Impact case study database

The beneficiaries of the impact can be summarised as:

a) politicians and legislators

b) the policy-informed public and

c) civic campaign groups

Politicians and Legislators

Both Tiernan and Kelly have been invited to address leading fora of politicians and legislators. In 2018 Tiernan addressed the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly on the role of women in British and Irish democracy. In November 2019 Kelly addressed the Embassy of Ireland to Great Britain on ‘Anglo-Irish relations: from St John Henry Newman and the Catholic University of Ireland to Brexit’. Both academics helped to highlight issues of concern to parliamentarians and equipped politicians and their teams with historical analysis of issues relevant to the 2015, 2016 and 2018 referenda.

Kelly’s research has informed the ‘moderate’ nationalist parties on the island of Ireland (Fianna Fáil and the SDLP) on historical approaches to Irish unity (increasingly a possibility following Brexit). In 2014 General Secretary of Fianna Fáil, Seán Dorgan, called Kelly’s work ‘interesting’ and forwarded it to party leader – and present Taoiseach – Micheál Martin; Pat McParland, Director of Communications, Fianna Fáil, subsequently requested that Kelly address Fianna Fáil’s national executive on how history could inform future approaches to unification. In 2017, Micheál Martin accepted Kelly’s invitation to deliver a public lecture in Liverpool around Brexit and Irish unity. The contents of Mr Martin’s address linked directly to Kelly’s research vis-à-vis Fianna Fáil’s historical attitude to Northern Ireland. In 2018 Lisa Chambers, Fianna Fáil spokesperson on Brexit, invited Kelly to address the parliamentary party on the historical context informing a potential merger with Northern Ireland’s Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). In 2019, the SDLP announced an electoral merger with Fianna Fáil.

A 2020 testimony from Irish head of state President Michael D. Higgins, in the wake of the 2015 and 2018 votes and in the context of the debate around gender and the Irish constitution, praised Tiernan’s research for bringing to light a hidden history of a radical pioneer of equal rights. Higgins was responsible for signing the legislative change into law, and declared himself “indebted” to her work.

The Policy-informed Public

On 22 May 2015, the thirty-fourth amendment to the Constitution of Ireland was passed by popular vote, permitting marriage between two persons without regard to their sex. The move was, according to The Guardian, ‘hailed as a social revolution and welcomed around the world’. On the back of this historic vote, Tiernan wrote in the Irish Post and Irish Times newspapers urging further Irish constitutional change to respect women’s rights, citing her research on Gore-Booth and with reference to the ‘Repeal the Eighth’ campaign, the movement to overturn the eighth amendment to the Irish constitution of 1983, which made abortion illegal in nearly all circumstances. Increasingly a public voice for Irish women’s rights and women’s history, as the 2018 referendum loomed Tiernan was interviewed on BBC’s Woman’s Hour (3.7 million weekly listens); Pantisocracy, RTÉ national radio chat show hosted by drag queen Panti Bliss aka Rory O’Neil (31 July 2017); and RTÉ’s Morning Ireland (average daily listenership 448,000, February 2018). She commented on the 100^th anniversary of the votes for women campaign in the context of the referendum on the eighth amendment, framing the debate around women’s rights.

President Higgins’ ‘indebtedness’ to Tiernan is significant in terms of the constitutional position of the Irish President: as official representative of the Irish people, Higgins was expressing the indebtedness of all Irish citizens.

In a series of interviews and opinion pieces with Ireland’s national broadcaster RTÉ, Kelly, too, has established himself as a leading public voice, in his case on unification.

Civic Campaign Groups

As mentioned, Kelly’s work in communicating historical perspective on Irish unity impacted not only political leaders but also rank-and-file party membership and campaigners. Similarly, the referendum victories of 2015 and 2018 were the result of many years of campaigning by civil society groups and citizen’s assemblies as a prelude to the public vote.

Tiernan was commissioned to write the history of the ‘Repeal the Eighth’ campaign. In the foreword to that book, long-time women’s rights and LGBT campaigner Senator Ivana Bacik praised Tiernan’s ‘invaluable contribution’ to the struggle. Tiernan was prominent in public campaigns, too, including supporting a lobby by LGBTQ+ community activists for a pillar commemorating Esther Roper in her hometown of Manchester in 2015. Tiernan’s work with civic campaign groups indicates the reach and significance of her research. She has continued her public-facing research into women’s and gender rights, in 2019 delivering a public lecture at National Museums Liverpool on Eva Gore-Booth and Esther Roper to mark LGBT History month and in 2020 a Facebook reading and Q&A hosted by campaign group LGBT Ireland.

The impact comprised 1) enhanced public understanding of how approaches to public feeding were of relevance today 2) the provision of historical context to policy around contemporary food poverty and 3) nutritional and social benefits to key user groups.

1. In order to enhance public understanding of how wartime approaches to food poverty resonate today, these creative commemorations were publicised nationally, for example one of the recreation events [held in Liverpool on 29 March 2017] featured several times on BBC1’s ‘Breakfast’ show (7 million viewers); BBC News 24 (505,000 viewers) and BBC North West Tonight (329,000 viewers).This publicity inspired innovative commemoration from third parties. Enhanced public understanding of national kitchens is evidenced through emails and letters to Evans from individuals looking to set up their own public feeding schemes based upon the national kitchens model. One wrote ‘I’m not officially under the poverty line. I’m 23 years old and I earn £22,000pa. Sounds good for someone my age, right? But I live in London which means I actually earn around £8,000-£9,000 pa after taxes and rent. I mention this because I would happily eat every supper at a national kitchen if I knew I was getting meat, veg and, I don’t know, rice and cost only a couple of quid. That’s coming from someone who sees himself as middle-class.’ Many people asked for pointers on how to recreate national kitchens in their communities, with one woman saying the research had inspired her to ‘lobby politicians and newspapers’ championing this ‘brilliant idea’ for ‘cheap nourishing meals which save on food, fuel, money and time’. Local groups held events exploring social eating as an aspect of WW1 commemoration. For example, in 2018 Evans’ mini-exhibition was loaned to the Imperial War Museum's Women's Work 100 project and to a community history project in Devon; in 2019 a National Lottery Heritage Fund project in Harwich, Essex used Evans’ research as the basis for a touring theatrical performance about life during the war. In achieving enhanced public awareness, the research was used by producers from Wall to Wall Television, makers of BAFTA-nominated Back in Time for Dinner, for the follow-up series Further Back in Time for Dinner, which aired on BBC2 in 2017.

2. The research added historical perspective to debate around contemporary UK food policy. Evans was consulted by several lobby groups including the UK Government Parliamentary Working groups listed above; Food for Soul (an Italian food waste charity); Food Train (a Scottish non-profit supporting elderly people in food poverty); and the Independent Food Aid Network. He was invited to speak at discussions which informed the APPG on Hunger’s subsequent national report ‘Feeding Britain: The first 100 days’ (APPGH, 2015) and the APPG on Hunger’s inquiry into school holiday hunger (APPGH, 2017) and spoke at workshops as part of the Fabian Society’s report Hungry for Change (2015) which called for a new Ministry of Food and for local authorities to establish food access plans addressing food insecurity. The Labour Party invited Evans to convene a meeting featuring ‘alternative voices’ on food poverty which included the Association of Public Sector Excellence, Public Health England and Tesco Corporate Social Responsibility. Evans also addressed MPs interested in this issue from the four nations at Portcullis House, Westminster, advising that the UK could borrow from global best practice as well as its history of wartime dining in efforts to diversify food poverty provision, with an emphasis on social eating rather than the basic ‘take away’ food bank. The research helped inform critical debate around food policy, contributing towards reports and political thought leading, in February 2019, to the announcement of a government ‘national index of food insecurity’.

3. In targeting specific groups at-risk of food poverty, the events stimulated ideas for action. On the back of national publicity Evans was invited to provide a public lecture and kitchen at Preston’s 2017 Feast for Peace - a special event organised by city councillors as a riposte to rallies by the Britain First group - at which he claimed national kitchens promoted intercommunality around food, especially for the homeless, children and the elderly. In targeting the homeless, anonymous feedback from a participant in one of the recreations read ‘I live on the streets. This was a great opportunity for me to feel human again’ and another ‘this really helps those who are homeless’. A letter from a voluntary worker in Birmingham outlined how the research prompted her to consult local homeless on their daily food budget, calculating that the roll-out of a new ‘national kitchens’ model would provide them with a £2.50 saving per day. Others spoke of how using food banks left them feeling ‘ashamed and depressed’ but that the national kitchens project ‘socially, has an air of magic to it’ / was an ‘adaptable and transferable model’ / ‘built community’ / ‘inspired us to set up a community kitchen’. The pilot school holiday hunger schemes for children in Birkenhead were praised by the Archbishop of Canterbury and led to the roll-out of food poverty initiatives that moved away from the basic ‘hand out’ food bank model and towards the WW1 model including (by 2018) the establishment of ‘food bank plus’ as best practice alongside ‘hot food for the homeless’ schemes. The implementation of national kitchens for local elderly at risk of malnutrition was praised by the manager of Age Concern Liverpool, who wrote to Evans thanking him for the idea of using the armband tool, which was ‘made easier thanks to the party atmosphere’ leading to the identification of ‘two users with low scores on the armband’; she added that ‘we were able to ensure that on their next visits they were eating properly and their armband scores have since improved.’