The annual conference of the TUC today will be debating a motion and amendments demanding that the trade unions in the UK take action in support of the Palestinian people and to oppose the genocidal war being waged to drive them from their land.
The motion, from the Artists’ Union England, notes the ‘catastrophic destruction of Gaza’ by the genocidal Israeli regime since 2023 ‘killing over 70,000 Palestinians, displacing millions’ along with the increase in illegal settlements.
The motion further notes the ‘ongoing government efforts to discourage and censure Palestinian solidarity, including within arts and culture.’
The motion calls for the TUC to ‘support the Palestinian-led BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement and promote the workplace days of actions.’
The motion further calls for a ‘campaign for an end to all arms sales and military cooperation with Israel and divestment from companies complicit in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians’ and for the TUC to ‘support trade unionists, including artists and culture workers, who refuse to handle goods and services linked to violations of international law.’
Previous TUC conferences have passed motions expressing support for Palestine and revulsion at the genocidal war being carried out by the Zionist regime.
None of these motions have led to any action.
Today, however, there is a noticeable change being expressed at the conference due to the increasingly intolerable pressure being exerted on the trade union leaders by workers and youth who are demanding an end to the UK’s complicity with genocide.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Gaza, Francesca Albanese, said this was the ‘first genocide that awakened global conscience and global response’.
It has most certainly awakened the conscience of workers and young people across the globe, but so far the response of the TUC has not matched the demands of Palestinians for the international community to take decisive action.
In the UK, the latest Labour prime minister Andy Burnham and his foreign secretary Ed Miliband still carry on denying that genocide is taking place in Gaza. At the same time, Burnham is continuing with mobilising the courts and police in an attempt to intimidate and suppress support for Palestine and opposition to Zionist genocide.
While Burnham has attempted to divert the anger of workers by imposing selective bans on goods from illegal Israeli settlements, the UK remains a provider of military equipment used to commit Israeli war crimes.
This week it was announced that the death toll in Gaza had reached 73,883, mainly women and children, while the number of Palestinians killed so far in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem has reached 1,123, including 240 children.
An average of over one Palestinian a day is being killed by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) or the homicidal settlers unleashed by the Netanyahu regime in the occupied territories as they carry out the openly proclaimed intent by Netanyahu and his Zionist ministers to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the occupied territories of every last Palestinian.
Despite all the genocide and mass murder, the Palestinian people have resolutely refused to bend or break in their determination never to be driven from their land. The time has come for the working class across the world to answer the Palestinian call for action to put an end to Zionist genocide.
This conference of the TUC must seize the opportunity by calling a general strike in support of Palestine on Friday October 9th.
The Global Alliance for Palestine (GAFP) is calling for worldwide coordinated action from 9-11 October to mark the three years since the Israeli regime started its genocidal campaign.
The TUC must respond to this call by organising the full strength of the working class in a general strike on October 9th to demand that the Labour government either breaks all diplomatic, economic and military support for Israel or be removed and replaced with a workers government – a workers government that will not just recognise the state of Palestine but provide it with all the material and aid required to ensure the victory of the Palestinian revolution.
