Posted by: John Phoenix
Stop the war machine! No cooperation with the genocide in Gaza!
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For two years, dockworkers in France, Greece, Italy and elsewhere have been organising strikes, protests and blockades to prevent arms and military equipment destined for Israel being loaded onto container ships.
They are responding to the actions of their own governments, which have been complicit not only in the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, but in brutal imperialist warmongering all over the world.
Dockers from across the continent met in Genoa last September to coordinate action in European ports. Their aim was to maintain and escalate their blockade of arms and equipment being used to unleash genocidal slaughter on the people of Gaza.
Where were the British dockworkers’ unions?
Britain has many large ports, yet instead of organising members on the docks to resist the government’s criminal warmongering, Unite has called instead for more spending on weapons!
According to general secretary Sharon Graham: “Government defence spending must be used to secure UK jobs and skills. This country has world-class aerospace and shipbuilding capabilities. Buying British is crucial if we are going to retain them, for the sake of our national security as well as our future economic growth.”
Such leaders pretend to care about the workers, but in reality they are repeating the ruling class’s war propaganda. What about the right of those being attacked to live in peace from imperialist aggression?
Terrible crimes are being committed around the world by the lords of British finance capital – the same exploiters who impose brutal austerity and whose system has brought us housing, employment, hunger and healthcare crises here at home.
If our union leaders choose to defend our class enemies, then they have proved that they are not fit for purpose. In which case, we must organise to take action from the grassroots up.
Our unions should be working to make sure we have useful, productive jobs with decent pay and conditions that build the real economy and serve the interests of the people as a whole. Wars for plunder strengthen our class enemies at the expense of the peoples of the rest of the world – and they make British workers poorer and weaker at the same time.
Workers involved in production and distribution have their hands on levers of real economic power – a power that has been amplified by the supposedly ‘efficient’ use of ‘just in time’ logistics.
It is time for workers in ports across the nation – from Felixstowe and Tilbury to Grangemouth, Teesport, Immingham, Southampton, Avonmouth and Liverpool – to declare: “We won’t be part of the imperialist war machine!”
Individually, we may feel impotent, but together the real power of the land is in our hands. Our class has the ability to stop the war machine in its tracks and call the warmongers to account.
We must learn to use that power in the interests of our class and of humanity.
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For more information about how workers can organise to stop the war machine, see our page on non-cooperation and get in touch.