THE TUC did the right thing in voting to prioritise wages and welfare over warfare, reversing its 2022 decision to campaign for an increase in military spending.

There were several good reasons advanced at Congress for the change. The old policy was divisive, pitting the presumed interests of a small number of workers employed in manufacturing weapons against those in the public services.

Of course, unions should always endeavour to protect members’ jobs wherever they are employed. But demanding that more resources are channelled into an arms race when health, welfare and education are under such pressure is indefensible, given that all military spending is taxpayer-funded and state-controlled.

Money spent on public services benefits all working people, which cannot be said for arms spending.

But the most compelling reason for change lies in the need for the working-class movement to disengage from the catastrophic war drive the British state is engaged in.

Britain’s armaments have been used this century in aggressive wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen. The huge increases now projected by the government will largely go on prolonging the war in Ukraine and provoking China in the Pacific, where a British aircraft carrier is presently touring as a symbol of Britain’s global military machismo.

The British state — whether under a Labour, Tory or Reform government — cannot be trusted with the weapons it has, never mind still more. 

They are simply instruments of an imperialist policy which has brought immense suffering to the peoples of the world and threatens still worse, including conflicts which will exact a heavy price from the British people themselves.

These are the truths the labour movement needs to be enunciating loud and clear. It is a fantasy to imagine that government’s imposing austerity and authoritarianism at home are somehow acting in an elusive “national interest” abroad.

The vote in Brighton is important not just because it gets the movement’s immediate priorities in the right order, but also because it is a step towards the essential requirement of independent working-class politics on the supreme issues of war and peace.