UNIONS backed “wages, not weapons” at TUC Congress today, reversing a policy from 2022 to support increases in defence spending.

Delegates voted with a small margin in favour, with Unite, Prospect and GMB speaking against the motion.

Moving, University and College Union general secretary Jo Grady warned that the country is “broken,” with public services either privatised or starved of funding.

“Yet we can still afford the world’s fifth-biggest military budget, [with] £59.8 billion found for weapons [and none] for wages,” she said.

“Make no bones about it: this is an anti-worker agenda. It is a direct attack on our interests, class, communities and our movement.”

Ms Grady said that the vote to support increased military funding at Congress three years ago “put us on the wrong side of history.”

“Today, we have the chance to put that right,” she said. “Our priority should be on wages, public services and our communities.

“That means that we need to vote to overturn our support for increased defence spending, voting to put all of our interests first.”

She said that while her own union has members involved in research for the arms industry, “it is not good enough for us to say ‘jobs first’ when the result of those jobs is that hell is rained down on other workers elsewhere.”

“We must have better ambitions than that,” she said. “There can be no peace and justice if the UK continues to put weapons before wages.”

The motion resolved to prioritise campaigning for public investment, committing to a “safe, liveable planet,” and reaffirming that the movement’s priority is “welfare and wages, not weapons and war.”

GMB union’s Ian Clarke said that the motion “does not fix” the problems of cuts to public services, but instead “pits worker against worker.”

“Nobody wants wars, but the world has become a dangerous place,” he told delegates.  

But Stop the War welcomed the decision, with convener Lindsey German saying: “The vote wipes away the stain on the movement which the TUC’s 2022 decision to campaign for an increase in military spending represented.

“[The debate] exposed the lie being peddled by the government that growth in communities can be built on increased militarism and laid bare the real impact that hiking spending on arms to record levels of GDP has on working people, as public services and the welfare system are stripped to the bone.”