It was, I think, the Spam that broke me. The infamous blend of processed pork and ham has always been, with the best will in the world, poverty food. Cheap and long-lasting, the foodstuff whose name apocryphally stands for ‘spare parts and animal meat’ became iconic for helping see Britain through the deprivations of the Second World War; it is telling that, when Spam’s manufacturer Hormel brought legal action against the Jim Henson Workshop for naming a fictious pig after their product in the film Muppet Treasure Island, the judge dismissed the lawsuitby commenting: ‘One might think Hormel would welcome the association with a genuine source of pork.’
Spam is also a key ingredient inbudae jjigae, a dish created out of necessity and desperation in the aftermath of the Korean War, when South Korea was wracked by poverty and famine, and thousands were therefore forced to sustain themselves on those provisions which could be scrounged — sometimes literally from the garbage — of American military bases. An incongruous stew of ramen, hot dogs, kimchi, and (of course) Spam, it is an archetypal and distinctly anti-imperialist example of peasant cuisine — the creation of something ingenious and delicious from not very much at all. It is, in extremis, the classic ‘struggle meal’, and in times of struggle, an old favourite of mine.
Far too many in the UK right now will recognise what it is like to shop for food, as I do, whilst in receipt of Universal Credit’s dubious largesse. Doing so, you quickly become an expert at knowing precisely which supermarkets offer the cheapest option; you treat anything capable of bestowing flavour — herbs, garlic, hot sauce — as if they were gold dust; you start to appreciate whyBen Gunn was so obsessed with cheese. You may also find that even those groceries that were once relied upon in lean times have become intolerably prohibitive. This revelation struck me when I discovered that a 200g tin of Spam at my local store now costs £3.15 — the kind of money for which I might as well buy, y’know, recognisable meat. I realised that budae jjigae, a recipe invented to feed a nation ravaged by privation, was now outside my price range.
None of this is a great secret; in the five years leading up to this July, food pricesincreased by 37 percent, compared to a rise of 4.4 percent over the preceding five-year period. This can be attributed to multiple factors — inflation, climate change-induced drought, and the disruption of global supply chains by international discord — but the result is that Britain is catastrophically afflicted by food poverty. According to surveys by the anti-poverty charity Trussell Trust this month, more than 14 million people across the UK faced going hungry last year due to a lack of money. Trussell Trust’s Helen Barnard commented: ‘We have already created a generation of children who’ve never known life without food banks.’
While you may or may not have heard all this in the news — as if you needed reminding after adding up your weekly food bills — you will likely not have heard these issues mentioned amidst the febrile discourse surrounding the terrifying spectre of shoplifting, which, for some mysterious reason, much of the British media has decided is a considerably more pressing matter. In July, figures for the Crime Survey for England and Wales for the year up to March 2025 reported that shoplifting offences were at theirhighest level since records began in 2003, with the Office for National Statistics reporting 530,643 cases of shoplifting over the same year. Last month, the House of Commons library analysis revealed that almost 290,000 cases of shoplifting in England and Wales were closed by policewithout a suspect being identified, and only 18 percent led to an alleged perpetrator being charged.
Predictably, such reports have provoked considerable outrage from the cloisters of the British Right; in their telling, endemic shoplifting is indicative not of our ongoing cost-of-living crisis, but a breakdown in the social order that has rendered the UK a lawless dystopia where crime can be committed without consequence and no tin of baked beans is safe. The tenor of this discourse was much revealed when the police instructed a North Wales retailer to remove a sign describing shoplifters as ‘scumbags’. This earned numerous fulminating editorials in the right-wing pressdefending this characterisation, with noted paragon of compassion Rod Liddle raging inTheSpectator that the episode suggests ‘not only has shoplifting been decriminalised, but that shoplifters constitute a ‘vulnerable’ community and that their sensibilities should not be disquieted.’ ‘It is time to “step in and shame the criminals,’ wrote Liddle’s colleagueRobert Taylor; ‘the law-abiding majority must fight back.’
Against whom, precisely? While much attention has been paid to the threat of organised criminal gangs systematically targeting stores throughout the country, retailers have instead warned of a dramatic rise in the number ofpensioners shoplifting. Speaking to PA Media in May, Kingdom Security director commented: ‘Ten years ago, five years ago, you wouldn’t have seen this kind of theft. We put it down to the cost of living. People can’t afford to spend £10, £20 on food. It’s desperation.’ This reality rather complicates the prevailing right-wing narrative that the supposed blight of shoplifting can be attributed to hardened and shameless criminals.
It should not require lengthy explication to argue why stealing bread to live should not be considered a crime, but if you want one, there’s a book by Victor Hugo (Les Misérables) you might be interested in. The Right, however, particularly in the UK, has never truly abandoned the noxious Victorian segregation of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor, and never tires of finding ways to reassign and more and more people into the latter category; it is why confected panics over crime — major or minor, real or imagined — remain so useful to their purposes.
You will find no shortage of left-wing proposals for the kind of major action necessary to ease the burden of the cost-of-living crisis, from price controls to a dramatic expansion in state benefits. Yet, until these measures can be implemented, it is not enough to condemn deprivation without also defending those it has forced into acts of desperation. In modern Britain, shoplifting is not only an explicable but justifiable response to otherwise impossible circumstances.
Left-wing defences of shoplifting are not new, but have often framed the practice as an act of anti-capitalist resistance rather than a necessity; such anarchist and illegalist arguments can, in the modern context, appear rather quaint. Offering tips for effective shoplifting in 1970sSteal This Book, Abbie Hoffman advises: ‘Become a discriminating shopper and don’t stuff any of the cheap shit in your pockets.’ Sadly, today’s shoplifters are left with little choice, as more expensive goods — fresh meat, butter, chocolate — are now commonly bedecked with more electronic security apparatus than a LoJack car.
Nevertheless, Hoffman’s contention that shoplifting can be a tool for survival has unfortunately lost none of its relevance. Its prevalence in Britain today demands that the Left not only analyse and abominate the economic context which gives rise to shoplifting, but stand in solidarity with those who must engage in it, especially in the face of a concerted right-wing campaign to turn them into the latest criminal class to be performatively crushed. Failing to do so would be a disservice to the impoverished and an abnegation of the Left’s responsibility.
For those who are wondering, I do not shoplift. Not because of any ethical objection — I’m simply too much of a coward to try. Besides, if I had the skillset to become a successful criminal, I would never have become a journalist. But who knows what the future may hold? With the kind of irony I could live without, as I was in the middle of writing this article, my old friends at the DWP got in touch; since an unexpected outage by my internet provider prevented me from attending an online appointment, I am to be sanctioned by upwards of £300. For some reason, I could really go for some Spam right now.
So, remember: if you see someone shoplifting? No you didn’t.