‘Orientation to the working class and its organised movements are fundamental’

Speaker: Sacha Ismail (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Trade Union Liaison Officer) Conference theme: Labour solidarity

I’m going to speak mainly about Ukraine Solidarity Campaign’s work in the UK trade union movement. I’m a member of two trade unions – the general public sector union UNISON, in its London Fire Brigade branch, and the much smaller Fire Brigades Union. Both those unions will feature here as stories of difficulties and challenges for Ukraine solidarity but also significant progress.

USC, and our sister campaign in Scotland, have made significant success winning the UK workers’ movement to political support and practical solidarity for Ukraine and its workers’ movement. That is the result of determined focus on labour movement solidarity, running back to before the full-scale invasion, back to our founding in 2014 – but stepping up since 2022.

We do not wish to overstate our success, and there is huge amount more we can and hope to do, even within the current weak organisational and political state of the UK labour movement and left. We’re keen to learn more from comrades’ experience in the labour movements of other countries. We hope our experience will be of use to others.

I will discuss two broad areas, winning political support in the labour movement and organising practical solidarity and aid. Hopefully other UK comrades in the audience will add to what I say.

Before we get into details, a comment on the wider political approach informing labour solidarity. As socialists and anticapitalists, orientation to the working class and its organised movements are fundamental. That is of course not limited to trade unions, but unions are central – in our own countries and in Ukraine. This is not only about numbers and resources, though those things are important, but a more fundamental social and political orientation. To even seriously push back surging capitalist reaction and imperialism, and to help the working class and the oppressed defend themselves and take the offensive, we must strengthen and radicalise and mobilise workers’ movements.

Having said that: firstly, about political campaigning in unions.

Today we can say that the bulk of the UK trade union movement has stood fairly solidly with Ukraine. But when the full-scale invasion began, it was not obvious that would be so.

Many UK unions were, indeed still are, affiliated to the Stop the War Coalition, which is an engine for campist politics in our movement. Reinforcing this, the Communist Party of Britain still has influence in the bureaucracy of some unions, while the Socialist Workers Party has a relatively large number of activists.

Since 2013 pro-Russian propaganda and disinformation have been widespread on the UK left. There was an organised campaign in solidarity with the Russian nationalist forces in eastern Ukraine, called SARU. It was supported by the left-wing rail and transport union RMT, and even our national Trades Union Congress passed a motion leaning that way.

However the establishment of Ukraine Solidarity Campaign as a small but organised force, from 2014, made a difference. USC pushed back against the propaganda and educated a layer of people. Right at the start USC won support from two national unions, the National Union of Mineworkers and trade drivers’ union ASLEF, and from labour movement-connected politicians such as the Member of Parliament John McDonnell. It organised in union branches, winning affiliations. It focused, alongside opposition to Russian intervention and support for Ukrainian resistance, on solidarity with workers’ struggles in Ukraine, against employers of different national and political stripes. This message made it easier for UK trade unionists to understand and support.

In 2022, as USC expanded and became more active, we pushed to expand activity in the labour movement.

In April 2022, we organised a demonstration of hundreds of trade unionists in support of Ukraine. In our larger recent demonstrations, working closely with Ukrainian organisations, we have had some significant union presence too.

In 2022, our already existing base of union support, including ASLEF and NUM nationally, undoubtedly helped. So did existing networks of activists, for instance left-wing militant networks within unions as well as socialist organisations that support us. Such existing organisation was important in civil service union PCS, our first national union affiliation after the invasion, a much bigger union than the two previous. In PCS campaigning by left-wing activists working with us, also produced active support from the General Secretary, even though many of his factional allies disagreed. At their 2022 conference we won a good position and affiliation overwhelmingly, with this reaffirmed in 2023. It paved the way for a lot of practical aid work by the union.

Since then we have won decent policies in many unions, and national affiliations from three more – university and college union UCU; public sector union UNISON, which is the UK’s largest union; and just this week, the large general union GMB, which by the way is the union organising Amazon in the UK. We also expanded union branch affiliations, but there is a lot more to be done there. The nationally affiliated unions have representatives on our campaign’s steering committee.

The general pattern is that where union conferences have discussed and voted on Ukraine, they have taken pro-Ukraine positions. We push for the maximum debate and involvement in deciding policies. In contrast the campist and Stalinist left often try to prevent debate. In both my unions, UNISON and FBU, the left-wing national executives passed bad policies and then kept the issue off their conference agendas. In 2024, when we established an organised solidarity group in UNISON and had the luck to have two strong supporters elected to the national executive, then turning up new supporters and allies, we got the issue raised at the conference, and won by a large margin.

In the big teachers’ and school workers’ union NEU, so-called Stop the War motions were defeated twice, but the campists prevented votes on pro-Ukraine motions for three years – last year by appalling undemocratic tactics. NEU conference 2025 is in two weeks and this time we hope to win! Where there has been resistance or setbacks, we have persisted. UNISON is one example. Another is the university and college union UCU, the only UK union whose conference passed a Stop the War-type policy, in 2023. Comrades organised in the union, came back last year, overturned the policy and won affiliation to USC. That was a high profile struggle. This year we have a pro-Ukraine motion at the Fire Brigades Union conference for the first time.

In 2023 NEU activists set up a NEU Ukraine Solidarity Network to organise the fight in their union, as well links in Ukraine and practical solidarity. They held a successful conference last month, open to members of other unions. That model has spread: there are now organised solidarity groups in UCU, UNISON, and the biggest private-sector union, Unite. Comrades in some other unions are discussing similar. We recently agreed to ask groups whose union is not affiliated to send representatives to our committee, and the NEU network joined. They are the ones spearheading the fight at the NEU conference in April.

On the basis of this work, and through our national supporting unions, we won policy at the 2023 TUC Congress, the national conference representing almost all UK unions. It passed overwhelmingly, but again this was very far from a foregone conclusion. A fight had to be organised, and that helped develop the activity in various unions.

We’ve also tried to connect our work in the unions to work in the Labour Party; that is a different kind of fight. We have strong support from some left-wing, union-connected Labour Members of Parliament. This is important and I hope other UK comrades will say more about this too. We also work with trade unionists and socialists in the Green Party.

The strength of the policy won varies from union to union, chiefly in terms of how explicitly they advocate increased military aid. We have not shied away from these arguments, and have been able to win a strong overall level of policy, strongly opposing the Russian occupation and supporting Ukrainian resistance.

We organise at various levels of unions – national leaderships, regions, branches, and among members. At every level we have strived to work through democratic lay structures and representatives, not primarily through unions’ bureaucracies, as some campaigns do. We have not kept what we are doing secret or behind the scenes, but sought to gain the widest possible publicity among union members and workers. That follows from our socialist and democratic perspectives.

The second plank of our labour solidarity, practical work organising aid for the Ukrainian labour movement, is also a mechanism of political propaganda, in the labour movement itself and more widely. It also has crucial practical importance.

This work has perhaps four key elements.

Firstly, helping activists and leaders push for their unions to make donations to Ukrainian labour movement causes; collect and send equipment and materials; and make direct links with Ukrainian unions. Thus PCS, the civil service union, has donated significant money, including £10,000 for an appeal by the KVPU medical union. Ukrainian trade unionists have spoken remotely and in person at its meetings at various levels. The union nationally has sent two several delegations to Ukraine. Work has also been done, for instance public-sector UNISON in Scotland, connecting local union branches with counterpart branches in Ukraine, what we call twinning.

Secondly, we’ve run a series of centrally-organised aid appeals, promoting them throughout the labour movement and beyond, and encouraging activists to promote in their unions. Money has come from unions and union branches, from crowdfunded donations, and collections at meetings. We want to try workplace collections. Some appeals have supported parts of the Ukrainian armed forces with concentrations of trade unionists, in response to appeals from those soldiers through their unions. Others have supported essential workers saving and sustaining lives behind the lines, including medical workers, teachers, miners and rescue workers. Our recent appeal for rescue workers in Donetsk oblast, members of the KVPU mining union, has raised £27,000, as well as donations of vehicles, equipment and PPE worth tens of thousands more. Particular appeals can be focused on particular unions or industries. We worked hard to promote the rescue appeal in the Fire Brigades Union; and moreover this has begun to open up the political argument in that union for the first time a bit as well. We also support groups in unions to organise their own appeals: for instance, the NEU and UCU networks have collected funds and equipment for schools in Ukraine.

Thirdly: wherever possible we deliver aid through solidarity delegations to Ukraine. Since the full-scale invasion we have centrally organised six USC delegations. We also help unions to organise their own delegations. Special mention here to South Wales National Union of Mineworkers. Working with a member of the Welsh Parliament on our committee, they have organised numerous delegations. Our central USC appeals have produced aid worth many tens of thousands of pounds. South Wales NUM have produced aid worth many hundreds of thousands of pounds, perhaps a million.

Fourthly, we publicise and support struggles in Ukraine – including the unions’ resistance to the government’s neoliberal policies and attacks on workers’ rights. We’ve begun a campaign supporting their resistance to the new draft Labour Code undermining workers’ rights. There’s an open letter we encourage you to sign and circulate.

We may have some differences in our campaign about the balance between political campaigning in the unions and organising practical aid, but for the most part these two elements reinforce each other.

Thank you.