THE TUC voted narrowly today to drop its support for defence diversification and back increased military spending after a heated debate.

Composite 2 on defending manufacturing jobs was adopted by 2,556,000 votes to 2,469,000 after a card vote.

Moving, GMB’s Nigel Warn said that job losses in manufacturing would be devastating for working-class communities “from Glasgow to Barrow-in-Furness to Derby.”

He argued that higher arms spending was needed because “full-scale industrial war is being fought in Europe again.”

But Jon Reddiford of the National Education Union slammed the composite, saying “Liz Truss’s priorities are defence spending and arms sales and that is what it means — it does mean producing arms that will be sold to Saudi Arabia to kill kids in Yemen.

“Yesterday we passed a motion on a just transition. This is what we should fight for, that is a solution to these high-skilled jobs in Barrow and Derby and elsewhere, not investment in pointless, unproductive, murderous weapons.”

The CWU’s Rob Witherspoon warned that the TUC should not be backing increased arms spending when “the world stands closer to nuclear Armageddon than at any time probably since the 1960s ... trade union members may make these arms but don’t determine where they are used.”

Martin Cavanagh of PCS said the composite should be opposed because “the trade union movement is an absolutely critical part of the peace movement” and pointed out British military spending was already the third-highest worldwide, while the FBU’s Jamie Newell, the son of a paratrooper, reminded delegates that “a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends” and asked Congress to remember the victims of Blair’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

And Fliss Premru of TSSA said besides being exported for use in wars by brutal regimes raising arms spending made a mockery of Congress commitments to reducing Britain’s carbon footprint.

Steve Turner for Unite said the union was backing the motion but with “serious reservations,” saying defence budgets should be spent in Britain rather than propping up foreign economies but increased arms spending was unnecessary to defend existing jobs.