What a soup kitchen in London’s financial district thinks about a windfall tax on the banks

“We’re bankers, too,” jokes Sal, standing in line to collect groceries. “Food bankers. But yeah, they do walk past though.”

Just a few minutes’ walk from the UK’s financial centre, Our Forgotten Neighbours soup kitchen serves the Tower Hamlets community in the East End of London.

When Big Issue visits – after an afternoon spent interviewing City of London bankers – set-up is in full swing. Crates line the square: fresh fruit and veg; canned goods, sausages, sandwiches, bottles of water, stir-fry kits. Volunteers buzz around, chatting with attendees and catching up.

“People queue from about 2 o clock,” says Victoria Barnett, who runs the weekly operation with her husband Vincent. “There’s always plenty of need.”

Read more:

• Don’t listen to JP Morgan. Britain’s benefits system is dire
• Overwhelming majority of Brits say the country feels divided
• The stereotype is that homelessness comes from bad choices – but it could happen to anyone

London’s financial centre is not all gleaming skyscrapers and Pret a Mangers. In fact, it’s ringed by pockets of serious deprivation.  

The borough of Tower Hamlets is at the sharp end of many of the problems that the government has pledged to fix. Some 47% of children there live in poverty, the highest rate in the country, and food insecurity is widespread. More than 25,000 families are on the social housing waitlist.

Solutions to these entrenched problems don’t come cheap. And recently, a windfall tax on the banks has been mooted as one way of generating the necessary revenue.

After spending an afternoon chatting to Square Mile city workers about this policy proposal, Big Issue visited a nearby food bank to ask customers the same question.

Sal is one of the first people I speak to. Staying in a hostel nearby, he counts himself “very lucky” because he receives universal credit – but “things are still tough”. On the windfall tax, he’s unequivocally supportive.

“The 1% have more money than they’d need in 10 lifetimes. Why’d they have all that stuff about the welfare bill? Cutting welfare,” he said.

“I worry it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse for everyone. The economy is in such a bad shape, but most people are focused on migrants. Look at what it costs to put people up [in asylum hotels], it isn’t a huge sum, £5 billion, yeah, but there’s £100bn offshore.”

Fellow queuer Lucy – a lifelong East Londoner who proudly tells us that she’s a cockney, “born by the Bow Bells” – has been coming to the food bank for three or four months.

Like Sal, she thinks the inequality in the area isn’t fair and “most definitely” supports a tax on the banks.

“It’s difficult, I’ve paid taxes all my life, since I was 16… I lost my job in the pandemic, lost working and getting up and having a function to live.”

“The cost of living has gone up, the electricity, the gas and things like that. You see people begging here. We all try and look after each other but it’s getting much more difficult.”

Since August 2020, Our Forgotten Neighbours has endeavoured to take the edge of the worst of this difficulty. Victoria and Vincent and their team of ten or so volunteers have provided the community tens of thousands of meals over the last half-decade.

It was all started by a chance encounter; Victoria tells Big Issue.

“It was raining really heavy. We were arguing what type of takeaway to get,” she says. “There was a young guy sitting there, homeless, crying. I’ll always remember him.”

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it. My husband says, you keep crying every time you see a homeless person, what shall we do about it? We decided to start soup kitchen to feed people, because we every day so why shouldn’t other people?”

They pooled some savings to start the organisation, soliciting donations from friends. It took off: Our Forgotten Neighbours nos feeds around 100 families every week, and have expanded to Finsbury Park. in 2023, Big Issue named them as one of our Changemakers.

But funding remains an issue. They’ve as yet been unable to secure a government grant, and so rely on donations from supermarkets and the public.

In this context, Victoria’s positive about the idea of a windfall tax. This part of London really is a tale of two cities, she says.

“On one side, in Whitechapel, it’s pure poverty. Then you cross over the lights at Aldgate, and you’re in the middle of the city, really, with all the big buildings and city workers. It’s literally across the road.”

“They have to walk past our soup kitchen, and all these homeless people, to commute. It’s mad.”

City workers don’t tend to be the biggest donors, she says. “They’re sort of tunnel vision. They leave their work and they just want to get home… It’s people like us that donate more, they’re closer to it.”

It’s a common sentiment among the volunteers. Lindsay runs a clothes stall every week at the food bank. Brightly coloured tops, shoes, and adorn her trestle table – providing visitors “something to make themselves feel good about themselves when they’re in positions where they’re maybe not generally feeling good”.

The soup kitchen is “sandwiched in between Canary Wharf and the banking district”, she says – the inequality is obvious.

“Of course the bankers you spoke to are against it,” she says, when I put their arguments – largely concerning threats to growth – to her. “But how many of them will pass by here every single Thursday and then, you know, go and get in their Lamborghinis?”

“I mean, I’m joking but, I’m also not.”

It’s not certain that the funds raised by a bank tax would make its way to organisations like Our Forgotten Neighbours. But with the autumn budget approaching, the concerns raised by volunteers and customers aren’t going anywhere.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

Change a vendor’s life this Christmas.

Buy from your local Big Issue vendor every week – or support online with a vendor support kit or a subscription – and help people work their way out of poverty with dignity.