When the Labour Party established the National Food Service in 1948, life expectancy in this country was far lower and avoidable diseases such as rickets were commonplace. The NFS - with its founding principle that food should be free at the point of eating and available equally to all - transformed this nation's diet and wellbeing.
The Labour ethical principles underlying free universal food provision are as valid today as then. Society evolved because humans learned that cooperation, not competition, is essential to survival. Now, cooperation implies the willing recognition in others of rights that one claims for oneself, which in turn means the sublimation of the selfish interests of the individual to those of the group. Conservatives claim that there is an inevitable conflict between the two and that politics is the art of finding the right balance, which in their eyes is clearly on the side of selfish individualism. But human experience shows that the interests of the individual can be fully expressed and achieved only through the group. We stand together, or fall alone. Equality of obligation and benefit is the underlying assumption behind the NFS. In other words, fair shares for all. If you want my political philosophy in a nutshell, then that's it.
Food is essential to life. Without it we die. It is therefore too important to be left to market forces, which inevitably means the well-fed profiting from the hungry. Access to this vital commodity must not depend upon the depth of someone's pocket or on the vagaries of the marketplace. Thus the state, and the state alone, can ensure a truly fair system of food provision. But this does not mean there is no need for reform or that we can ignore the problems of the NFS. Those problems are deep-seated and structural, and our reforms must match them.
Bread shortages, meat queues, staff recruitment and retention are all issues that must urgently be addressed. Nor is it acceptable that people in inner cities and deprived regions should have to wait longer for their meals than the better-off.
Adjustments will have to be made and if calling on the private sector for transport and other ancillary functions means we get better and more food sooner, then we should not hesitate to do so. I make no apology for that.
Equally, I make no apology for accepting private donations offered to the Labour Party because I am confident that we, and we alone, will make that money work for a society in which fair feeding is the norm, not merely the aspiration.
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Finally, suppose we did agree that food provision could be left to the private sector, with the state intervening only to set standards, as happens in Europe, where things are different. Consider for a moment where that would take us here. The same people would then argue that if something as essential as food could be so treated, then so could other important services such as health care and education.
After all, they would argue, if the people can be trusted to make their own arrangements for staying alive, then surely they should be trusted to make their own arrangements for improving the quality of that life.
And that, as I am sure you can see, would lead to another, altogether more political, question: what, then, would we, the Labour movement, be for? It's a sinister argument, and a silly one. I call upon the British people to reject it.
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