Above photo: Getty Images.
We’re hurtling towards more wars and greater global instability, with the governments of Europe responding with massive rearmament programmes and increasing moves towards conscription. So we urgently need a mass movement for peace to break with the worldview of the likes of Donald Trump and Tony Blair.
The International Conference Against War on 20 June in central London will be a unique and historic step to building it.
Over 1,700 people from the UK and across Europe have bought tickets so far and, with international speakers, this will be a truly world-wide solidarity conference. Speakers are coming from France, Palestine, Belgium, the UK, the US, Ukraine, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and Sweden.
They include (all in person):
- Mustafa Barghouti, General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative.
- Medea Benjamin, American political activist Code Pink.
- Mothin Ali, Green Party deputy leader.
- Lorena Delgado Varas, Swedish MP.
- UK MPs Richard Burgon, Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana, Jon Trickett.
- Jérôme Lagavre, French Assembly member.
- Fran Heathcote, PCS general secretary.
- José Nivoi, Genoa docker.
- Tariq Ali, author and activist.
- Felix Kreklow Rojas, German anti-conscription student campaigner.
- Andrew Feinstein, former ANC MP.
- And many more.
John Rees, Stop the War national officer and one of the organisers of the conference, said:
The wolf is at the door. Donald Trump is setting fires he has no intention and no capacity to extinguish.
European political leaders have begun a continent-wide rearmament programme on a scale not seen since World War Two. They’re making arms companies rich and the rest of us poor.
Every day another politician or army chief tells us we have to accept austerity and prepare for war. Conscription has returned in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Keir Starmer is threatening the same here.
The International Anti-War conference in London on 20 June is the response from trade unionists and anti-war activists. It could not come at a more vital time. Together we will demand welfare, not warfare, wages not weapons.
