Union boss demands ‘wages not weapons’ as Gaza campaigners claim victory at Labour conference

There, Stop the War hailed Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband’s declaration that protesters “were right” as a “great victory,” and called for campaigners to push for further action, including a complete end to arms sales to Israel.

Speaking at the UCU event in Liverpool, Grady claimed conversations she has had with ministers suggest the “dial has shifted” in the debate over defence spending.

“We're even having conversations now amongst ministers who even four or five months ago were saying the only way was extra defence expenditure.”

She contrasted the constraints on education spending and “disappointing” job losses in her sector with the sums being discussed for the military.

“What we were seeing in the UK was almost unlimited money potentially being made available for investment in defence.

“When the conversation was happening about investment in defence, it seemed almost inevitable that we would just see huge amounts more invested.”

She claimed that money would be used to “produce weaponry that will rain down hell on earth in Palestine and other areas”.

The UCU secured support for its Wages not Weapons motion at the Trades Union Congress, which reversed the movement's historical position supporting defence spending.

“We changed that official TUC policy, which was a big moment in the trade union movement in the UK,” Grady said.

“We said that if we are going to be seeing increases in expenditure of any kind, it should not be just going on military expenditure; it should be going on us.”

Grady also claimed that British military interventions had made the world less safe.

“Again and again, we are told that military intervention is necessary for our security, and I would argue again and again, we have seen incredibly disastrous consequences.

“These interventions do not make the world safer, they make it a much more dangerous place.”

And she appealed to larger unions to join the UCU-led campaign.

“There were some other really quite big unions that weren't in the place where we want them to be on this. We didn't bring this motion to the TUC to be divisive. We brought it because we fundamentally think it's the right thing to do.”

She added: “We need a mass movement in the UK to take this forward.”

Also during the fringe event, Richard Burgon, the Labour MP for Leeds East, warned against Britain being drawn into Donald Trump’s “attempt to maintain a world dominated by the USA, secured through raw power, militarism, and what I would call gangster politics”.

And former Labour candidate and Tax Justice UK executive director Faiza Shaheen suggested completely defunding British defence.

She said that while working in Costa Rica, "I had all these normal, everyday people saying to me: 'Oh, decades ago, we took the money from the army and we don't have defence here, we don’t have an army here, and we put it into education’”.

"That was such a point of pride for those people and I think that would be true here as well."

But Streeting rejected the premise that protecting public services required opposition to defence investment.

Addressing the main conference on Monday, the defence secretary said: “You are not defending our public services by attacking investment in our national defences.”

The Chancellor, John Healey, resigned as defence secretary earlier this year over what he regarded as inadequate military funding.

Meanwhile, the meeting of Stop the War and Friends of Al-Aqsa, titled “Labour’s position on Gaza is betraying justice and the people”, went ahead outside the conference secure zone despite its removal from the official guide.

Andrew Murray, from Stop the War, seized on Miliband’s conference speech as vindication of the demonstrations organised over Gaza.

“I'm almost tempted to begin by saying I'm bringing solidarity from the foreign secretary,” he told the room of ten or so attendees.

“When he says, ‘you are right’, he means Friends of Al-Aqsa is right, the Muslim Association of Britain is right. The Palestine Forum in Britain is correct. CND is right. Palestine Solidarity is right and Stop The War is right because we have organised 35 national demonstrations over the last three years and as we can now see we are getting results.”

While he said it was “too late” and “too little”, he added that Miliband’s speech was “a big step forward. It is a great victory.”

Murray said there had been “almost a cathartic release” among delegates listening to Miliband, but demanded the government go further, including a complete end to arms sales to Israel and a boycott, divestment and sanctions programme.

“We have got to go further; we have to demand that complete end to arms sales to Israel, a full BDS programme, not just focused on the West Bank of Palestine alone, so we've got to go further, but we have to take encouragement from the fact that our movement has achieved so much.”