THE final session of this year’s STUC passed seven motions in solidarity with the people of Palestine and Gaza today.

After attempts at compositing the motions failed, each passed individually, meaning the STUC will now call on the British government to end arms sales to Israel and the Scottish government to ensure no more Scottish Enterprise grants are handed over to weapons manufacturers.

More than £3 million of Scottish government cash has been handed over to manufacturers such as BAE Systems, Leonardo and Raytheon since 2023, while the firms continue to supply the Israeli military’s assault on Gaza.

PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote told delegates: “We cannot be bystanders, we cannot walk by on the other side as we witness what is now widely accepted as a genocide. 

“The ICJ has ruled there is a plausible case, and Amnesty International have now confirmed that.

“Fifty-eight years of illegal occupation, decades of settlement building, an ethnic cleansing, Israel’s Gaza onslaught has killed at least 60,000 people since 2023, and the Lancet has estimated the real figure could be 180,000 dead.

“Successive UK governments have stood by. The Foreign Secretary David Lammy says Labour supports the International Criminal Court as a cornerstone of the international legal system

“Well, if you respect international law, you follow that up with action, not just empty words.”

She continued: “We are witnessing on our phones in real time the obliteration of hospitals, homes, human beings, with high-tech weaponry made here in the UK.

“There are 60,000 pregnant women in Gaza, yet with the health infrastructure all but obliterated, the consequences have been catastrophic.

“Miscarriages up by 300 per cent, babies born anywhere with whatever sharp object that can come to hand being used to cut the umbilical cord, babies in displacement camps go months without being washed.

“The number one cause of child deaths on Earth this year is Israel — remind yourself of that again and again.

“The list of human suffering is incomprehensible. 

“This level of suffering cannot be allowed to continue and we must do everything in our power to resist it.”

Moving Glasgow TUC’s motion calling for greater support for the refugees from Palestine, Keith Stoddart — in the briefest contribution of the day — urged delegates to “vote for all the motions.”

They duly did.