UNTOLD billions are being pumped into arms companies while Europe struggles with soaring homelessness, poverty and climate change, Irish MEP Clare Daly told the Stop the War Coalition AGM in London at the weekend.

The aggressors who brought war to Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya — currently plunged into crisis by floods its post-invasion failed state cannot cope with — “don’t suddenly become peacemakers. It doesn’t happen like that,” she declared to applause.

Ms Daly said the constant flow of arms would not help Ukraine — “the best it can hope for if this continues to to be another Libya, or as Hillary Clinton gleefully said, ‘Russia’s Afghanistan,’ and what a nightmare for the people of Ukraine.” 

It took “some neck” of ex-US president Barack Obama to call for charitable donations to Libya after leading the intervention that destroyed what had been the richest country in Africa, she said: “They don’t deserve charity — they deserve reparations.”

She compared the refusal to talk before a complete Russian withdrawal to Britain’s ongoing occupation of Northern Ireland and the Irish republican recognition that peace and negotiations were a better path forward than killing.

A couple of hundred delegates attended the conference in London’s Hamilton House, backing resolutions calling for continued campaigning for a ceasefire and peace in Ukraine.

Delegates also backed calls for immediate release of the Russian peace activist Boris Kagarlitsky and Ukraine’s Yurii Sheliazhenko, who are being persecuted by their respective governments.

And they warned of the growing threat of a world war against China and discussed how to rebuild the influence of the peace movement in trade unions following the setback of the resolution on arming Ukraine passed at the recent TUC Congress, and the previous year’s resolution to back increased arms spending.

The AGM heard from RMT president Alex Gordon, who rejected recent calls from former Corbyn aide Andrew Fisher that Stop the War should disband, saying the need for a campaign against wars was greater than ever, and from Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe, who pointed to movements for an end to Western imperialist control as a motive for the current drive to war.

A message of support was read out from former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

A small group of “Solidarity with Ukraine” protesters gathered outside the AGM, heckling those entering and leaving.