TUC policy in support of increased military spending must be reversed, speaker after speaker demanded at a lobby in support of the UCU resolution Wages not Warfare. UCU’s resolution is due to be debated on the conference floor tomorrow (9 September) at the annual congress in Brighton.
In congratulating UCU and Stop the War Coalition activist, Sean Vernell, for organising Sunday’s lobby, StW deputy president Andrew Murray said the TUC’s decision in 2022 to campaign for an increase in military spending was “a stain on the British trade union movement that must be wiped away”.
“It’s a policy that divides the movement. It pits a small number of workers in particular industries against the great majority of trade unionists, particularly those in the public services. It’s divisive, it splits the working class movement, and attacks the interests of the working class as a whole.
“If anyone thinks you can have both guns and butter under this or any other government you are living in a fool’s paradise!”
Murray pointed out that already the Starmer government’s militarism, which has seen an increase in defence spending to 2.5 percent of GDP and is set to rise to 3.5 or even five percent, is being paid for by families and children around the world who have been dependent on British aid, and now by British working people.
“Where do we think that increased spending is going to come from? It’s coming from welfare for the disabled, from benefits for the pensioners, from the very fabric of public services and the welfare state. That’s why, while Starmer’s slogan is ‘make the poor pay for my war’, our’s is ‘welfare not warfare’.”
Murray pointed out that the last 25 years has seen wars supported by the British ruling class and both Labour and Tory governments. These wars have killed millions of people around the world and destroyed whole countries – from Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya to Syria, now its Ukraine and of course the British supported genocide in Gaza.
“Can the working class say we should give that ruling class, that state, more weapons, more guns? They will not be used, are never used for the defence of the British people, they are being used for criminal wars of imperial aggression around the world.
“The TUC conference theme this year is ‘Winning in the Workplace’. We have to say to every TUC delegate that supporting and giving the British ruling class more means of mass destruction is not winning in the workplace, it is betraying workers here and across the world. So let’s unite to bring this to an end and support the UCU motion.”
NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede, whose union is seconding the UCU motion, said that education funding had been completely decimated over the last decade.
“We now spend about 3.2 percent of GDP a year on education, when we used to spend 5.5 percent. We’ve got a very dark recruitment and retention problem in schools in this country. Keir Starmer should prioritise children not weapons and war. Let’s build a better future that lifts children out of poverty instead.”
His colleague Jess Edwards, a member of the NEU’s executive committee, described how the return to school this week in England and Wales had been overshadowed by the thought of every Palestinian child who will never return because Israel has killed them or destroyed their schools.
“Nothing is more important than the lives of those Palestinian children: not jobs, not weapons, not arms factories. There are no jobs on a planet that has been bombed to destruction. There is no job more important than stopping the slaughter in Palestine. Every single delegate needs to go to their delegation, fight for this [UCU] motion. If you have colleagues, friends, comrades, relatives in unions where the leadership wants to put their interests before the slaughter of children, talk to them, get them to raise the argument, to overturn the decision of their leadership.
“Nothing is more important at this conference. This country is complicit in genocide, we will not have a trade union movement that shares in that complicity.”
Stop the War officer and former RMT president Alex Gordon brought confirmation that his union was fully behind the UCU resolution.
“We’ve seen a succession of reactionary positions adopted by our movement which have called for military spending to be increased to 2.5 percent of GDP and to be spent on arms manufacturing and development, including in 2022 when the Conservative government wasn’t even in favour of it. And now we’re in a position where we have a Labour government, that much of the trade union movement campaigned for, which said it will increase to 2.7 then three percent and now Donald Trump has instructed them to spend five percent of GDP on arms.
“It’s more than we spend on our NHS, it’s an absolute abomination perpetrated by politicians and the RMT cannot support this. The movement has to say this is not in the interests of the people of this country or its members. There are no jobs on a dead planet. That’s not an abstract slogan, we are nearing the point when war between nuclear armed powers is going to happen in our lifetime. Our movement must stand for peace, not war, and for building our public services and welfare state.”