Protesters from the CND, Stop the War, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Muslim Association of Britain, Palestinian Forum in Britain and Friends of Al-Aqsa, lead a national demonstration to the US Embassy in London to call for an end to attacks on Iran, Marc
THE TUC could adopt a comprehensive anti-war policy at its Congress this year, PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote suggested today.
Speaking at a Stop the War Coalition fringe meeting at PCS’s annual conference, she said that the “monumental effort” made to adopt such a policy had been thwarted to date by opposition from large unions.
But the “tide is turning,” she told delegates in Brighton, with “more unions that perhaps abstained or didn’t take a position on it actually taking a position for peace.”
Last year’s TUC Congress saw unions narrowly pass a vote to reverse a policy from 2022 to support increases in defence spending despite Unite, Prospect and GMB opposing the University and College Union’s “wages, not weapons” motion.
Ms Heathcote added that while PCS has “very clear” policies against supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza the “difficulty is the legal advice isn’t terribly helpful.
“It doesn’t support a collective response on all of that which makes it quite hard.”
Stop the War Coalition co-convener Lindsey German told the meeting that the West’s military intervention in the Middle East and Latin America have coincided with a “huge attack on public-sector wages, conditions and jobs.”
Britain is seeing rising unemployment and a cost-of-living crisis which is “going to be massively exacerbated” by Iran’s closure and the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, she added.
“In this setting we are only just beginning to see the impact this will have on energy prices, food prices… and they will try to make us pay for those rises.”
