply, while increasing it. This pattern which rolled for the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st is now all being questioned. And Robin saw and aided that questioning.
Capital investment poured into food and farming, unleashing the agrichemical revolution, incentivising ‘inefficient’ farmers to leave, and pursuing output almost at any cost. It worked. Output rose. But a mix of complacency, arrogance and then new facts emerged. The arrogance was mostly in the West which thought it had resolved the Food Problem; only the developing world was a problem still, but that was in liberation struggles or post-colonial politics. And gradually from the 1970s, the new insights emerged on the environment, health and work. Robin saw that all very early. Today in the 2020s, the ecosystems destruction is widely known, but he saw and backed the development of policy and ideas on how what we might call ‘ecological public health’ could be linked to food as work.
As a political economist, he grasped that over-production of food simply meant it became ubiquitous, cheapened, and commodified into what today we term ‘ultra-processed’ foods, high in salt, fats and sugar – food which looks like food but comes in a packet, mass produced, from a factory, blended from commodities. Britain in his lifetime (and mine) moved from the under-consuming cautious food culture in which Britain was infamous for brown food to today when food culture has both been loosened but constrained. Giant supermarkets and catering combines offer the tastes of the world 24 hours / 364 days a year. In his brilliant Benetton Britain paper, Robin charted the new mix of production and consumption that was emerging, where flexible specialisation nominally put the consumer in charge – if certain clothes sell in this or that town, they can be replenished fast. Small batches can be mass produced. Distribution and new market information mediates between supply and sale. This was a shift in how late capitalism worked, he argued. Today, agri-food partly has accelerated that pattern – think of the ubiquity of just-in-time supply chains - but also it has pursued mass commodified quasi-Fordist long-run food supply, held in the market by huge advertising and product placement – a wing of the cultural industries: the systematic moulders of consciousness. To the end, Robin was fascinated by the innovation and imagination unfolding.
Robin saw the importance of food as a multi-disciplinary, multi-channel problem, and how it fragile it could be. Right away at the Greater London Council (GLC), he employed people who saw food as an integrating politics: Robin Jenkins a development sociologist and Sandy Hunt, a nutritionist. Within the Economics team, with Robin’s guidance, they built the thinking about London’s food challenge and what the regional government might do. They forged the blended approach for food within the London Industrial Strategy: part nutrition and health, part jobs and economics, part culture and service economy, part skills, part pleasure. Something to be invested by the Greater London Enterprise Board. This all-encompassing grasp shows Robin’s formidable reach. Whether helping set up TWIN Trading, which spawned Cafédirect, the Dick Day Chocolate Company (now Divine Chocolate) and latterly Liberation Nuts, or funding the London Food Commission, of which I was the Director 1984-90, which did much to deepen UK appreciation of the need to rethink food policy, or thinking about what is now termed the Circular Economy in his sojourn post-GLC in Canada by working on the enormous problem of waste, or contributing to radical reassessment of the Co-op movement – I think of his brilliant 2011 Cooperation in the Age of Google report - Robin was there with his laser-like and questioning mind, his charm and energy, always encouraging others and providing framework.
I am one of hundreds, thousands, who owe Robin so much. He took a punt on backing the London Food Commission (LFC). He consistently supported its team working. While much of the GLC economics work was about jobs and the restructuring of London – for instance recognising how motorways meant Heinz could close its London factory and relocate to Kitt Green, Wigan - he nurtured the mix of good research and daring thinking. Was London’s future one where cultural industries might replace food manufacturing, where catering could be part of the transition to the service economy, where food which has historically flowed into London might be reformed to improve public health and rebuild good jobs? No small questions.
The case for a food, health and education think-tank for Londoners was part of wider thinking. Set up in 1984, the LFC was to promote the public good through the food system. The questions are even more vital today, with climate change upon us, pandemics rocking complacency, and jobs precarious. What is good food work? Why is it low waged, always threatened with de-skilling and automation? Can dietary improvement lead to better food jobs? Why are social divisions so persistent in food? What do we want from land? What, indeed, is ‘good’ food? These questions remain urgent today. Straightaway the LFC showed that Londoners’ health and its class divide were themes for food supply. It produced the first reports on the needs of London’s black and ethnic minorities. It worked on school food standards (which had been abolished by the Thatcher government). It reported on inequalities and the needs of infants. It supported local authority environmental health and trading standards bodies making links to the rising evidence of environmental crisis. It reviewed new technologies in food production (from additives to irradiation). It championed criticism of how adulterated food has been normalised with commodified ingredients, pouring fat, salt and sugar down mouths. No wonder we have the rampant obesity crisis today.
Once again, as in the divisive politics of the 1980s and 90s, it is being recognised that good food is or ought to be a common right today. And we relearn how food standards shape trade. How poor quality diets mean people on low incomes die early. And how food work is consistently low waged but is an essential for life. These conflicts and pressure points were illuminated by Robin and many teams of colleagues he energised all his life. I was privileged to know him and to feel the warmth of his gaze.
August 2020