The Annual Congress of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) representing nearly 6 million members in Britain adopted a motion on September 15, which reaffirmed its solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people for the right to self-determination, condemning the occupation and expansionist policies of the Israeli government.
The resolution expressed outright opposition to the annexationist ambitions of the Benjamin Netanyahu government, backed by the United States Administration and called for an end to British government complicity.
Demanding a cessation of the blockade of Gaza and support for “the right of Palestinian refugees to return”, it committed the TUC to “communicate its position to all other national trade union centres in the International and European Trade Union Confederations, and urge them to join the international campaign to stop annexation and end apartheid”.
What is distinct about the resolution is that, in calling for an end to “apartheid”, it identifies the Israeli state’s practices towards the Palestinian people as institutionally discriminatory, thereby challenging the normalisation of relations currently adopted, for example, by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and promoted by the White House.
Internationalism has a long tradition in the British trade union movement. In the 1860s, mill workers in the Manchester area refused to work with slave-labour-produced cotton imported from the southern states of the US, despite the hardships their families suffered as a consequence.
Read the article by Bernard Regan in Green Left.