LAST month, the TUC unanimously passed an emergency motion headed: ‘Stop the escalation of war in the Middle East’ and committed the TUC ‘to support the call for a UK-wide workplace day of action in support of an immediate ceasefire’.
Since passing that motion, the leadership of the TUC have shown their ‘commitment’ to the Palestinians by doing absolutely nothing while remaining completely silent on the genocide being committed by the hour in Gaza and the latest expansion of murderous bombing and missile attacks launched against Lebanon.
Questioned about what the TUC had done to implement this policy, the answer given was couched in terms that the TUC was far too busy with its response to the Labour government’s workers’ rights bill that was published yesterday.
The TUC leaders were far too busy issuing statements hailing Labour’s bill as a ‘seismic shift’ for the working class while acknowledging that ‘there is still a lot of detail to be worked through’.
That is an understatement for a bill that contains so many holes and get out clauses for the employers that it will change nothing for workers.
It will change nothing for the thousands of pensioners whose winter fuel lifeline has been cut or the millions of children condemned by this Labour government to go hungry after the refusal to end the Tories’ two-child benefit cap.
Of course, none of this matters for the TUC leaders, just as over 42,000 Palestinians murdered in Gaza (70% of them women and children) and the over 2,000 killed already in Lebanon are not worthy of consideration (let alone action) by the comfortably cosseted bureaucrats residing in TUC headquarters.
The TUC’s only concern is with cosying up to the Starmer government which on Monday made clear that it would never stop supplying the arms used to commit genocide in Gaza and being used to bomb and kill men, women and children throughout Lebanon.
On Monday, Starmer proclaimed publicly his commitment to the genocidal Zionist regime with not a word of condemnation or comment issuing from the TUC.
Yesterday, Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a telephone conversation with US president Joe Biden which centred on the anticipated all-out attack on Iran.
At every step of the way the US has, despite public calls for restraint, given the green light and support for the Zionist war to crush Palestinians and now its extension into a war against Iran.
A war that will set the Middle East ablaze with dire consequences for the working class as oil and energy prices will soar into the stratosphere.
Starmer will no doubt maintain that driving workers into destitution will be a ‘sacrifice’ worth paying for an imperialist war to maintain its Israeli regional attack dog and re-assert its grip on the Middle East.
If none of this matters to the TUC, it most certainly matters to the millions of workers and youth who have continually demonstrated in support of Palestine and are now increasingly demanding not just lunch time solidarity meetings but real action by their powerful trade unions to put an end to all complicity with genocide.
The Spanish trade unions showed the way when they organised a one-day general strike to demand their government end arming Israel and call for an immediate ceasefire. Workers in Britain must now demand that the TUC must go even further and organise an indefinite general strike to bring down the Labour government and bring in a workers government.
Workers must now force an immediate recall of the TUC to sack those leaders who refuse to lift a finger for Palestine and replace them with a leadership prepared to organise the working class to take the power by going forward from a general strike to a workers government and socialism.
As shown by the Spanish general strike this call will be taken up across Europe and the US where tens of millions of workers and youth are rising up against a barbaric capitalist system that can only offer a future of wars and destruction.
The time is NOW for building up the WRP and Young Socialists in Britain, and sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country to provide the leadership required for the victory of the world socialist revolution and dumping bankrupt bloodthirsty capitalism into the dustbin of history.
There is not a moment to lose. Forward to the victory of the world socialist revolution.
This is the only way forward!
