The Trades Union Congress (TUC) supported a Palestine Solidarity Campaign call for a ‘workplace day of action’ for Palestine on 28 November and according to Chris Nineham, Vice Chair of Stop the War and a leading member of Counterfire, ‘It was a real breakthrough that the TUC voted for an end to arms sales to Israel and backed workplace days of action over Palestine’. According to the Stop the War statement, ‘This day of action has been backed by the Trades Union Congress, and we hope it will turn out to be one of the biggest yet. The TUC’s support shows that the trade union movement nationally is swinging behind workplace action in order to force the government to stop colluding in genocide. Take part and join the call on Keir Starmer and David Lammy to end their support for Israel as it pursues its genocide in Gaza and escalates war throughout the region’.
Did this ‘breakthrough’ mean stoppages of work and industrial action in support of the Palestinian Resistance? Action in support of the call issued by Palestinian trade unions last year in October 2023 to refuse to manufacture or transport arms to Israel? No, the ‘actions’ suggested by the TUC included emailing your MP or a ‘radical action’, like wearing something ‘red, green or black’ to work. Stop the War, promoting and fully supporting this day of ‘action’, and not to be outdone in the radical stakes, advised that people could ‘wear a badge or scarf for Palestine day’ or even organise a bake sale!
In the event, a number of radical actions did take place on 28 November, including a protest outside the Department for Business and Trade in London organised by the Palestinian Youth Movement; Palestine Action continued its activities against UAV Engines – which makes drones for Israeli arms company Elbit – by scaling the roof of its operations in Shenstone, and around the country students at various universities organised marches and protests, including UAL and Goldsmiths students in south London who blocked a major road and occupied a university campus. But none of these had anything to do with the TUC. Nationally, the most any union could muster was a few scattered lunchtime rallies.
This pathetic ‘day of action’ by trade unionists was an insult to the tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese who have been massacred and maimed by the Israeli war machine – a war machine armed, financed and politically shielded by the western imperialist powers.
With their promotion of the TUC’s support for a ‘workplace day of action’ Stop the War and the middle class left organisations that run it, Counterfire, the Communist Party of Britain and the Socialist Workers Party, help cover up the role of the TUC as a defender of the interests of British imperialism.
This day of ‘action’ followed the Scottish TUC’s ‘support’ for a national Palestine demonstration in Glasgow on 23 November, a demonstration which was not significantly bigger than recent Scottish Palestine demonstrations in Glasgow, despite Socialist Worker headlines trumpeting ‘unions throw weight behind Scottish Palestine march’. The only weight thrown about would seem to be the stifling dead weight of the labour aristocracy slowly suffocating the movement.
While the TUC has added its voice to the demand for an end to arms sales to Israel, it has carefully framed this within its broader aim of protecting jobs in the arms industry – and therefore British imperialism’s wider political interests. So while its stated aim is to ‘stop direct arms sales to Israel, along with all collaboration between our armed forces, and encourage partner governments to do the same’, this is balanced against working ‘with unions in our defence sector to protect our wider defence alliances/partnerships alongside current and future UK work content’. How stopping arms sales to Israel is to be achieved remains unclear, with the TUC going on to emphasise that it does not support any direct action against arms firms with links to Israel, asserting: ‘We condemn physical attacks, intimidation and threats to UK workers whose activities here are wrongly linked to events in Gaza’.
The continued promotion by the middle class ‘left’ of the idea that trade union support, either via the TUC or from individual unions, is the key to building a mass movement in solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people is a criminal diversion from the real issues. The trade unions individually and through the TUC are completely tied to the Labour Party. They mainly organise amongst the better paid and more securely employed minority of the working class. Less than 25% of all workers are members of trade unions.
The vast majority of the working class are not members of trade unions. Amongst this majority are the millions of low paid and casual workers, black and immigrant workers, workers who do not support the Zionist Labour Party. It is this section we have to to reach out to and mobilise for Palestine.
Bob Shepherd
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 303 December 2024 /January 2025
