Jesse Winney | No to Nato (Britain)
Dear friends at the World Anti-Imperialist Platform,
it is an immense privilege for me to give greetings on behalf of the Workers’ Party of Britain and No to NATO.
It is vitally important that Britain is represented in the global anti-imperialist movement as we are one of the main purveyors of imperialist aggression worldwide. It is Britain that is at the helm of this so-called coalition of the willing, of Britain, France, Germany and Ukraine in its proxy war against Russia.
Just recently we had our Minister of Defence, John Healey, resign from his post following a dispute between himself and Keir Starmer that defence spending is not being sufficiently increased. But it is defence spending that has seen the biggest increase than any other possible outlet of state spending in Britain.
This means that all other sectors of British society are suffering, healthcare, education and housing. So it is very clear that Britain’s involvement in imperialist aggression impacts not only the peoples of the global east and the global south, but fundamentally it impacts people here at home.
Mass migration is the biggest point of political discourse in Britain and it is a phenomenon that exists solely because of an imperialist global system of forced wealth transfer from the global south and the global east to a handful of imperialist nations. But is it going to the nations collectively? No.
It goes to financial oligarchs, big companies and the military industrial complex that is being inflated by taxpayers’ money. These are the people who are enjoying the biggest bonanza from our involvement in imperialist wars abroad. So it is vitally important that Britain plays its role in the anti-imperialist movement.
That British workers are connected and organised to undermine and weaken the imperialist front at home. We have an important role behind enemy lines and we seek to fulfil that role. There is precedence to British workers organising to undermine the war machine. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Winston Churchill implored the ruling class of Britain to strangle the baby in its cradle. And to this effect, the British armed forces geared up the Jolly George to be sent to Russia to arm the treacherous reactionary White Army with the full support of America, Canada and the other imperialist nations of Europe to crush the revolution before it built socialism in Russia.
But it was organised British workers that refused to arm the Jolly George and the project was abandoned completely. Workers both behind enemy lines and on the front lines of imperialism have the power to end imperialism. And that is a key feature that must be conveyed in the World Anti-Imperialist Platform. So dear friends, I wish you a fruitful congress. I hope lots of practical points will be made and that a new plan of work over the next coming years will be made. Because we need your work now more than ever. Solidarity comrades.
