“They say we can’t afford weapons and welfare states, so they’re going to choose the weapons” – Kate Hudson
Sian Errington reports on the recent ‘Opposing Trump’s War Drive – Globalise the Resistance’ rally.
Ahead of the catastrophic local elections for Labour, UCL’s Policy Lab had published a report using research from the eminent pollster Stan Greenberg, finding that in Britain voters want to see a more robust challenge to Trump from the government, and not only support a position of Britain not being involved in the war on Iran but also wanting an articulation from the government on why the war is wrong.
This topic, ‘Opposing Trump’s War drive’ had been the theme of this year’s eve of May Day rally, organised by ‘Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas’, the seventh one in what has become an annual fixture. Organised under the banner of it yet again brought together British and international labour movement figures.
Opening the meeting, chair Jess Barnard, highlighted how “Trump’s war drive epitomises an era of permanent war with deadly consequences” followed by Matt Willgress, speaking from Arise setting out how events such as this for May Day 2026 allows us to unite with movements across the globe, and emphasised the human toll Trump’s war drive is taking with huge loss of life across Iran, Palestine, Lebanon – where an estimated 20 per cent of the population has been displaced – and in Venezuela.
Diane Abbott MP spoke on the urgency and the centrality of taking on racism and defeating the far-right, with the need for unity across our movement on this objective, drawing out the points in her exclusive Labour Outlook article. Diane highlighted how, alongside the direct war interventions Trump has made, “Trump and Britain are waging a war against some of the poorest people in the world by slashing their aid budget” with USAID ending and Britain slashing its budget while increasing military spending.
Later in the meeting, Roger McKenzie, Morning Star International Editor, highlighted the need to organise and how that gave rise to people’s hope of a better future and the need to always remind people of the wins and successes we have as a movement. He was speaking from Johannesburg in South Africa, where May Day comes a few days after Freedom Day with Roger underlining that he, as well as many others on the rally, “spent many a long hours outside of South Africa House many years ago, campaigning against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa at the time, and many people told us continually, that there’s no point”.
He was followed by a representative of the Cuban Embassy, outlining how Cuba has been subject to threats by the US for over 60 years now, with the illegal blockade and sanctions against the island.
Since Trump’s re-election, however, there has been an increase in the severity of the US aggression against Latin America and the Caribbean. This is most clearly illustrated by the kidnapping of the Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, in January, where over 100 people were killed, including 32 Cuban security personnel. Between January 2026 and 19th April 2026, there had been 180 people killed in the Caribbean by US naval strikes under the pretext of preventing drug smuggling.
Kate Hudson, speaking on behalf of the peace campaign, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, focused on the disastrous impact of the race to increase military spending, characterising a ‘circular flow of war’ as we witness a proliferation of wars since Trump’s election and then how those wars both sustain military spending and cause more wars. Not only drawing attention to the escalating pro-war rhetoric we are seeing from our Government for our societies, and of course, that’s accompanied by escalating pro-war rhetoric. We hear a lot of that here in Britain; we hear from our Prime Minister continually about Britain being war-ready, how we have to have a whole society approach to war and so on. And of course, across Europe, too, governments are slashing public spending budgets, destroying welfare states. They say we can’t afford weapons and welfare states, so they’re going to choose the weapons”.
This also reflected what Daniele Obono, La France Insoumise member of the French National Assembly, had highlighted earlier in the meeting, drawing attention to how “Compared to the previous five year period, Europe has tripled its arms imports… with EU countries spend[ing] a record of 343 billion [euros in 2024]… yielding to Trump’s demand to increase their military spending to 5% of the GDP and showing that they can find the money, but not for social services, not for the people or for addressing climate change”. Daniele also the continued need to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians, saying that “Worldwide governments are trying to repress the movement of solidarity with Palestine, but at the same time this very movement shows the spirit of resistance of people worldwide that has been opposing the Gaza genocide” and “The choice is either a world of war and unbridled capitalism, or a world of internationalism and solidarity”.
Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, was also clear on how the US war against Iran “is yet another illegal and completely unnecessary war carried out by the major imperialist power in the world” and that “One of the most important things we have to do is [campaign for] our trade unions into opposing rearmament and the drive to war” and the need to defend the right to protest.
Saed Erziqat, the General Secretary of the General Union of Palestinian Teachers was the final speaker of the evening, powerfully outlining the daily impact of the decades of military occupation the Palestinians have lived under, and now violence as a policy being used in Gaza and the West Bank, ending the meeting with the explanation “ That is why this struggle is global, not only in Palestine or Iran or Lebanon. As a teacher and as a trade unionist, I want to be very clear. War is always against education. War destroys schools…war steals the future”.
- You can sign up for Arise’s next online event, “The economics of Trump’s war – profits for the few, misery for the many”, here.
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