Lancashire School Meals Campaign

Material from 1980 to 1982 relating to the standard of school meals, notably changes instituted by Lancashire County Council - changes which sparked an outcry and political debate because of the 'fast-food' element, higher charges and restrictions on free meals. It led to The Lancashire School Meals Campaign being set up, one of the founding members being Tim Lang, then a Lecturer at Preston Polytechnic. The campaign was based in Accrington. Events fed into the whole issue of nutritional standards in school meals and the campaign soon gained momentum amongst parents and on a nationwide scale.

Issues raised by the campaign were value for money, fast food element, costs, treatment of packed lunch children, nutritional standards of the meals, hot meals, value of sandwich packed lunches and how to make up nutritional packed lunches, changing attitudes of providers and consumers, children and parents, catering staff and teachers, government regulations preventing school meals being obtained, issue of the recession and government cuts affecting money spent on school meals by local education authorities, issue of food poverty, low income and school meals, tuck shops, involvement of unions such as NUPE, comparison of school meals to workhouse food, effect on socially deprived children of the reduction of school meals, nutritive values, issues of wider social policy and the Welfare State, the effect of the 1980 Education Act on allowing Local Education Authorities to decide for themselves how to operate their school meals service (the effect was they tried to make savings resulting in the running down of school meals services as they had the right to withdraw the service altogether for all but those children with the right to free meals, reduction of school meals staffing was another effect of the savings, and a deleterious effect on catering staff salaries).

Mainly comprises newspaper, newsletter and journal cuttings, extracts from reports on health standards in school meals, manuscript notes, (?)Lancashire Education Committee budgets 1981/1982, few bits of literature, memos and newsletters or circular letters produced by the Lancashire School Meals Campaign, data on school meals from the 1970s, literature on school lunch program in Sweden, some correspondence with organisations and the Department of Education and Science and responses to Tim Lang's letter expressing concern about school meals service, some letters from the Secretary of State for Education and Science to the Campaign, some minutes of Campaign meetings, some press releases, material about a few other local authority school meals services in the UK, plus some Rochdale Child Poverty Action Group newsletters.

1980-1982

1 file (in 4 parts)

Note that the material in these four files is rather jumbled up and no attempt has been made to 'arrange' it.

L0069614-6 in Wellcome Images