Come on Newcastle! Do it for the Toon

On Saturday 50.000 Newcastle United fans will pack the club’s iconic St James’ Park stadium for the local derby with Sunderland. I’ll be there hoping United beat their old rivals and cheer up a city which identifies closely with the Magpies and is in need of the lift a win would give it.

Newcastle has eight food banks and seven low cost food centres, a stark reminder of the hardship afflicting too many people in what Cameron and Osborne are trying to pass off as a recovering economy in which, as the IFS report today, the poorer are being hard hit.

In the Benwell and Scotswood ward which I represent on the City Council, one of the 10% most deprived wards in the country, we have one food bank and the schools have breakfast clubs. This week a busy food bank in the adjoining ward closed, but is now re-opening thanks to another local institution, Greggs. I’ve challenged Newcastle United and its sponsor, Wonga, to make a financial contribution to support the work of these dedicated organisations and the volunteer helpers who work tirelessly to help the neediest in our community.

This, after all, is the week United have received £25m from the sale of Yohan Cabaye, arguably the club’s best player this season. If the club donated £1 for every fan attending Saturday’s match it would hardly notice the impact. Such an amount would be a mere fraction of the weeky wage bill, let alone the annual bill, but it would help sustain a resource which is a lifeline for people struggling to feed themselves and their children.

Football was born out of working class communities in the 19^th Century. Newcastle’s Jackie Milburn, a gentle star who came from a mining town and family and whom I had the honour of nominating for the Freedom of the City in 1980, and who earned a pittance compared to today’s players, would be horrified to learn that for thousands of people in Newcastle and other towns and cities 19^th Century Poor Law is being revived and the hungry are increasingly dependent on charity. 

Jeremy Beecham is a Labour Peer and a long-serving Newcastle City Councillor