“Let’s raise our voices for peace and cooperation, and say ‘no’ to militarisation and ‘yes’ to social investment”
Richard Burgon MP
Labour Outlook’s Sam Browse reports from the Arise Festival Eve of May Day rally – “For Peace & Socialism – No to Trump’s New World Disorder!”
Yesterday, hundreds tuned into Arise Festival’s eve-of-May Day rally, ‘for peace and socialism – no to Trump’s new world disorder’.
As the Chair, Rachel Garnham, highlighted, this May Day comes as governments around the world are failing to protect people and planet, while turning to austerity and militarism in the face of mounting crises. And yet, across the globe, people are resisting and fighting for a better future – in Latin America, the left are winning the fightback, in Africa we have seen advances and, while the situation is bleak, the heroic resistance of the Palestinians continues as global solidarity movements grow.
A key aim of the rally was to link struggles – and the event saw not only a wide range of speakers from across the global left, but an impressively dispersed audience, too, with people listening in from London and Exmouth, to Colwyn Bay and Paisley; but also Mexico City to Washington DC.
Fran Heathcote, General Secretary of the PCS union, told the meeting that ‘these are grave times for the trade union movement, the left, and for progressive movements more generally. The election of Donald Trump has emboldened the far right around the world, and legitimised bigotry on a scale we haven’t seen in decades.’
‘We know that our class is strongest when it is united. We have to reject the politics of dividing us against each other. There is nothing that cynical employers and politicians want more than a divided and weakened working class.’
Slamming Reform UK, she said ‘it’s not migrants that are putting up energy bills; it’s not muslims that are hiking water bills; it’s not disabled people jacking up our rent. The people ripping us off are the super-rich tax dodgers, the corporations, the landlords, and the low paying bosses.’
A key speaker at the rally was Eman Al-Shayeb of the General Union of Palestinian Teachers’ (GUPT) General Secretariat, who gave an update on the situation in Palestine, focusing on the experience of her members working in the education sector. She set out the shocking situation across Palestine – the over 13,000 students killed in Gaza, the detention and killing of students and teachers in the West Bank, and the writing-out of Palestinians in the curriculum and closing of UN schools in Jerusalem.
In closing, she said, ‘all the practices that the Israeli Government uses against us in order to displace us from our land – Trump supports them… the weapons that Israel uses against us come from America, so this is a Trump policy and a Netanyahu policy.’
Following Al-Shayeb, Richard Burgon MP argued that ‘Palestine lays bare the deep injustice of the current world order. It also underscores how the world is growing ever more dangerous as international law is cast aside. The doomsday clock is inching closer to midnight not only because of the climate catastrophe but also due to the growing risk of war and nuclear conflict. Trump’s so-called trade war with China will pour more fuel on the fire.’
‘But economic wars can easily escalate into real wars. We need to be clear: a war between the US and China would be an all-out nuclear war the consequences of which are simply too horrific to imagine. Across Europe, governments demand ever greater military budgets even as public services are slashed and disability support axed. That’s clearly the wrong priority. ‘
‘So this May Day’, he urged in a fitting conclusion to this report, “let’s raise our voices for peace and cooperation and say ‘no’ to militarisation and ‘yes’ to social investment.”
- You can watch the Arise Festival Eve of May Day Rally: For Peace & Socialism – No to Trump’s New World Disorder! here or listen on the Arise Festival podcast here.
- You can follow Arise Festival on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, Spotify and YouTube – and see all upcoming events here.
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