From the leaflet distributed by Socialist Alternative members at UCU National Congress 2025
Keir Starmer’s Labour government is committed to increasing military expenditure to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 and to 3% of GDP in the next parliament. In the meantime, education is severely underfunded at all levels. The enormous resources that Labour decided to pour into warmongering could easily be used to address the crisis in education and across our public services.
Education workers have been suffering from stagnating wages for almost two decades, while resources in schools and colleges are at an all-time low. In Higher Education, the government has provided no response to an ongoing crisis with student recruitment, which brought to light the dependence of the sector on international students. Mass layoffs are now on the horizon for HE workers. To truly resist these attacks, UCU must reject militarism and stand for a policy of welfare, not warfare!
The supposed reasons for re-armament across Europe are drenched in hypocrisy. While leaders talk about growing ‘security threats’, nowhere do they mention their own track record of imperialist aggression. After all, the ruling class in Britain today exports weaponry fuelling the ongoing conflict in Yemen, and actively supports Netanyahu’s genocidal war on Gaza.
In the growing world of inter-imperialist conflict, the workers’ movement should take no side, and should instead stand for international working-class unity and solidarity. Socialist Alternative stands for building an international, working class-led anti-war movement, which fights for a socialist world, based on public ownership and solidarity, run in the interests of the majority.
