SATURDAY marked the 80th anniversary of the 1945 general election in which Labour, led by Clement Atlee, won a 146-seat majority.
 
At last Sunday’s annual commemoration of the British Communist Party’s historic leader Harry Pollitt, held in his birthplace Droylsden, our current general secretary Rob Griffiths reminded us of the imperialist policies of that post-war government.

In doing so laying bare the continuities between Labour in power in 1945 to 1951 and Labour in power today. Not the starry-eyed welfare state utopianism of Ken Loach’s 2013 documentary film The Spirit of ’45 but then as now unbridled warfare and overseas military intervention in Greece, Korea, Malaya, Indonesia, Kenya, India, and Iran. From playing a leading role in the formation of Nato to developing an atomic bomb.
 
In 1945 the world was ostensibly coming out of a (hot) war on a global scale. In 2025 we appear to be moving in the opposite direction with world peace under significant threat. The June 22 illegal US attack on Iran — carried out without UN security council authorisation or even a pretext of self-defence — was a clear breach of international law.

A restatement of the 2003 Bush doctrine of pre-emptive self-defence which led to the catastrophic invasion and occupation of Iraq. In both military and trade matters the Trump regime bears the hallmarks of gangster imperialism.

It was apt that Allan Beattie writing in the Financial Times on May 8 2025 described the US-Britain trade deal as being “closer to a protection payment to a mob boss than a liberalising agreement between sovereign countries.” Two other cases in point from recent days being Donald Trump issuing a national security presidential memorandum on Cuba to tighten the trade embargo and stricter enforcement of the US tourism ban and his reported minerals for peace deal in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Neocolonialism dressed up as transactional diplomacy. 21st-century gangster imperialism. 
 
The resurgence of Western militarism is epitomised by Germany where the government has allocated an enormous €650 billion to military expenditure over the next five years. By 2029 the German military budget will stand at €162bn — a 70 per cent increase on 2025. At last month’s congress of the German Communist Party, the DKP leader Patrick Kobele stated that “today we are dealing with a new quality of the armaments and war policy of the federal government and the bourgeois parties. The transition of the entire bourgeois policy to war policy goes hand in hand with a policy of division through racism, the dismantling of bourgeois democracy and the formation of the AfD as a nationalist-racist force with a fascist wing.” 
 
The same process of militarisation is occurring across the member states of Nato in North America and Europe. At the recent Nato summit held in The Hague, there was acceptance, except for Spain, of the US empire’s demand for 5 per cent of GDP to be allocated for military purposes by 2035 — a minimum of 3.5 per cent on core military spending and 1.5 per cent on war infrastructure. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that Nato combined spending will rise from $1.5 trillion in 2024 to an extraordinary $4.2trn in 2035.

Echoing the Labour government’s recent Strategic Defence Review, Starmer claimed that signing up to this commitment was “an opportunity to deepen our commitment to Nato and drive greater investment in the nation’s wider security and resilience.” In contrast Spain’s refusenik social democratic Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that committing to a 5 per cent target “would be incompatible with our welfare state and … would require cutting public services and scaling back other spending, including toward the green transition.”
 
The Nato summit was followed by a European Council meeting in Brussels which doubled down on EU economic and military intervention in Ukraine.To date, €160bn has been committed by the EU to the non-member state Ukraine, including €60bn in military support as well as 17 packages of sanctions against Russia. 

This year, the two rounds of US-brokered peace negotiations held in Istanbul have achieved some progress with confidence-building measures such as large-scale prisoner exchanges and both sides scoping potential political settlements of the war. 

A third round of negotiations is imminent, meanwhile intensive combat and gradual Russian advance continues along the 600-mile front line as well as constant artillery and drone attacks deep inside both Russian and Ukrainian territory. 
 
Despite Trump’s manoeuvrings around short term ceasefires, the genocidal policies of the Israeli state terrorist regime against the Palestinian people show no sign of abating with a daily intensification of ethnic cleansing and military occupation in Gaza and attacks on West Bank Palestinian communities. The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza now stands at over 56,500 with 133,600 injured since Israel launched its war in October 2023. 
 
The refusal by the High Court to outlaw the indirect export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel through a global pool of components shows the British state closing ranks in support of commercial and military interests regardless of human rights considerations. It makes the case for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and non-violent direct action as legitimate channels of protest when legal and political routes provide no justice. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign 20th anniversary conference on BDS on July 12 is a timely and important event followed by the next national demonstration for Palestine in central London on July 19.
 
The Starmer-led government’s attacks on civil liberties — which includes the draconian banning of Palestine Action as a “terrorist organisation” and the criminalisation of political demonstrations — also present continuities with previous Labour governments, notably those of the 1997 to 2010 era. 

In his book Bonfire of the Liberties — New Labour, Human Rights and the Rule of Law, Keith Ewing outlined how the Blair and Brown-led governments promised “a culture of liberty” and actually introduced a Human Rights Act — but then in the context of the Anglo-US war on terror New Labour presided over a regime of internment, control orders, rendition, increased powers to the police, massively expanded public surveillance and drastically eroded rights to privacy, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression.

The current Home Secretary Yvette Cooper who introduced the legislation to ban Palestine Action was a Cabinet member in the Brown government. 
 
This week the Labour government backtracked on elements of its benefit cuts legislation — the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments Bill — making major concessions to back-bench rebel MPs which would protect existing claimants. After last week’s vote the Bill remains barely intact and the campaign to kill it off will continue into 2026. Credit is due to the dynamic political activism of disabled people demonstrating that self-organisation when harnessed to class interests can be an effective social force.
 
Despite Labour’s flagship Employment Rights Bill having been laid before Parliament in October 2024, it is now clear that the government will fail to meet its target to pass the Bill into law before the summer recess in three weeks’ time. Concerted pressure has been applied by the Conservative Party, Reform, employer organisations and the capitalist media to overturn key sections of the Bill. The manifesto commitment to remove industrial action ballot thresholds is now subject to indefinite delay.

Recently the Financial Times reported both that royal assent will be delayed to September at the earliest and that Prospect general secretary Mike Clancy had broken ranks with the TUC by suggesting that Labour make concessions on proposals to outlaw “fire and rehire” tactics of imposing contractual changes or implementing mass dismissals as occurred at P&O in 2022.

This week the government published a roadmap for implementing the Bill between now and 2027. The details of the legislation will be subject to further and protracted consultation. The big business opponents of the Bill will be smelling blood and strong counterpressure from trade unions and the left of the labour movement is needed to resist further concessions and watering down of the legislation through caveats, opt-outs and qualifying periods typical of past EU employment directives. 
 
On Thursday July 3 Zarah Sultana MP issued an individual statement stating that “after 14 years, I’m resigning from the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn and I will co-lead the founding of a new party, with other Independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country.”

This initiative has been long trailed, including by Corbyn himself at a meeting of “community independent” councillors in Liverpool on June 14. Since Labour abandoned its socialist clause four constitution in 1995 there is a long trail of failed left-of-Labour political projects proving that there are no shortcuts to socialist advance.

Limited recent electoral successes driven by independents standing in principled opposition to genocide in Palestine and war have been a positive development. Such local initiatives should continue to receive the support of the Communist Party in line with our united front strategy.

But a much broader class-based socialist platform and wider class forces than those outlined in the Coventry South MP’s initial prospectus are required for a successful and sustained political challenge to Labour in working-class communities across Britain.

“Welfare not warfare” is a political demand of these times which resonates with millions in Britain. Wednesday’s House of Commons launch of the Alternative Defence Review points the way to what is possible. Rebutting the myth of military Keynesianism, the review calls for a drastic reduction in military expenditure and a sustainable economy “grounded in social justice, global solidarity and the urgent need to build peace — not war — for the 21st century.”

Communists demand an end to the Nato arms race. We say Jobs not Bombs; Welfare not Warfare.