Several hundred people packed central London’s Hamilton House on Saturday March 14 for the annual conference of Britain’s Stop the War Coalition (StW).
Amidst the most dangerous international situation in the lifetime of most if not all of the delegates, the day’s proceedings represented a powerful, united and militant expression of determination to do everything possible both to end the brutal imperialist wars currently being waged against Iran, Palestine, Lebanon and elsewhere and to prevent the outbreak of a third world war that would threaten the very existence of humanity.
Stop the War’s website reports that during the opening session, Mustafa Barghouti, the renowned Palestinian figure, thanked StW for its solidarity with the Palestinian and Iranian people and drew attention to the devastating attacks Israel is currently conducting against Lebanon.
Jeremy Corbyn MP spoke of StW as a voice for peace, and of UK complicity in the destruction of Gaza, noting how the UK continues to send weapons to Israel.
Maryam Eslamdoust, railworkers’ union TSSA general secretary, who has family in Iran, reminded conference of the human tragedy of war. Maryam said Trump’s attacks were designed to strike fear and terror into civilians to achieve an uprising, fast victory and regime change. However, she believed Iran would not crumble as the imperialists hoped, and that the US would face a Vietnam-style defeat.
A motion on opposition to British foreign policy, moved by Stop the War deputy president and founding chair Andrew Murray, in an exceptionally fiery and impassioned speech, notes that:
- The Trump administration has embarked on a rampage of aggression that is imperilling the entire world.
- It has launched a barbaric and illegal attack with Israel on Iran (including murdering its leader) and Lebanon, kidnapped the President of Venezuela, bombed Yemen and Nigeria and is trying to bring down the government in Cuba. It has also threatened Panama, Colombia and Greenland. It has embarked on an intensification of the nuclear arms race.
- All this is aimed at reversing the relative decline of US imperialism, particularly in the face of China’s growing strength, and securing a new redivision of power and profit in the world to its advantage. It threatens a third world war.
- Keir Starmer has committed the British government to support for this reckless and bloody policy. All his professed support for international law disappears in the face of Washington’s illegalities. He is craven in his appeasement of Trump when he is not actually joining in with his wars.
- Instead of aligning with most of the world in condemning this war drive, Britain backs the aggressors. This policy also threatens to beggar the British people with entirely unsustainable and unnecessary increases in military spending, on a scale which will make urgent social improvements all-but impossible.
- The government also works to prolong the dangerous conflict in Ukraine and to engage in military provocations directed towards China in the Far East.
- This is all accompanied by a war psychosis designed to condition the population to the inevitability of an impending great power war.
Conference resolved:
- That Stop the War’s priority remains breaking this alliance and forcing the British government onto a path of support for international peace and disarmament, including exiting NATO.
- To demand an end to all support for Israel, and to fight for freedom and justice for the Palestinian people.
- To demand welfare not warfare and an end to the militarisation of the economy.
- To oppose the aggressions against Iran, Lebanon, Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere.
- To support an urgent end to the Russia-Ukraine war and oppose the deployment of British troops there.
A resolution on Building the Stop the War coalition in the current period noted:
- From the ongoing genocide in Gaza, devastation in Ukraine to rising tensions involving China, Iran and Latin America, the world is becoming more dangerous for working-class people everywhere.
- That more than ever there is an urgent need for a broad, united, mass anti-war movement capable of mobilising large numbers of people against war and militarism.
It resolved:
- To commit to linking opposition to war with struggles against austerity, racism and attacks on democratic rights, and to argue for international solidarity from below.
- For all members to play an active role in rebuilding a visible, confident and effective anti-war movement capable of challenging the drive to war and militarism in the period ahead.
A resolution moved by Jenny Clegg addressed the questions of Trump, the Pacific and Britain’s ‘Not NATO only’ militarisation. It reads as follows:
Conference notes:
- The Trump Administration is committed to a ‘strong denial defence’ of the First Island Chain – from Japan to the Philippines through Taiwan – setting the Pacific up for war with China.
- Japan’s ultra-nationalist Prime Minister Senae Takaichi is leading the country’s far right swing back to its prewar imperial militarism and is claiming any use of force by China against Taiwan could constitute ‘an existential crisis for Japan’ to which it would respond with military action.
- On a visit to Japan coinciding with the 80th anniversary of VJ day, UK Defence Secretary, John Healey, hailed the closest defence ties between the two nations since the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance which fostered Japan’s emergence as an aggressor state. These ties include the 2023 Reciprocal Access Agreement to deploy forces in each other’s countries. AUKUS is now going ahead following the government’s agreement in 2025 to build ‘up to’ 12 new AUKUS attack submarines for the Royal Navy.
- China’s military modernisation is developing pace; its projection of global military power remains limited.
Conference recognises:
- The ultimate priority of the Trump administration is to contain the rise of China.
- Unleashing the huge military power of the US unrestrained by law or morality, the Trump administration raises the risk of war spreading to the Pacific.
- Trump and Takaichi, as leaders of major states, play key roles in the worldwide lurch to the far right as they ready the region for war.
- The UK, in claiming to contribute to NATO by providing the link between security in the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic, is actively helping to create conditions for a Third World War whose consequences could be fatal for the entire humanity.
Conference resolves:
- To work urgently to raise public awareness of the dangers of UK military involvement in the Pacific, and, by making the connections between the different regional wars, to build a movement against a Third World War.
- To continue to call on the government to withdraw from AUKUS and demilitarise completely its relationship with Japan.
- To challenge exaggerated claims by politicians and the media about the so-called ‘China threat’.
- To recommend speakers from the IndoPacific region be invited to address the June International Peace Conference.
The full texts of the conference resolutions, passed unanimously, can be read here. Keynote speeches from the day can be viewed here.
Coinciding with the conference, the Morning Star ran an editorial, entitled, ‘ Capitalism is war. Socialism is peace’. It noted:
“German revolutionary socialist Karl Liebknecht, who was shot in the back by Freikorps forces in Berlin’s Tiergarten in January 1919, described imperialism and militarism as destructive forces acting as a “cyclone” and a “vampire.” He stated: ‘Capitalism is war; socialism is peace.’
“Today, Liebknecht’s words are prescient precisely because the cyclone of death and destruction displayed by US imperialism’s vampiric mission to suck up wealth around the world, from Venezuela to Iran, contrasts with the real achievements of socialist China, which has not been at war since 1979.”
It concluded: “This weekend’s Stop the War Coalition conference in London is a welcome opportunity to reinforce the message that adorns the masthead of this newspaper, ‘For Peace and Socialism.’
“The demand that increasingly unites trade unionists and peace campaigners across the world, is for welfare, not warfare.”
The theme of welfare not warfare was also taken up in a feature article by Andrew Murray published in the newspaper on the same day. It concludes:
“Stop the War, which has stood strong despite all efforts over the years to divert it from its essentially anti-imperialist orientation, will continue to be at the forefront of the British people’s fight for a new policy of peace and justice and an end to the wars scarring the globe today.”
The following articles were originally published on the Stop the War website and by the Morning Star.
Report from StW’s annual conference 2026
March 17 (Stop the War) – Stop the War Coalition’s annual conference on Saturday (14 March) was informative and inspiring. The hall was packed and activists left the event motivated to build StW and campaign like never before.
Speaker after speaker referred to the current moment as the most dangerous since the founding of StW, indeed since the Cuban missile crisis. The threat of war is both nuclear and global, and wars are spreading at pace.
During the opening session Mustafa Barghouti, the renowned Palestinian figure, thanked StW for its solidarity with the Palestinian and Iranian people and drew attention to the devastating attacks Israel is currently conducting against Lebanon.
Speakers drew links between the genocide in Gaza and the spread of war in the Middle East. It was noted that the attacks on Iran would not have happened had Israel, the US and complicit European states, including Britain, not been granted impunity for the genocide.
Jeremy Corbyn MP spoke of StW as a voice for peace, and of UK complicity in the destruction of Gaza. How, despite the ICJ rulings, the UK continues to send weapons to Israel.
Maryam Eslamdoust, TSSA general secretary, who has family in Iran, reminded conference of the human tragedy of war. Maryam said Trump’s attacks were designed to strike fear and terror into civilians to achieve an uprising, fast victory and regime change. However, she believed Iran would not crumble as the imperialists hoped, and that the US would face a Vietnam-style defeat.
Lindsey German, Convenor of StW, drew attention to the speed at which war has spread globally, how incredible it is that since January the US has turned its aggression from Venezuela, to Cuba, to Iran. Lindsey noted that the US is failing Iran – failing to achieve regime change and has been taken by surprised by Iran’s response to its attacks. Iran’s targeting of Gulf states and closing the Straits of Hormuz will have political and economic ramifications that will likely prove unsustainable for Trump.
In a particularly fiery contribution, Andrew Murray, StW deputy president, pointed out how Keir Starmer has learned nothing from Labour’s mistakes over Iraq. The government line that current UK involvement in the Iran war is purely defensive is not remotely credible. Andrew highlighted how war in the Middle East leads to dangerous rises in racism and Islamophobia, and fuels the far-right and militarism. It is time to end our alliance with the US.
The three breakout sessions covered arms sales and military spending, the rise of conscription and Iran, Palestine and Islamophobia. The groups were all full to capacity and provided opportunity for discussion.
The afternoon plenary sessions focussed on the need to develop links internationally and build within trade unions. French MP Jérôme Legavre and StW’s John Rees emphasised the importance of the peace conference being organised by StW and others in London on 20 June. They stressed the need for a continent-wide mass movement to oppose Trump’s gangster imperialism, European militarism, conscription and far-right extremism.
The session on trade unions highlighted the value of StW’s trade union network. It was reported that a number of TU branches, with no history of affiliation to StW, had recently proved eager to support both StW and the international conference. The importance of the slogans wages not weapons, welfare not warfare was stressed. It was felt the growing mood among workers against war and militarisation could and should be harnessed to strengthen the organisation.
Conference passed resolutions which can be found here, and voted for the StW steering committee. Resolutions covered issues raised during the day, including defending the right to protest, welfare not warfare, opposing British foreign policy, the war on Iran, militarisation in the Pacific and building StW.
Enthusiasm for StW was apparent throughout the day as was appreciation for the central role our organisation plays in the anti-war and anti-imperialist struggle. It was noted that over the last month five new local groups had been established. In the current climate StW should have a presence in every town across the country.
Watch the keynote speeches here.
Capitalism is war. Socialism is peace
March 13 (Morning Star) – German revolutionary socialist Karl Liebknecht, who was shot in the back by Freikorps forces in Berlin’s Tiergarten in January 1919, described imperialism and militarism as destructive forces acting as a “cyclone” and a “vampire.”
He stated: “Capitalism is war; socialism is peace.”
Today, Liebknecht’s words are prescient precisely because the cyclone of death and destruction displayed by US imperialism’s vampiric mission to suck up wealth around the world, from Venezuela to Iran, contrasts with the real achievements of socialist China, which has not been at war since 1979.
The permanent state of war extolled by Donald Trump’s grotesque demand to boost Pentagon spending by 150 per cent to $1.5 trillion to create his “dream military,” constitutes more military spending than the military budgets of China, Russia and Iran combined.
Yet with global stock markets inflated by vast quantities of fictitious capital, Trump’s militarist boasts assume a critical role in keeping share prices high.
In Europe too, militarism is the strategic choice of political elites. In November 2025, the EU introduced its Military Mobility Package for swift and efficient movement of military assets and personnel across borders through a “Military Schengen” — war without frontiers.
A year ago in March 2025, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced “ReArm Europe” — subsequently rebranded as “Security Action for Europe” because “Safe” sounds much nicer — €800bn of EU military spending for war in Ukraine.
The EU’s private capital loans of €150bn to fund this spending bonanza leaves member states to raise the bulk of the arms package. Yet, EU rearmament is already running into trouble.
Yesterday, Polish President Karol Nawrocki vetoed €44bn in EU funding for military spending, saying Brussels should not control Poland’s military procurement.
Nawrocki called Safe “a massive foreign loan for 45 years in a foreign currency, with interest costs that could reach up to 180bn zlotys ($48bn). Poles will therefore have to pay back twice the value of the loan, and Western banks and financial institutions will profit from it.”
More than half the EU €150bn Safe loans have now been delayed. However, the headline-grabbing announcements of increased arms spending by Trump, von der Leyen, Macron, Merz and Starmer all underline the extent of state capture by the arms industry today.
The demand to boost share prices of arms and technology firms through increased state military spending is a phenomenon recognised as long ago as 1961 by US president Dwight D Eisenhower, who warned of the dangers of the military industrial complex when he described the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.”
Today, arms firms are merging with the financial technology sector, focussing on AI, autonomy, big data and cybersecurity and acquiring tech companies to integrate these capabilities into weapons systems.
The European Defence Fund and the EU Defence Equity Facility drive private capital into arms research and production and create collaborations and mergers between finance capitalists and the arms industry.
Yet, there is little popular support for this amoral and degenerate industry. European rearmament has accelerated deindustrialisation and falling living standards in Europe.
Despite the enthusiasm of generals, arms dealers and bourgeois politicians for cutting public education, healthcare, housing and civil infrastructure investment to pay for arms spending, no European government has yet succeeded in the wholesale switch of public spending from welfare to warfare necessary to satisfy their demands.
This weekend’s Stop the War Coalition conference in London is a welcome opportunity to reinforce the message that adorns the masthead of this newspaper, “For Peace and Socialism.”
The demand that increasingly unites trade unionists and peace campaigners across the world, is for welfare, not warfare.
Welfare not warfare: sounding the alarm over Britain’s war drive
March 14 (Morning Star) – Never in its 25-year history as Britain’s anti-war movement has Stop the War convened its annual conference at a more dramatic and dangerous moment.
The essence of the crisis is simple — Britain’s imperialist Establishment is leading the country to disaster.
Expressed in the policies of the Starmer government, Britain is at the centre of the multiple crises gripping the world.
And working people will pay the price — first in living standards and social cohesion, later surely in blood.
War has been sparked across the Middle East by the brazen, reckless and illegal aggression of the US and Israel against Iran.
Britain is increasingly complicit in that aggression, as initial reservations about permitting the Trump warmongers to use British bases have eroded to the point of meaninglessness.
Indeed, Keir Starmer is increasingly anxious to be seen to be engaged in the war, dispatching air force and naval assets to the conflict zone as fast as possible.
The war against Iran shows no signs of an early conclusion, with the Iranian regime failing either to collapse, as anticipated, or to come to heel on Trump’s terms.
Already entirely predictable economic consequences are being felt, with soaring oil prices bound to have an impact on working people’s costs here.
At the same time, Britain remains deeply invested in continuing the conflict in Ukraine. Here Labour expresses complete continuity with Tory policy since 2022.
Indeed, Defence Secretary John Healey tried to link the two conflicts this week, claiming that Iranian drone attacks on imperialist bases in the region showed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “hidden hand” behind them.
This unsupported claim is designed to mislead British people into thinking that Russia is somehow “attacking” British forces in the Middle East.
It is consistent with government attempts to drum up a dangerous war psychosis directed against Russia, necessary to persuade working people of the necessity of deploying troops to Ukraine, as Starmer and Healey desire.
This is part of a Europe-wide drive to condition the peoples to accept the inevitability of impending war with Russia.
Rather than working to bring an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, the government is effectively looking to extend it.
Already working people are having to pay for this imperialist posturing. Huge increases in the military budget are slated for the indefinite future, something that can only be sustained at the price of reductions in almost every form of socially useful state spending.
Stop the War is proud of the part it has played in winning the trade union movement to reverse its support for campaigning for increased arms spending and to put wages and welfare before warfare.
But more needs to be done to rouse the movement to these dangers.
The last 30 months have seen a huge and sustained movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people in the face of the Israeli genocide.
That genocide has had the full support of the Starmer government too. That reason alone would be sufficient for us to pledge that the Palestinian issue must never slide down our agenda.
But that movement of solidarity needs to be broadened and deepened to meet the escalating crisis. Along with full solidarity with the Palestinian people, Stop the War demands “Welfare not warfare” and “Hands off Iran” as the main slogans of the moment.
We also seek to deepen popular understanding of the roots of the crisis and how to overcome them. Starmer’s policy today is an expression of his desire to appease the Trump administration, presently embarking on a rampage of aggression of which Iran is far from being the only target.
Venezuela, Cuba, Yemen, Panama, Colombia, even Greenland have all been attacked or threatened by Trump and his crew, unbounded US imperialists that they are.
Only the menaces directed at Greenland have drawn any rebuke from Starmer, and that only because the threats of aggression imperilled the Nato war alliance, the centre-piece of Labour’s international strategy.
In Ukraine, Starmer actually urges greater bellicosity on Washington.
All this reflects the Establishment’s determination to prop up the post-1991 world order, which pivoted on unilateral US power and within which Britain and its commercial interests occupied a privileged position.
Stop the War has always demanded an end to the London-Washington war alliance. More than ever, it is at the heart of the dangers menacing the British people and the world as a whole.
It is the reason vital services are being cut to pay for war. The reason energy prices are now soaring. The reason British troops are being deployed from Norway to the Middle East to the Far East.
It is the reason young people are being conditioned to fight and die for Trump.
But the mass of the people have not forgotten the Iraq war, even if Tony Blair remains unrepentant. Nor the endless and pointless occupation of Afghanistan.
They want no more of it. Stop the War, which has stood strong despite all efforts over the years to divert it from its essentially anti-imperialist orientation, will continue to be at the forefront of the British people’s fight for a new policy of peace and justice and an end to the wars scarring the globe today.
