Received from: UCU
Congress recognises:
i. that Britain’s public services, public goods, and core infrastructure – including education, healthcare, local government, mail, and transport – continue to suffer from chronic neglect and underinvestment
ii. this harms working people, holds back unions and compounds national decline.
Congress further recognises that:
a. rearmament is not a suitable standalone foundation for national renewal
b. moreover, there can be no meaningful national security in the absence of massive public investment to rebuild the social and economic fabric of working-class communities
c. political pressure from Trump continues to ratchet up expected levels of spending on defence, potentially climbing to 5 per cent of gross domestic product
d. in the current political context, ever-higher expenditure on arms will inevitably mean less money for our education, health, and councils, and the green transition.
Congress believes:
1. we should stand, in our best traditions, for peace and against militarisation
2. that actively campaigning for ever-higher spending on arms risks signalling approval of a wider drive to war, in the dangerous context of renewed great-power rivalry
3. that British participation in the F-35 programme implicates it in Israel’s grave violations of international law in Gaza.
Congress resolves to:
I. reverse policy, dating from 2022, of support for immediate increases in defence spending
II. prioritise campaigning for public investment in Britain’s public realm, decimated by austerity
III. commit to a safe, liveable planet
IV. reaffirm that our movement’s priority is welfare and wages, not weapons and war.
University and College Union