For Peace!

In this section, we examine responses by the workers’ movement to stopping military-industrial production. Through organised labour, workers took a stand for peace at the Rolls-Royce factory in East Kilbride, refusing to service the engines for British jets used by the Pinochet regime. Workers at Lucas Aerospace developed creative strategies through the shop stewards' network to convert an arms factory to socially useful production under workers’ control. We also feature a selection of documents that examine how campaigns against nuclear weapons have orientated themselves towards the organised working class to challenge capitalism, through actions such as workers refusing to handle nuclear cargo. In particular, the Scottish Committee of 100 called on trade unionists to demonstrate outside the Rosyth Base on Easter Sunday 1964. The call argued that if the trade union movement had organised sufficient resistance to Polaris at Holy Loch, there would be no Faslane Base today. We also include an open letter to the British Labour Movement from the Troops Out Movement, calling for organised opposition to the military presence in Northern Ireland.

The cheeky little pamphlet The Workers' Bomb distributed at the 1962 Aldermaston March, offers a critique of imperialism and the workers' movement, condemning Communist parties for their continued support of the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal over unilateral disarmament. It is shown here alongside Against All Bombs, originally distributed in Moscow and later translated and published by the Industrial Sub-Committee of the Committee of 100. Both pamphlets were written, in part by Ken Weller, a member of Spies for Peace and one of the authors of Beyond Counting Arse, featured in the previous section.

MayDay Rooms has a large collection of Italian workerist material, and we include pamphlets called Operai e Soldati, published by the Italian workerist group Lotta Continua, which documents the work of Proletari in divisa (Proletarians in Uniform), form by militants during their compulsory military service, aiming to bring a workerist mode of organising into the military.

We also draw attention to contemporary workers' actions against the production and flow of weapons fuelling Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. This includes a call from Palestinian trade unions to the international workers’ movement to halt the arms trade with Israel. We include a number of responses to this call such as the picketing of Elbit factory in Kent by Workers for a Free Palestine and a poster from Collettivo Autonomo Lavoratori Portuali (CALP) from Italy. The CALP has long opposed Saudi arms shipments linked to the Yemen war. In 2021, they helped organise a blockade in Livorno against the Asiatic Island, a ship carrying military equipment to Ashdod, Israel. More recently, they’ve taken part in actions blocking weapons bound for Israel.