This year’s Labour party conference will include fringe events sponsored by a spyware firm and arms manufacturers heavily involved in nuclear weapons production, not to mention fossil fuel firms, private healthcare companies and banks. In a sad sign of the times, many of these fringe events will be hosted by New Statesman Media Group – a far cry from earlier times; the meeting in 1957 which led directly to the founding of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was held at the flat of the New Statesman editor Kingsley Martin.
Is there to be no clear distinction between the government of the past 13 years and the values of any future Labour government? By welcoming in the arms industries, the Labour party is letting the British public know that it will continue this Conservative government’s vision of a belligerent United Kingdom, rooted in increased militarisation rather than disarmament and peace.
This is the wrong priority.
In the biggest cost of living crisis for decades, with inflation at a 40-year high, when millions of people are struggling with hunger, fuel poverty and lack of housing, billions of pounds will be spent on weapons instead of wages, welfare, and meeting the needs of our communities.
The Labour party needs a new set of priorities that focus on improving living standards for the whole population and protecting the planet and its peoples from the climate disaster into which we are hurtling. Increased militarisation has no part in this. Arms companies, which contribute to the escalation of wars with their terrible human loss and suffering, the displacement of people and the ruination of our environments, should keep their bloodstained hands out of politics.
Kate Hudson General secretary, CND
Lindsey German Convener, Stop the War Coalition
Richard Norton-Taylor Former Guardian security editor
Andrew Feinstein Author, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade
Victoria Brittain Journalist and author
Kirsten Bayes Campaign Against Arms Trade
Canon Paul Oestreicher Vice-president, CND
Prof Barbara Einhorn Professor emerita, University of Sussex