Anti-war movement resolves: “No cooperation with war crimes”
The Communist Party of Great
Britain (Marxist-Leninist) submitted the resolution below to the Annual General
Meeting of the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) on 25 April, and it was passed
near unanimously. In addition it had the full support of the StWC officers. Lalkar
is pleased to reproduce this resolution, which has now become a part of the
mobilisation programme of the anti-war movement in this country and marks a
landmark in the political development of the anti-war and anti-imperialist
movement.
Editor
______________________
No cooperation with war crimes
This conference condemns Britain’s continued
involvement in the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and calls for the
immediate recall of all British troops from both these countries.
While the City of London’s financial elite
sought to benefit by joining arms with the US to seize Iraq’s oil wealth and
manipulate her domestic and foreign policy to their advantage, this conference
affirms that the entire bloody debacle has always been contrary to the
interests of the vast majority of British workers, who have consistently
demonstrated their opposition to this modern-day Anglo-American colonial
crusade.
Since 2004, more than 1.5 million wholly innocent
Iraqi men, women and children have been slaughtered as a result of the illegal
invasion and occupation of their country. This can only be termed genocide. In
addition, more than 4 million Iraqis have been displaced from their homes as
internal and external refugees, and the resultant dislocation of Iraq’s cultural, political and economic life is near total.
In Afghanistan, tens of thousands of people have
been murdered, and the country’s infrastructure smashed to pieces as a result
of the Anglo-American oil monopolies’ quest to control the routes of projected
pipelines.
This conference notes with shame the fact that ‘our
own’ British imperialist Labour government has been a key player in planning
and perpetrating these heinous war crimes against the Iraqi and Afghan peoples.
Conference notes that many British workers were
browbeaten, by a compliant political and media establishment, into accepting
these wars on entirely false premises (Afghan responsibility for the 11
September attacks, Blair’s ‘45 minute’ claim about Iraqi WMD, etc) that sought
to paint Afghanistan and Iraq, rather than Anglo-American imperialism, as the
aggressors. Thus the necessary ground was laid to send British and US soldiers
(workers in uniform) to do the bankers’, oil magnates’ and armament
manufacturers’ dirty work.
This conference believes that war fought to enforce
subjection and servitude upon another nation is morally abhorrent; to fight and
die in such a cause is demoralising, corrupting and meaningless.
This conference realises that, although
individually powerless, collectively, British workers do have the power
to stop the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, since the government and corporations
cannot fight them without us.
This conference therefore resolves that the coalition
will do all in its power to promote a movement of industrial, political and
military non-cooperation with all of imperialism’s aggressive war preparations
and activities among British working people.
Union mobilisation remains key to the success of such
a policy, and this conference instructs the incoming Stop the War steering
committee to campaign vigorously among trade unions to encourage them to adopt
a practical policy encouraging their members to
do everything not to support illegal wars or occupations, directly or
indirectly; and to render every support to members victimised for taking this
principled stand.
This conference welcomes the magnificent examples
set by such signal actions as:
·
2002/3: FBU strike action immediately preceding the invasion of Iraq, which threatened the entire enterprise.
·
Jan 2003: Fifteen Aslef train drivers refused to move arms from Glasgow factories to Glen Douglas base on Scotland’s west coast (which remains NATO’s
largest European arsenal, and from where they were bound for the Gulf).
·
9 Aug 2006: Protesters occupied the Derry offices of Raytheon
when Israel invaded Lebanon, to “prevent the commissioning of war crimes by the
Israeli armed forces using weapons supplied by Raytheon”.
·
May Day 2008: tens of thousands of US west coast dockers defied
court injunctions to strike in protest against US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite the decision of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union
(ILWU) leadership to withhold official sponsorship for the strike.
·
Dec 2008: Smash EDO demonstrators occupied and disabled
production at Brighton-based missile-delivery system manufacturer EDO (recently
acquired by Armament Giant ITT) during Israel’s massacre of Gazans.
·
Feb 2009: Norwegian Train drivers staged a national stoppage to
protest the Israeli massacre in Gaza.
·
Resolutions asking Bectu media workers to resist the transmission
of imperialist war propaganda will be considered at the union’s forthcoming
congress.