AS A young person in Britain, the future may seem bleak. The job market is more and more precarious, there is an ongoing housing crisis and the cost of living is still on the rise and it is young people who bear the brunt of this. 

At the same time, our public services are being completely decimated. As a representative of all young workers in Unison, Britain’s largest public services union, our members are overworked, their workplaces understaffed and they are underpaid.

Under the current system, young people are offered nothing more than a world that is embroiled in open war which is leading to further deaths, destruction, displacement and the danger of increased conflict. The ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza has seen thousands of children and young people killed. 

While working people and young people of Britain have been out demonstrating for a ceasefire in Gaza and the overwhelming majority of the people of Britain seek peaceful solutions to global conflicts, these are not reflected in the actions of our government or the Labour opposition in Britain. 

Under this Tory government, our public services are in complete crisis — leading to an overworked and underpaid workforce and public services that are not functioning effectively for users. In research from my own union Unison, “Councils Under Pressure” showed that councils in Britain and the devolved nations face a collective funding shortfall of £3.56 billion for the coming financial year (2024/25); and the cumulative figure will have risen to £6.99bn the year after, with many councils effectively becoming bankrupt. 

There is a similar picture with the National Health Service, with a staffing emergency with over 100,000 vacancies, heavily increased workloads and record patient backlogs. These crises in the NHS and local councils are replicated across all public services in this country. 

While the government tells us that there is never money for our essential public services, the British government always has money for war and militarisation. So while workers are being told continually there is no money for pay rises for essential workers, there is endless money for material support for war. This further exposes the current political system for what it is — corrupt and callous in pursuit of cycles of continual war for profit. 

It should be clear to us as workers that this is a political choice and not an inevitability.

Our response as trade unionists should be clear. We must be in opposition to all war. The trade union movement and the peace movement must strengthen their work together to continue building a broad peace coalition which doesn’t see wars independently from each other but connected as part of the global imperialist system.

There needs be a heightened understanding of our own government’s complicity in these wars abroad, particularly British government complicity in the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people. Britain hasn’t just overtly supported the Israeli government politically but has materially supported it by sending military equipment, including war ships, to Israel.

As workers in public services, it is never in our interests, or that of the working class of this country, to support the government’s drive to war. In February 2024 it was reported on the government press release that Ministry of Defence spending topped £25bn for the first time. 

Britain is experiencing its third consecutive year of increased military spending. There is no surprise then that our public services are facing a severe funding crisis. Consequently, it is the youth and the working class that bear the burden of the incessant drive to war in our communities and public services.

We should be clear as trade unionists that British foreign policy is not separate from the Tory attacks on our services and attacks on our trade unions at home. 

Trade unions must be leading from the front loudly in opposition to all wars, increased military expenditure and the military industrial complex. 

As young people we must demand a better future than the never-ending cycle of imperialist war. For our public services, we must demand that there are no increases in the military expenditure and an end to the military-industrial complex. 

We deserve a future, with well-funded, well-functioning public services. We must not be complacent and just ask for this — we must struggle for it. In the struggle for peace, we must be more organised than ever in combatting imperialism and ready to lead the fight for peace in the interests of the youth and working people in Britain and worldwide.

Micaela Tracey-Ramos is a member of Unison’s NEC, this article is written in a personal capacity.