NEVER in its 25-year history as Britain’s anti-war movement has Stop the War convened its annual conference at a more dramatic and dangerous moment.

The essence of the crisis is simple — Britain’s imperialist Establishment is leading the country to disaster.

Expressed in the policies of the Starmer government, Britain is at the centre of the multiple crises gripping the world.

And working people will pay the price — first in living standards and social cohesion, later surely in blood.

War has been sparked across the Middle East by the brazen, reckless and illegal aggression of the US and Israel against Iran.

Britain is increasingly complicit in that aggression, as initial reservations about permitting the Trump warmongers to use British bases have eroded to the point of meaninglessness.

Indeed, Keir Starmer is increasingly anxious to be seen to be engaged in the war, dispatching air force and naval assets to the conflict zone as fast as possible.

The war against Iran shows no signs of an early conclusion, with the Iranian regime failing either to collapse, as anticipated, or to come to heel on Trump’s terms.

Already entirely predictable economic consequences are being felt, with soaring oil prices bound to have an impact on working people’s costs here.

At the same time, Britain remains deeply invested in continuing the conflict in Ukraine. Here Labour expresses complete continuity with Tory policy since 2022.

Indeed, Defence Secretary John Healey tried to link the two conflicts this week, claiming that Iranian drone attacks on imperialist bases in the region showed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “hidden hand” behind them.

This unsupported claim is designed to mislead British people into thinking that Russia is somehow “attacking” British forces in the Middle East.

It is consistent with government attempts to drum up a dangerous war psychosis directed against Russia, necessary to persuade working people of the necessity of deploying troops to Ukraine, as Starmer and Healey desire.

This is part of a Europe-wide drive to condition the peoples to accept the inevitability of impending war with Russia.  

Rather than working to bring an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, the government is effectively looking to extend it.

Already working people are having to pay for this imperialist posturing. Huge increases in the military budget are slated for the indefinite future, something that can only be sustained at the price of reductions in almost every form of socially useful state spending.

Stop the War is proud of the part it has played in winning the trade union movement to reverse its support for campaigning for increased arms spending and to put wages and welfare before warfare.

But more needs to be done to rouse the movement to these dangers.

The last 30 months have seen a huge and sustained movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people in the face of the Israeli genocide.

That genocide has had the full support of the Starmer government too. That reason alone would be sufficient for us to pledge that the Palestinian issue must never slide down our agenda.

But that movement of solidarity needs to be broadened and deepened to meet the escalating crisis. Along with full solidarity with the Palestinian people, Stop the War demands “Welfare not warfare” and “Hands off Iran” as the main slogans of the moment.

We also seek to deepen popular understanding of the roots of the crisis and how to overcome them. Starmer’s policy today is an expression of his desire to appease the Trump administration, presently embarking on a rampage of aggression of which Iran is far from being the only target.

Venezuela, Cuba, Yemen, Panama, Colombia, even Greenland have all been attacked or threatened by Trump and his crew, unbounded US imperialists that they are.

Only the menaces directed at Greenland have drawn any rebuke from Starmer, and that only because the threats of aggression imperilled the Nato war alliance, the centre-piece of Labour’s international strategy.

In Ukraine, Starmer actually urges greater bellicosity on Washington.

All this reflects the Establishment’s determination to prop up the post-1991 world order, which pivoted on unilateral US power and within which Britain and its commercial interests occupied a privileged position.

Stop the War has always demanded an end to the London-Washington war alliance. More than ever, it is at the heart of the dangers menacing the British people and the world as a whole.

It is the reason vital services are being cut to pay for war. The reason energy prices are now soaring. The reason British troops are being deployed from Norway to the Middle East to the Far East.

It is the reason young people are being conditioned to fight and die for Trump.

But the mass of the people have not forgotten the Iraq war, even if Tony Blair remains unrepentant. Nor the endless and pointless occupation of Afghanistan.

They want no more of it. Stop the War, which has stood strong despite all efforts over the years to divert it from its essentially anti-imperialist orientation, will continue to be at the forefront of the British people’s fight for a new policy of peace and justice and an end to the wars scarring the globe today.

Andrew Murray is deputy president of the Stop the War Coalition and was its founding chair.