“Opposition to imperialism is the antidote to nationalism and Islamophobia and is absolutely central to the fight against fascism.”
Shabbir Lakha spoke at Stop the War’s recent International Anti-War Conference on the need to oppose militarism. You can read his speech below.
If you’ve used public transport recently, you will likely have seen the massive military recruitment campaign plastered all over the place. Do you like football? Join the army.
It might seem ridiculous, but it is just one example of how militarism is invading all parts of our society.
At a time when schools are literally crumbling, when universities are collapsing, when unemployment – and specifically youth unemployment – is rising, our government’s response is to introduce a ‘military gap year’. It has given the military an extra £70m specifically to go into schools and universities to recruit students.
The Ministry of Defence is establishing a Defence Universities Alliance to commit universities to developing military technology and to set up graduate schemes to funnel students into the military industrial complex.
At the same time, the government quietly increased the age limit for recalling military reservists to 65 and lowered the threshold for doing so to include times of “warlike preparations”.
It is not an exaggeration to say that this is the beginning of the reintroduction of conscription – especially when you look at developments across the continent.
Every week, we are fed stories about the Russian threat and the need to expand our military. Last month, they carried out war games in a bunker under a central London tube station, and they boasted about using the same AI targeting system that has been trained in battle by Israel and the US in Gaza, Lebanon and in Iran – you know the one that has consistently picked schools and hospitals to be bombed.
There is a consensus among the political classes across Europe that we need to cut welfare, cut spending on public services, and cut wages in order to fund rearmament on a mass scale. We are being driven at alarming speed towards more war, and more deadly and catastrophic forms of warfare and at the expense of working people.
And the nationalism generated by militarism, the Islamophobia used to justify the butchering of people in the Middle East, the authoritarianism used to stifle dissent, and the austerity that is impoverishing working people are the driving forces of the fascists and the far right.
So opposition to imperialism is the antidote to nationalism and Islamophobia and is absolutely central to the fight against fascism. Standing up for the Palestinian people is the frontline of defending our right to protest. Resisting the drive to war is a crucial part of stopping cuts to wages, welfare and public services.
And that’s why it’s so important that this movement is led by the labour movement, that those unions that have bought into the idea of defence jobs and supporting imperialism are pulled away by rank and file trade unionists.
Out of this conference, we are calling an international day of action for Palestine on 10 October, an international day of action supporting the dock workers’ action in October and an international day of action against conscription and militarism on 21-22 November.
Today in this hall and on those days we are showing the ruling classes that the millions who have marched for Palestine, the general strikes that have shut down cities, the blockades that have closed the ports to stop weapons getting to Israel, the universities that have been occupied and the students who have walked out of school, all the boats that have joined the flotillas – they are not isolated actions but the components of a united popular international movement that is capable and determined to consign the warmongers and the genocide perpetrators to the dustbin of history.
This is not a moment for despair, because it is precisely at this time, when the old order is dying and the new is struggling to be born, that we can have the most impact.
We represent the majority of the people of Europe and of the world and we are carrying on the traditions of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebernicht, of the soldiers that mutinied and ended the First World War, of the liberation movements that brought down empires, of the Palestinian people whose resistance is an inspiration to the world, of Malcolm X when he said we want freedom, justice and equality by any means necessary, of the Paris Communards when they declared 155 years ago:
Nous avons le devoir de lutter et de vaincre. It is our duty to fight and to win.
So let us get on with it. Solidarity.
- Shabbir Lakha is an Officer for the Stop the War Coalition. You can follow him on Twitter/X here.
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