UK: « We want to stop arming Israel. We want no increase in defense spending. »

How is Stop the War involved in the defense of the Palestinian people?

Lindsay German : When we were formed in 2001, we quickly became involved in campaigning over Palestine because we were opposed to war in Afghanistan and in Iraq but we also saw that Palestine was key to what happened in the Middle East. I spoke at a big rally organized by Muslims in 2002 against the massacre in Jenin and then we agreed to work together. The demonstration, the two million we had against the Iraq war, also had a slogan for free Palestine. We’ve continued to work with the Palestinian organizations ever since, over all the different attacks by Israel on Gaza and on the West Bank.

Is the Stop the War Coalition also involved against the war in Ukraine and the war in the making all across Europe as different governments increase drastically the military budgets?

Lindsay German : Yes, we’re very much opposed to Western intervention in Ukraine. We opposed the Russian invasion but we said that NATO proxy war would actually only make the situation worse. And as you quite rightly say, the West European governments are now spending huge amounts of money on arms for Ukraine.

Macron’s talked about sending troops to Ukraine. This is a very dangerous situation and it can of course lead to a war between nuclear powers. We know Russia has nuclear weapons, we know that Britain and France have nuclear weapons and this can escalate into a nuclear war. So we oppose that as well.

How are the unions in the UK involved in that battle?

Lindsay German : The unions over Ukraine are not very good. A number of them support sending more arms to Ukraine. They don’t have a good position. A few do, but most don’t have a particularly good position on it. We are trying to campaign within the unions to change that. The TUC, which is the general body, umbrella group of the trade unions actually supports the idea of spending more on arms because it says it protects jobs.

Now we say we don’t want people to lose jobs but we don’t want people producing weapons of mass destruction. We want a transition towards jobs which are useful to society, not ones which will destroy millions of people.

There is now a new prime minister in the UK. What do you ask for?

Lindsay German : We want to stop arming Israel. We want no increase in defense spending. We think defense spending is much too high. We’d like to see much more money spent on things that people really need, the health service, ending poverty, better education. We say no more war, no support for Netanyahu in Israel, but also a domestic policy which stops scapegoating the poorest people in society and allows the rich to get richer.