Manchester United and England forward Marcus Rashford has been awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for his exceptional campaign to secure free meals for vulnerable children during the coronavirus pandemic.
Rashford’s high-profile campaign rallied support across the country after the government announced their intention to suspend the £15-a-week vouchers over the summer.
As pressure mounted and threatened to engulf the government in another crisis, Downing Street were forced into a volte-face and launched a new £120m fund for 1.3 million pupils in England. Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Rashford personally “to thank him for what he’s done”.
“I’m incredibly honoured and humbled. As a young black man from Wythenshawe, never did I think I would be accepting an MBE, never mind an MBE at the age of 22,” Rashford said in a statement via Manchester United.
“This is a very special moment for myself and my family, but particularly my mum who is the real deserving recipient of the honour.
“The fight to protect our most vulnerable children is far from over.
“I would be doing my community, and the families I have met and spoken with, an injustice if I didn’t use this opportunity to respectfully urge the Prime Minister, who recommended me for this honour, to support our children during the October half-term with an extension of the voucher scheme, as the furlough scheme comes to an end and we face increased unemployment.
“Another sticking plaster, but one that will give the parents of millions of children in the UK just one less thing to worry about.
“Let’s stand together in saying that no children in the UK should be going to bed hungry. As I have said many times before, no matter your feeling or opinion, not having access to food is never the child’s fault.”
Rashford has continued his efforts to instigate social change and eradicate child food poverty, assembling a task force of the UK’s biggest supermarkets and food brands to help those worst affected.
“Food poverty is contributing to social unrest,” he wrote in a letter to MPs. “Mothers and fathers are raising respectful, eloquent young men and women, who, in reality, are part of a system that will not allow them the opportunity to win and succeed. Add school closures, redundancies and furloughs into the equation and we have an issue that could negatively impact generations to come. It all starts with stability around access to food.
“To be well-nourished is the foundation of opportunity,” he added. “Any government serious about levelling up will ensure the most disadvantaged children have access to food.”
Rashford’s efforts have received widespread praise and he was awarded a special merit award by the Professional Footballers’ Association last month.
What we’ve done so far, it’s only a short-term answer,” he said at the time. “Me and my team behind me are just trying to find plans on how we can help these children for the rest of their childhood really; to find long-term answers to the problem.
“At the moment we don’t have the answers but we’ll do our best to try to find them, and to progress the situation that they are in at the moment the best we can.”
Also in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list Brendan Foster, the 1976 Olympic bronze medalist who founded the Great North Run, received a knighthood for services to international and national sport and culture in north-east England.
Former Wales rugby union coach Warren Gatland, who stepped down after 12 years at the helm following the 2019 World Cup, was awarded a CBE, while captain Alun Wyn Jones received an OBE for services to rugby union.