While slashing welfare and public services, Labour’s spring statement delivers a bonanza for death-dealing bomb merchants. We now see the true and terrible face of austerity 2.0, writes MICHAEL BURKE
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The TUC should not support the British government's war policy in Ukraine
Stop the War Coalition's CHRIS NINEHAM explains why a resolution before Congress this year risks committing the labour movement to a policy of escalating the war in Europe
Detailing the deluge of delusion and dishonesty pushed by the pro-war camp, IAN SINCLAIR identifies four key tactics corporate journalists use to confuse audiences and suppress opposition to the proxy war in the east
From ‘moral duty’ to ‘military Keynesianism,’ Labour manipulates language to justify slashing welfare but pouring billions into warfare, condemning communities like Glasgow South West to deeper poverty, writes MATT KERR
With politicians dismissing constituents’ fears of global war, the peace movement must look beyond Parliament to prevent catastrophe, writes TOM MORRISON
The mass movement supporting Palestine represents potential political power that the left must now embrace as central to its strategy, writes HUGH LANNING, ahead of this Saturday’s Socialism or Barbarism day school in London
Health Secretary Wes Streeting taking £53k from Tory-linked recruiter and outsourcer Peter Hearn’s OPD Group is a great example of how Labour’s rich donors shape policies targeting the poor – not their wealth, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
MAT COWARD recalls the communist and pacifist aristocrat whose commitment made a difference in the Spanish civil war, the Blitz and WWII Europe
THE trade union movement in Britain has an excellent recent record of opposing Britain’s involvement in foreign wars. Ever since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, through the dreadful attack on Iraq and the bombing of Syria and Libya, unions have played an important role not just in opposing successive British governments’ warmongering but in mobilising against it.
Last year a GMB resolution calling for increased arms spending narrowly passed at the TUC after an intense debate, undermining that record. It called on Congress to back an increase in arms spending to 3 per cent of GDP at a time when wages were in free fall and welfare was being slashed. It actually put the TUC to the right of the Tory government which even now only dares to push for 2.5 per cent arms spending.
This year a composite resolution on Ukraine threatens to overturn the trade unions’ anti-war record. The resolution follows logically from last year’s call for increased arms spending by effectively asking the movement to back Tory war policy against Russia.
More from this author
CHRIS NINEHAM slams the deepening and dangerous Western hypocrisy in backing Israeli attacks while condemning any kind of resistance or retaliation, warning of a potential global conflict if we don’t take action immediately
As Israel targets Hamas and Hezbollah leaders beyond Gaza in a campaign of deliberate provocation, CHRIS NINEHAM calls for a global protest movement against Israel's Western sponsors to prevent a wider war
CHRIS NINEHAM of the Stop the War Coalition argues that escalating the Ukraine war is a recipe for disaster — and we are already paying the price
We should be under no illusions – the massive expansion of Nato in eastern Europe since the cold war is of direct relevance to today’s brutal conflict, argues CHRIS NINEHAM, of Stop the War
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