For a just and lasting peace

Trade unions are being urged to support the Stop the War conference in January specifically aimed at mobilising working people around “every effort... to pursue peaceful relations between countries through negotiations and disarmament". The World at War conference that is open to all trade unionists takes it lead from the resolution passed at this year’s RMT national conference which rightly said that “workers have no interest in war with China, Russia, or any other country. Every effort should be made to pursue peaceful relations between countries through negotiations and disarmament”.
    But sadly the first call of the Stop the War coalition is not the immediate ceasefire call of the pacifist community but a demand for the complete and unconditional withdrawal of all Russian troops – which is precisely what NATO wants as well.
    We are in the middle of a hate-campaign not seen since the dark Cold War days of the McCarthy era, We’re being swamped with hysterical anti-Russian propaganda to justify more and more sanctions on Russia and more and more military aid to the Ukrainian fascists.
    The gurus of the mainstream media fill their columns with the usual stories of Russian atrocities to justify Britain’s deepening involvement in the anti-Russian offensive. The Tory government can count on the full support of the other bourgeois parties in parliament. Starmer and his Blairite clique openly embrace NATO and US imperialism while the fake lefters who pose as socialists essentially argue that peace is only attainable on imperialist terms.
    The Blairites and the self-styled “communist” and “trotskyist” movements drum up support for NATO’s war within the labour movement and the anti-war campaigns in the name of bogus Ukrainian leftists while ignoring the very real plight of the genuine communist and left languishing in Zelensky’s jails under Pinochet-style laws designed to crush all opposition to the puppet regime.
    Parroting imperialist demands in pseudo-leftist babble only spreads confusion amongst the millions who want to see an end to the conflict which could set the whole of Europe ablaze and possibly even trigger a nuclear war.
    These sinister forces within the labour and peace movement have long acted as cheer-leaders for NATO and neo-colonialism. Some are dupes who actually believe the nonsense in the bourgeois press. Some believe, with some justification, that it will pave their way to the top of the labour bureaucracy and others are simply hired hands of the intelligence services that monitor and influence working class opinion in Britain.
    Ultimately all these people serve the war lobby within the United States – the so-called “deep state” that represents the most venal and aggressive sections of the American ruling class that seek to dominate the entire world in the name of “globalisation” and the “new world order”.
    Now, more than ever, is the time for a clear call from the anti-war movement for an end to the fighting and a just and lasting peace in eastern Europe. This can only come with a neutral and de-Nazified Ukraine that recognises the rights of the Donbas and Crimean republics to join the Russian Federation as well as equal rights for all the peoples of the regions of the Ukraine.