A step in the right direction

Union activists broke through the bourgeois consensus on Ukraine last week when delegates passed a motion that has enraged the union bureaucracy as well as the fake left cheerleaders for imperialism within the University and College Union (UCU).
    At the UCU’s annual conference in Glasgow delegates passed a motion that explicitly said no to sending arms to Ukraine and no to NATO expansion and escalation.
    The union’s chief bureaucrat, General Secretary Jo Grady says that she was “deeply disappointed the motion passed”, claiming it was being used to “attack the union and question our solidarity with the working class and people of Ukraine”, whilst the movers claim this was a major victory for the anti-war movement.
    Arthur Scargill and Bob Crow were the exceptions that proved that rule that senior union full-time officials rarely reflect the demands of the membership they claim to serve. So Ms Grady can bleat on for as long as she likes as far as we’re concerned.
    At the same time it must be said that this motion is a very modest step indeed in the battle against the war lobby within the labour movement. Like the Stop the War movement that has clearly inspired this initiative, the motion brands Putin a “war criminal” and calls on Russia to withdraw from Ukraine. But it says nothing about the fascist terror that followed that drove the people of the Donbas to take up the gun in 2014.
    What it does tell us is that Putin has “unleashed war crimes” and says “we should stand in solidarity with ordinary Ukrainians and demand an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops”. The motion would have been carried unanimously had it stopped there. But it didn’t.
    It goes on to state that: “NATO is not a progressive force: escalation risks widening war in the region only through a peaceful resolution can lives be saved.” It calls on the Government to stop arming Ukraine and calls on the union to support protests called by Stop The War, CND and other anti-war organisations. This is what has enraged the war-lobby.
    The cause of peace is not helped, however, by those in the anti-war movement who blame the Russians for the crisis, ignore the legitimate demands of the people of the Donbas and fail to recognise that this war began in 2014 when the legitimate Ukrainian government was overthrown by fascist gangs supported by Anglo-American and Franco-German imperialism.
The hidden hand is always at work amongst the fake left within the peace and anti-war movement who essentially argue that peace is only attainable on imperialist terms. We saw this time and time again over Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Palestine, and now we’re seeing it over Ukraine.
   The movers of the UCU motion have opened up the debate and taken a step in the right direction. But they still call for an unconditional Russian withdrawal from Ukraine – which is also the demand of US imperialism and its lackeys.
The communist stand must be for a just peace in Ukraine – for a neutral and de-Nazified Ukraine that recognises the decision of the Donbas and Crimean republics to join the Russian Federation and grants equal rights for all the people of the regions of the Ukraine.