In defence of child labour

When I got a text from one of this newspaper’s comment editors asking me if I wanted to write a defence of child labour, I chuckled. Nice try. My mind went immediately to screaming Victorian children getting crushed in textile factories, contracting lung diseases from the furnaces and coming out of chimneys looking like a Dalmatian. My byline photo would smirk, as everyone read the headline next to it and assumed I was calling for the reversal of the 1833 Factory Act.

And that is exactly the problem. Children working has become an unnecessary taboo. OK, it’s probably a better idea to call it “part-time youth employment” than the Dickensian-sounding “child labour”. But it’s very clearly a brilliant thing in the right setting: for them, and for the country. Britain has one of the lowest rates of part-time youth employment in the world. Surely Saturday jobs are the remedy that Britain’s teenagers need?

I say this with absolutely zero personal experience. I didn’t have a part-time job growing up. I lived a feckless childhood in London, trying to learn Kasabian songs on guitar and watching Sunderland vs Burnley. That’s why I’m a journalist, and not something more useful. My achievements will definitely be well surpassed by Dexter Olejarka, a 14-year-old boy, who has just been told by Hampshire county council that his part-time job in his dad’s food truck is unlawful.

Dexter goes to the truck after school on Thursdays and Fridays, and cooks on Saturdays too. His family says he loves it: he’s completed a junior chef course at Eastleigh College, and Dexter himself says that “it’s better than sitting in front of a computer all day”. Dexter was left slightly exposed after one of the most popular foodie YouTuber went and visited the “Crane Feasts” truck (which the family said was named after Dexter’s late grandmother, which prompted me to think, “What on earth was she called?”).

Anyway, the Food Review Club loved Dexter’s food, and decided to give the video the headline “14 YEAR OLD Chef Serving His Creations From His Own Food Truck! Just a Gimmick?”. The commenters loved it: there’s about 9 million congratulating “the lad”, as they all call him, with one even saying that it was “nice to hear of a kid actually using a knife for the right reasons”.

However, the “14 year old” part of the headline slightly blew Dexter’s cover. He thinks that someone got in touch with the authorities off the back of it and complained. The thing is, you can’t be a 14-year-old and work in a commercial kitchen, which the 1933 Children and Young Persons Act defines as “anywhere where food is cooked for sale or for profit”. Yes, you obviously don’t want a six-year-old operating the deep-fat fryer, but the Act would even forbid Dexter from peeling potatoes, or washing broccoli.

I had a look at the Act, and it contains plenty of nonsense. For example, kids can work in pubs, but only if they’re not serving alcohol or working in the kitchen. What would they be there for, then? To clean the loos? Actually, you wouldn’t want that either. Fine, some of the regulations are understandable: kids can’t work in betting shops, for example. That is good. I do not want them exposed to the depths of human misery too early in life.

But the 1933 Act at least needs to be amended so that Dexter can get back to cooking. If not just for him, but also the customer. One of my favourite caffs (which will remain nameless) often has the whole family working on a Saturday. The kid that brings me my bacon sandwich when I’m hungover is about the height of a small bin, but he’s really lovely and is definitely learning more about the world than he would be sitting in his room.

And that’s the most important thing. Within reason, kids doing part-time jobs will teach them about the world. The grimmer the work they do, the more incentivised they’ll feel to work hard at school so they can avoid a rubbish job. Alternatively, they’ll find what they want to do early in life and have a head start. Dexter Olejarka is showing the way. Let him cook.