War is the continuation of politics by other means, as the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz famously said. We can see this very clearly over the war in Ukraine. War doesn’t result in a suspension of normal politics, but an acceleration of certain trends and tendencies, while at the same time certain other political strands face setbacks or defeats. In particular, war – at least in its early stages – tends to favour those on the right, the supporters of militarism and empire, who see in the war the possibility of strengthening their political clout and who act accordingly.
It is also a time when the protagonists can move to strengthen their own domestic positions and weaken democratic opposition. We have seen this with the rulers of both Russia and Ukraine, where Putin has openly repressed the anti-war movement and oppositionists, while Zelensky has banned many trade unions and attacked the left.
Here in Britain, there is a huge state and media backed effort to support more military spending, the strengthening of Nato, and a government which has led the way in belligerence and in scuppering any possibility of peace. It has also tried to use the war in the most scurrilous way – blaming the cost-of-living crisis on Putin, whereas it is clear that food and energy prices were rising before the war, saying that striking nurses are playing into Putin’s hands, and using the conflict to try to increase military spending which is already the highest in Europe.
The government is now faced with its biggest working-class fightback for more than three decades. On 1 February around half a million trade unionists will go on strike across Britain to demand a pay rise and in defence of working conditions. It will do everything it can to lie, distort, and deceive over the real issues and will use the war to try to justify its failure to fund health and education. The questions of war and peace, imperialism and military adventure cannot be separated from issues of austerity and wage restraint.
This was a recurring point made at the Stop the War trade union conference ‘The World at War: a trade union issue’ which took place in London on Saturday. In Britain, one of the world’s biggest arms spenders, the oldest imperial power, and possessor of nuclear weapons, international issues are domestic issues and not something separate. The trade unions have a long history of campaigning for peace and against war. When Stop the War Coalition was formed in 2001, it quickly gained the support of several key unions in its opposition to the ‘war on terror’. With the present war, trade union opinion is much more divided, with sections of the left arguing for governments to send more arms to Ukraine and totally opposed to peace talks.
This has allowed the right of the labour movement to push their reactionary politics. It is hard to imagine the motion passed at last year’s TUC, which actually calls for an increase in ‘defence’ spending, being supported without the background of the Ukraine war. Likewise, Keir Starmer’s diktat that Labour MPs could not support Stop the War, which means shamefully that no Labour MP will join a Stop the War platform or criticise Nato, could not have happened without the background of war. Since then, Starmer has pressed home his advantage, witch-hunting those on the left and demanding loyalty to every aspect of the British imperialist project.
Backing for the war and for the big increase in arms, including battle tanks and other heavy weaponry, is now causing political ructions across Europe. Right wing governments are pressing their advantage to weaken the left, and the left itself is divided. In Germany, the Greens are some of the most belligerent and putting pressure on the Social Democrats, with whom they are in government, to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine, and to allow others, like Poland, to send the German-made tanks as well. But many Germans, aware of their own history, are extremely reluctant to do so. In Denmark, the government is proposing scrapping a public holiday in order to raise defence spending – and facing mass opposition from trade unions and churches alike.
Shamefully, the left and liberals are some of the most pro-war in demanding more. Simon Tisdall in the Observer, in the latest of his gung ho column, can even state that ‘Fears of an escalating, even nuclear conflict, most often expressed by Germany’s government, are daily trumped by the horror of Putin’s relentless butchery.’ No, nuclear conflict would trump anything we have seen in this war.
Supporting our own ruling class over war weakens the working-class movement at home. That’s why we committed to doing everything to overturn the TUC motion, which in effect endorses cuts in other much more vital areas of public spending such as health and local government. It’s also why the many trade unionists who spoke will all be striking or supporting the strikers on 1 February but will also be raising issues of war and peace on the picket lines and demos.
Several speakers at the conference referred to the Scottish socialist John Maclean’s quote that a bayonet is a weapon with a worker on both ends. Working class people have nothing to gain from imperialist war, and we should not support either Russia’s invasion or Nato’s proxy war in Ukraine.