MOST unions are expected to support the Solidarity with Ukraine composited motion coming before the TUC on Tuesday.
Given outrage at the Russian invasion and the appalling suffering caused by the war, the labour movement’s wish to express solidarity with its victims is justified, but backing the motion put to the TUC would be a serious mistake.
It amounts to support for continuing a supply of ever more powerful weaponry without reflection on the potential consequences. It does not prioritise a ceasefire and talks to end the conflict, which is the position of the vast majority of countries worldwide.
The logic of supplying weapons is escalatory. The illusory quest for some super-weapon that could force a Russian retreat sees long-standing principles abandoned.
There is no criticism of Britain’s supply of depleted uranium to Ukraine, though its use will condemn future generations to the higher incidences of cancer and congenital birth defects, documented after its use by the US military in Iraq. Nor of the US’s supply of widely banned cluster bombs.
There is no criticism either of the deployment of British special forces in Ukraine, despite the obvious risk of sparking direct war with a nuclear-armed state.
Russia in turn has escalated, deploying nuclear weapons outside its own territory. That is part of an international pattern of nuclear proliferation.
Britain is expanding its nuclear arsenal — at colossal cost — despite treaty commitments to disarm. The United States, which under Donald Trump ripped up pacts like the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, is planning to deploy nuclear-armed bombers on British territory at Lakenheath.
The bulk of the British peace movement, including Stop the War and CND, have called for Russian troops to withdraw from Ukraine from the first day of this war — as has the Morning Star. But peace is not advanced by a refusal to address the war’s longer-term causes, including Nato expansion eastwards and the coup against Ukraine’s elected government in 2014, rapidly followed by the murder of 42 Ukrainian trade unionists in Odessa’s House of Trade Unions, a crime which the Ukrainian government has never held anyone to account for.
The TUC that year condemned that crime, called for a negotiated settlement of the separatist war that the 2014 coup sparked in the Donbass, and opposed any involvement of British troops.
That approach is even more necessary today. Not since the cold war has the risk of nuclear war been so high.
A war fever has gripped Parliament and dissenting voices are being silenced, including in the Labour Party through an unprecedented muzzling of MPs’ right to speak up for peace.
The attempt to put peace advocacy beyond the political pale forms part of a wider assault on democratic rights, both through Tory legislation restricting protests and strikes and through the purges and proscriptions that have been used to crush socialists in the Labour Party.
With Ukraine just one of multiple global flashpoints, a tightening US military encirclement of China in which Britain is directly involved, and a serving US general predicting the US-China war — World War III — will erupt the year after next, we cannot afford voices for peace to be cancelled in this way.
Trade unionists should welcome the proposals from Brazil, China, India, the African Union and others for peace talks. They should condemn a British government that — according to its own allies including Turkey and Israel —intervened to scupper talks early in the conflict. They should extend solidarity to the brave and persecuted peace activists of both Russia and Ukraine.
Without doing this, a resolution purporting to support the Ukrainian people in fact offers support for Britain’s corrupt, aggressive and imperialist government’s foreign policy and its subordination to the US interest in prolonging war in Europe. The Morning Star urges delegates at TUC 2023 not to do that.
