We oppose the TUC’s call for an increase in arms spending. The British arms industry supplies some of the most aggressive and authoritarian regimes in the world and the weapons it exports have helped to destabilize whole regions of the world and contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
It is wrong for any labour movement body to be calling for extra money to be spent on weapons, particularly when workers’ wages are falling way behind inflation and the government is pushing through drastic cuts to vital services. An increase in the arms bill is an ineffective way to create additional jobs in manufacturing.
We support unions’ action in defence of all jobs but we believe that extra state resources should be used instead to rescue the NHS, schools and public services from collapse and to create useful jobs in green industries and elsewhere.