I WAS given a similar time slot last year in the Star following on from the STUC annual Congress, sadly moving to biennial status following a successful general council amendment to the constitution.

This move was seen by most of the trades councils and small unions at the Congress as detrimental to lay democracy, a top-down approach putting more power in the hands of the big unions. Congress has been now been reduced from five days, to four days, to three days, and now will be held every two years after 2027.

While recognising and appreciating the increased support trades councils have received from the STUC in recent years, the promised increase in trades union council meetings does not replace the sovereign decision-making body, the annual Congress.

The reason for the change is of course resources and capacity.

Nobody will dispute the hard shift consistently put in by STUC staff, but the movement needs to provide the wherewithal required to halt what must be seen as a retreat.

Friday’s Star editorial welcomed the Congress card vote to oppose increases in military spending. For me this was the highlight of Congress and to many of delegates sitting around me the vote was a bit more than “welcome,” the delegate behind me said she was ecstatic!

The trades councils showed their worth again with Glasgow and Aberdeen TUC’s moving and seconding the composite motion. It’s been said many times, trades councils make the STUC special, and the special speech from Martin Cavanagh of PCS, which electrified the hall, is worth catching up on the recording of Congress.

The vote is the result of persistent work of peace campaigners in the movement conducted at the base.

The informative output of the Scottish Trade Union Peace Network, affiliated to Scottish CND and Scottish Stop the War, should be acknowledge.

Welfare and wages, not weapons and war, is the message coming from the Scottish trade union movement to George Robertson, John Healey, Keir Starmer and the rest of the warmongers.

The same Star editorial said “It is now time for the TUC and the Scottish TUC to translate their policy into active campaigning on the slogan “welfare not warfare” alongside the peace movement.”

We live in grim times when the news seems to get worse by the day, growth of the far right, war, the super-rich controlling our economy, Britain a vassal state of the US, the role of big pharma.

Clydebank TUC will be playing its small part in this campaigning with its next public meeting on “Healthcare and Welfare, Not Warfare.”

We will be arguing the need to win unions away from the idea that job security results from military production.

Building class consciousness in the trade union movement and organising against the cuts in our communities and for peace is the task at hand.

Tom Morrison is secretary of Clydebank TUC.