“Our trade union movement must not just speak out in solidarity but take these impactful actions called for in the motion as a collective movement.”
By Zita Holbourne
My union, Artists’ Union England (AUE), has submitted a motion to this year’s TUC Congress calling for support for the Palestinian-led BDS movement.
Over recent years, artists across the creative sector, including members of my union, have seen work they have created about Palestine restricted, censored and cancelled, and there have been threats to arts funding.
The BDS movement is global, involving over 170 Palestinian civil society groups, including trade unions.
There have been many powerful and successful BDS campaigns through history for Civil Rights both in the USA and UK – The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Bristol Bus Boycott, which was largely influential in bringing about the first race relations laws in the UK.
I am proud to be a trustee of ACTSA, the successor org to the Anti-Apartheid Movement. I experienced apartheid in South Africa as a child first-hand, and as a student was involved in organising boycotts, including of Barclays Bank and Sainsbury. The AAM BDS campaign was joined by not just consumers but sports people, artists and performers, teachers, dock and transport workers, including Ford workers and more, and it also called for an end to all military collaboration with South Africa and included a divestment campaign.
In 1984, a group of young and predominantly women workers at Dunnes Store in Ireland went on strike for 3 years, refusing to handle South African goods.
More info here – an education pack I co-wrote with playwright Tracey Ryan, whose play Strike tells their story. We were commissioned to write it by Ardent Theatre after we facilitated for them a programme of workshops for drama students in secondary schools and universities.
It is important that this history and the power of boycotting are shared with future generations.
As a UK trade union movement, we have a proud history of solidarity with Palestine, and I took part in 2019 in the first all-woman trade union delegation to Palestine, but there is more we can do and must do.
The genocide against the Palestinian people has now continued for almost three years. Over 70,000 people have been confirmed killed – over 1200 since the so-called ceasefire – with many thousands still missing.
The vast majority of the population of Gaza are living in makeshift accommodation and tents, leaving them without adequate protection from extreme heat, floods and freezing weather, and without basic necessities.
This places babies, the elderly and disabled most at risk of serious illness and death.
Military attacks by the Israeli military continue to be carried out indiscriminately and regularly, killing thousands of Palestinians (men, women and children) despite the so-called ceasefire.
The UK government has just very recently accepted the July 2024 International Court of Justice ruling that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land is unlawful and committed to a ban on settlement goods, action against companies involved in settlement expansion and further restrictions on arms export licenses to Israel.
This is a positive move but doesn’t go far enough. Our motion calls for a campaign to end all arms sales and military cooperation with Israel and divestment from companies that are complicit and support for trade union members, including those who refuse to handle goods and services linked to violations of international law, plus a stop to attempts to censor artists and arts organisations expressing solidarity with Palestine.
Palestinian Unions have just issued a global action by workers against genocide this November to end complicity in the ongoing genocide and apartheid, and this is also something trade unions should coordinate and play an active part in.
Our trade union movement must not just speak out in solidarity but take these impactful actions called for in the motion as a collective movement. This is urgent. We must stand with Palestine for their human rights and for freedom.
- Zita Holbourne is Joint National Chair of Artists Union England, Chair & Co-founder of BARAC UK, a multi-award-winning equality and human rights campaigner, multidisciplinary artist and writer. You can follow Zita on Instagram and follow Black Activists Rising Against Cuts (BARAC UK) on Facebook and Twitter/X.
- If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please donate here or become a supporter on Patreon.
