Composite R (covering Motions 51 & 116)
Peace & Military Spending
“That this Congress considers the refusal to lift the two child benefit cap, the means testing of the Winter Fuel Allowance, and the refusal to compensate the WASPI women for DWP mistakes, to be an outrage.
“Congress notes that while Government restricts funding in a number of crucial public service areas there is always money for war and that every pound spent on armaments is a pound less spent on public services.
“Congress notes that according to CND research the money spent on Trident could be used to improve the NHS by building 120 state of the art hospitals and employing 150,000 new nurses.
“Congress further notes that despite the election of a Labour government, Britain continues to play a belligerent role in international relations by:
- supplying weapons and military, technical, logistical, diplomatic and intelligence assets to assist Israel’s genocide in Gaza and attacks on Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran; and
- supplying British-made weapons, military support, credit and billions of pounds in public funding in trying and failing to achieve a military defeat for Russia in Ukraine, rather than working for a negotiated lasting peace and disarmament.
“Congress calls on the General Council to:
- campaign for the redirection of a proportion of the money allocated to the Trident replacement programme to other industries, including public services, creating more highly specialised and well-paid jobs;
- endorse RMT’s 2024 Annual General Meeting decision that peace is a labour movement issue, and to call for trade unions and peace organisations to convene a labour and peace movement summit in Scotland to work out the basis of a new foreign policy with the promotion of peace and social justice at its heart; and
- utilise this conference to outline a strategy for the orderly and planned divestment from the arms economy and toward the creation of new, sustainable industries within Scotland.”
Mover: Clydebank Trades Union Council
Seconder: North Lanarkshire Trades Union
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