TRADE WARS, genocides, and regional conflicts have brought us closer than ever to world war since 1945. Every major party is banging the war drum in one way or another — all while Scotland’s public services continue to rapidly crumble.

With the media in full swing on the threat of Russia and China, there are constant comparisons to 1939, but for many people, the comparison is better linked to the war fever of 1914.
 
Keir Starmer has called for a “coalition of the willing” within Europe and the EU has answered. Military spending will now increase by €150 billion with proposals to divert regional development funds into defence also being echoed in Brussels. Britain is hoping to lead the charge with a proposed increase in defence spending up to 2.6 per cent of GDP for 2027.

All the while Scotland’s infrastructure and public services are being decimated in the interests of private capital. Working-class people are being left without any sense of support or trust in the government’s duty of care to the people’s needs.
 
The NHS has been decimated by yet another year of service cuts to staff, health centres and acute sites. The voices of NHS workers have been completely ignored when calls for better investment and pay have been waved to the side.

This is best seen in the Scottish government’s recent decision to push back the reduction in the working week which was agreed as part of the 2023-24 pay deal.

After a year of poor planning and struggle from staff to implement the first half-hour reduction, Neil Gray has pulled the rug out from under them this year by pushing the agreed date back another year, it is well to remember that staff agreed this timescale in good faith that the government would keep its word and implement the reduction with the understanding that the spirit of the agreement was to create a better work-life balance for staff.
 
It is a daily reminder for NHS staff of the growing costs of treatment for patients, most noticeably in drug procurement. Drug costs were up 46 per cent last year and investigations by Global Justice Now have found “that pharmaceutical companies have charged the NHS an eye-watering £13 billion for just 10 medications over the previous decade, charging mark-ups of up to 23,000 per cent.”
 
Private multinational corporations are gutting our public services for their own interests while our government is telling us that we must tighten our belts to help in a war effort.
 
The prevalent narrative within the media that working-class people must struggle while our governments spend billions towards death and destruction that may ultimately lead to global conflict, while large companies are ripping off communities with price gouging in energy and food only shows the dialectical contrast growing between the workers and the capitalist system.

A full-steam-ahead drive to war is good for business but high wages and publicly funded amenities aren’t.
 
What options are left for Scotland’s working class? With a worrying rise in Reform’s influence shattering the idea of Scotland’s innate left-wing nature and the continued undermining of the trade unions’ goodwill with the Scottish government, the working class are crying out for leadership and organisation. How do we defend ourselves from cuts? Racist attacks? Low pay and underrepresentation?
 
The left must unite, not under arbitrary banners and slogans but under a broad left alliance with a grass-roots political and industrial strategy. A strategy that highlights the innate failure of the bourgeois parties to protect Grangemouth, the NHS, the environment, and peace.

A rebuilding of industrial community groups like the trade council movement and of community-oriented campaigns with a political understanding of the role an international war will play in decimating the lives of millions of Scots.

Drew Gilchrist is chair of Unite’s national young members committee and vice chair of the NLTUC.