BEFORE I was a member of a trade union, I was a member of Youth CND. My teenage years were heavily influenced by the peace and anti-nuclear movements in Britain and internationally.

We joined Ban the Bomb demos in London. We visited peace camps at Alconbury, Lakenheath and Greenham Common. We headed to Brockwell Park to hear the Style Council, The Damned and Madness at the CND Youth Festival for Peace in 1983. 

The popular culture of resistance to cold war warriors gave my generation its music, politics and attitude. Growing up in 1970s and 1980s under the shadow of a tactical nuclear arms race and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction affected my generation in a way comparable to the effect of social media today on young people in coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It gave us a sense of urgency that called on us to become activists. 

As president of the RMT union, a long-standing affiliate to CND, I’ve spoken at meetings to raise awareness of a live industrial dispute that RMT and our sister union, Nautilus International, are currently engaged in with the Ministry of Defence. 

Our outstanding 2023 pay claim for substantial real-terms pay rises for civilian seafarers employed by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA), the Royal Navy’s logistics and supply arm, has been deliberately obfuscated and ignored by MoD bureaucrats for over a year. 

Highly skilled and experienced seafarers who serve the RFA in theatres of war, disaster zones and humanitarian emergency response around the globe have been subject to real pay suppression for over a decade.

As a result, dedicated maritime professionals are leaving the RFA because they simply can’t afford to subsidise MoD parsimony. RFA vessels are severely understaffed, which in a safety-critical industry cannot be allowed to continue. 

The underlying reason for this highly unusual dispute, which has seen six days of strike action so far, with a further five days just announced, is that the MoD is a prisoner of the corporate arms trade.

While rear admirals cavil at paying real-terms pay rises to their civilian workforce, the MoD remains a public spending black hole, wedded to funding aircraft carriers that can’t make it out of the Solent without breaking down and nuclear submarines that can’t be used under any circumstances that anyone can explain. 

Meanwhile, the MoD has presided over the running down of actual armed forces and its civilian support infrastructure. MoD sources admit the Royal Navy is witnessing the general collapse of recruitment, with shortages of up to 35 per cent in some areas.

What was the newly elected Labour government’s response to this staffing and manpower crisis? It was to announce a strategic defence review on July 16, less than two weeks after the general election, 10 days after Keir Starmer had appointed John Healey as defence secretary. Clearly, plans had already been laid. 

Indeed, a newly elected Labour government commissioning a strategic defence review is not new. In May 1997, Tony Blair pledged to “conduct a strategic defence review to reassess our essential security interests and defence needs,” which led to the 1998 defence white paper described by David Edgerton in Tony Blair’s Warfare State (New Left Review, July/Aug 1998). 

The current government’s SDR headed by Lord George Robertson (Blair’s former defence secretary and Nato secretary-general 1999-2003) will report in the first half of 2025. 

It will be headed by three “external reviewers” — an attempt to imply that MoD insiders won’t be marking their own homework. In addition to Lord Robertson, the other external reviewers are Dr Fiona Hill (former adviser to presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama and known to enjoy close links to US arms companies) and General Sir Richard Barrons (former deputy chief of the defence staff). So, no insiders involved, then. 

According to the MoD, reviewers will “engage widely across the defence community” with submissions invited until the end of September “from serving and retired members of the armed forces, the defence industry, the general public, academics, Parliament, and our closest allies and partners, especially in Nato.” 

So, what should the response of the labour and trade union movement be to a project to boost British government military spending conducted by a former Nato secretary-general and a senior neoconservative adviser to US presidents?

My union’s annual general meeting this year declared that “Peace is a Labour Movement Issue” and recommitted our union to work for peace and call for peaceful resolution of global disputes through diplomacy, peace talks and permanent disarmament.

While the peoples of the world, including a majority in Britain, overwhelmingly want their governments to work towards peaceful solutions to disputes, such aspirations are not reflected in the actions of their governments. Our ruling class is engaged in a drive to war, by preparing the population to accept a state of war as normal and necessary. 

The best traditions of our trade union movement include working for peace, recognising that the working class and their families are always the main victims of war. There is no contradiction between this traditional working-class outlook and fighting to defend good jobs and working conditions. 
 
RMT is committed to campaign for British governments to commit themselves to work for peace and for diplomatic solutions to disputes and crises, and end their role in inflaming conflicts worldwide through bombing, military interventions and arms sales. 

We are reviewing all union investments to ensure that our members’ assets are not invested in armaments production or research. 

We have reiterated and strengthen our support for all organisations such as CND campaigning for peace globally and in Britain. 

RMT calls for trade unions and peace organisations to convene a labour and peace movement summit to work out the basis of a new foreign policy with the promotion of peace and social justice at its heart. 

We will also continue to campaign for socially useful, well-paid, unionised jobs to replace investment in arms production, including a commitment to build a campaign for defence diversification on the principles of just transition, so that skills, jobs and the communities that depend on them are safeguarded. 

As part of this, RMT is participating in a CND working party with trade unionists, academics, journalists and researchers to produce an “alternative defence review,” which we intend to publish in 2025 alongside Keir Starmer’s strategic defence review. 

We want to set out the real needs for security and peace in Britain and globally. This will not be secured by funnelling more public money into the arms industry — the definition of a dead investment. 

The labour and trade union movement needs to make the arguments for a real alternative to the arms economy and campaign for peace and disarmament.