The International Conference Against War [1] in Westminster on June 20 was one of the most significant anti-war events in recent decades. Following this conference, where more than 2,600 anti-war activists came from 27 countries outside of Britain, the anti-war movement is now building activities and actions in each country for international days of demonstration and actions across the world. Actions are being organised on common dates - from the international March for Palestine on October 10 to the worldwide weekend of mobilisation against militarisation and conscription on November 21-22 - forming a developing calendar of resistance that unites workers, youth, peace organisations and anti-war movements in every country.

As part of this movement, this month meetings and actions have taken place or are taking place against Britain's support for the US bombing of Iran and Israel's continued genocide of the Palestinian people as well as against the British government's continued drive to escalate its proxy war with NATO against Russia in Ukraine.

On August 5 a national online meeting took place on Trump's major new escalation in the war on Iran and to oppose the new Burnham government's support for US and Israeli aggression [2]. On Saturday, August 8 there is a Yorkshire March for Palestine demanding an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel, US out of British bases and banning Israeli settlement goods in Britain. On August 15, a demonstration is organised outside the US base at RAF Fairford. The organisers say that a "US B-1 bomber flew from RAF Fairford to bomb Iran the day after Andy Burnham became prime minister. The majority of us don't want British bases used in this illegal war. Join us at RAF Fairford on August 15 to call on Burnham to send the US bombers home for good!"

The actions in the anti-war movement are demanding that the government end its militarisation - to end all involvement in the US and Israel's war on Iran, including stopping the use of British bases here and in Cyprus and Diego Garcia for military attacks, as part of the growing international calls for an immediate end to the barbaric bombing of Iran, and Israeli bombing of Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen. The anti-war movement has the crucial task of opposing the warmongering schemes of the British government, whether here in Britain, or with the self-titled "coalition of the willing" in the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, or in alliance with the US regime and the criminal raining down of death and destruction on the peoples in the Middle East.

What is the significance of these events and what are the aims? They are undoubtedly a leap forward for the international anti-war movement as the next big step to co-ordinated action across borders to stop the drive of these Anglo/US NATO wars. Also, the International Conference Against War emphasised the vital question of the involvement of the working class and trade union movement. Actions include workplace meetings on war spending and militarisation, union-backed protests and co-ordinated international trade union actions and statements against war and war budgets. In the movement against militarisation and war, the working class and people have to work to consolidate themselves as the power to combat the warmongering, violence, dictate and militarism of the ruling elite. They must particularly take up the demand that the youth must not be made cannon-fodder in the wars of the ruling elite and the armaments industry. This must be at the heart of building Stop the War and everyone else in the anti-war movement into a people's front against war and in defence of the rights of all. This is an aim which is being taken up by the movement for peace, justice and democracy at this stage of history, which is calling for the work to establish an Anti-War Government.

Further on the aim for an Anti-War Government

As Workers' Weekly already summed up in an article on "The Need for an Anti-War Government" in March [3]: "The resistance to Britain's militarisation is growing, and it is a central part of the Party's work to bring out and inspire the human factor/social consciousness in this transitional period of history" ... "It can be seen that militarisation is not simply a rise in "defence spending", but is the road along which these oligarchs and governments are taking society. So the anti-war movement in its direction towards an Anti-War Government does more than react, or put its faith in a limited number of justly supported figures who take a stand against imperialist war, but works out ways to concretise how society must be organised so that sovereignty lies with the people and eventually political power is grasped, and the state acquires a modern democratic personality. The strength and future lies with the people as they break with the old conscience of society and fight for the alternative."

"The call is for a modern state which enshrines the rights of all by virtue of being human and their concrete reality. The alternative is being created as working people themselves constitute the authority at each turn of events and decide directly how to intervene to make sure whatever the ruling class is implementing at their expense cannot succeed. This means that those who currently deprive the people of power must themselves be deprived of the power to rule with impunity."

Notes
1. International Anti-War Conference: The International Conference against War was a huge success!, Workers' Weekly, June 27, 2026
https://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wwie-26/ww26-20/ww26-20-01.htm
2. Speakers at the meeting included Shabbir Lakha, Stop the War, Atefeh Zandi, Iranians Against War, Sophie Bolt, CND and Maryam Eslamdoust, TSSA General Secretary. A video of the whole meeting can be seen on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/cCDSDx3IJ6c
3. Britain's Militarisation: The Need for an Anti-War Government, Workers' Weekly, March 21, 2026
https://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wwie-26/ww26-09/ww26-09-02.htm

August 15, 2026 1:00 pm
Protest at RAF Fairford

ACTIONS FOR PALESTINE & AGAINST MILITARISM

British people have played a major role in the mass opposition to Israel's war on Gaza and the Palestinians. Actions are being organised on common dates - from the international March for Palestine on October 10 to the worldwide weekend of mobilisation against militarisation and conscription on November 21-22 - forming a developing calendar of resistance that unites workers, youth, peace organisations and anti-war movements in every country.

This week the date for the international day of action by dock and port workers was announced for October 30.

And on November 20-22 there will be a weekend of globally co-ordinated action against militarism and conscription.

THE BATTLE OF CABLE STREET - 90TH ANNIVERSARY

Sunday, October 4, 2026
March and Rally

Major march and rally on the anniversary day. Meet Sunday, October 4, at 12.00 outside Tower Hamlets Town Hall, march begins 13.00 (tube: Whitechapel).

For further information, see: The Battle of Cable Street - 90th Anniversary https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/events/the-battle-of-cable-street-90th-anniversary | 4 October 2026

Iran warns Britain it may resort to self-defence if Britain aids aggressors: photo shows Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and his British counterpart Ed Miliband.

A letter from ten trade union leaders demands that Prime Minister Andy Burnham reverse his decision on taking office to permit the use of RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and the Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia to assist the US in their illegal war. The text of the letter follows.

________________________________________

Dear Prime Minister,

As trade union leaders, we have seen how the US and Israel's devastating, illegal war on Iran is deepening the cost of living crisis faced by our members and the British public. Disruption to the world's food and energy supplies is hurting communities here in Britain and having a catastrophic impact in the global south.

Since the war started, the average British household has seen its annual energy bill rise by £221, while monthly food bills are forecast to rise by £32.80. Without an end to the war, there will be no end to this cost of living crisis.

We are encouraged by the new government's focus on the cost of living and the measures it is taking to make life more affordable. However, we are deeply concerned that the same government has authorised US air strikes to be conducted from bases on British territories as part of the war against Iran.

Ending rather than escalating this war - which the US and Israel chose to start in violation of the UN Charter - is essential for the government's affordability agenda to be a success.

As modelling by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows, the war on Iran has undone the marginal improvements to living standards made since 2024. While broad measures are needed to address the cost of living crisis, de-escalation and an urgent end to the war are essential to preventing bills from surging and averting a systemic shock to the world economy.

The UK has a central role to play in de-escalation: the US has relied on its bases on UK territories to conduct the war, as they are capable of launching strategic bombers and sit within range of Iran.

Revoking permission for the US to use these bases would have a significant impact on the US' ability to further escalate a war that has been a catastrophe for people in the Middle East and an economic disaster for the world.

We urge the Prime Minister to vocally and actively oppose the war and to revoke the UK's approval of US air strikes from British territories. Most of the British public oppose these air strikes.

Opposing this war is a necessity if the cost of living agenda is to succeed.

Yours sincerely,

Andrea Egan, General Secretary, UNISON
Daniel Kebede, General Secretary, National Education Union
Dave Ward, General Secretary, Communication Workers Union
Eddie Dempsey, General Secretary, National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers
Fran Heathcote, General Secretary, Public and Commercial Services Union
Jo Grady, General Secretary, University and College Union
Paul W Fleming, General Secretary, Equity
Maryam Eslamdoust, General Secretary, Transport Salaried Staffs' Association
Sarah Woolley, General Secretary, Bakers, Food and Allied Workers' Union
Steve Wright, General Secretary, Fire Brigades Union

07 Aug 2026

The long-running Birmingham bin workers' strike remains unresolved, despite renewed negotiations and reports that a settlement may be close. Industrial action began with one-day stoppages in January 2025 and became an all-out strike on March 11 that year. Nineteen months after the dispute began, the workers are still defending themselves against the loss of jobs, roles and pay arising from Birmingham City Council's restructuring of the waste service.

The dispute began over the abolition of the Waste Recycling and Collection Officer role. Unite has said that around 150 to 170 workers faced losses of up to £8,000 a year, while hundreds more would lose opportunities for pay progression. The council has consistently disputed those figures, while the workers have maintained that the changes amount to fire and rehire.

Following the change in political control at the May local elections, the new coalition administration declared settling the strike its first priority. Council leader Roger Harmer said in July: "We will find a deal. We will make a deal. There has to be a deal." Harris Khaliq, the independent councillor now responsible for city services, has confirmed that he instructed council officers to resume talks with Unite.

Reports at the end of July said that a proposal involving compensatory payments to affected workers was being considered and subjected to legal and financial checks. Any agreement would require the support of the council's political leadership, senior officers, and external auditors, as well as acceptance in a ballot of Unite members. Neither the council nor Unite has confirmed that such a proposal has been finalised. Importantly, it would also require approval by the imposed government-appointed commissioners who still oversee the council despite the recent election.

An earlier basis for agreement was announced in April by the previous council leader, John Cotton. Unite said that this restored the "ballpark" proposals reached through Acas, including at least two years' protection from losses arising from job evaluation, a route into permanent employment for qualifying agency workers, the ending or review of disciplinary action, protection of pension rights, and the withdrawal of legal action by both sides. The May election intervened before a final offer was put to the workers. The new administration subsequently said that no formal council agreement existed and began its own consideration of the dispute.

Meanwhile, the council is proceeding with its wider transformation of refuse collection. About 150,000 homes served by the Perry Barr depot, including parts of north Birmingham and Sutton Coldfield, are taking part in a pilot involving fortnightly general-waste and recycling collections and a weekly food-waste collection. Residents have reported missed deliveries of bins, missed collections, confusion about the timetable and concern about whether smaller general-waste bins can hold two weeks' rubbish.

In an admission that decisions imposed during the strike damaged the public service and the interests of residents, councillor Khaliq has now acknowledged that the previous administration was wrong to suspend kerbside recycling when the industrial action began. Recycling collections were withdrawn across the city for some eighteen months on the grounds that the available non-striking crews had to be concentrated on general waste. Birmingham, which already has one of the lowest recycling rates in England, is now trying to restore recycling in stages while the dispute continues. The council has not given a date for its return throughout the city.

These facts underline that the bin workers' dispute cannot be separated from the condition and direction of the public service itself. The prolonged withdrawal of recycling, the instability of collections and the difficulties encountered in the new pilot demonstrate the consequences of attempting to reorganise an essential service through cuts, imposition and strike-breaking instead of drawing on the knowledge and experience of the workers who provide it.

For more than a year, the council and the state authorities behind it relied on agency labour, court injunctions and police powers while the cost of the dispute mounted. A council report put the cost at £33.4 million by January 2026; Unite argued that even this substantially underestimated the true total. In March, the High Court fined Unite £265,000, with a further £170,000 in costs, for breaches of an injunction governing activity at waste depots. A separate injunction restricting obstruction by "persons unknown" was extended in May. None of these authoritarian measures resolved the issue that caused the strike.

The change of administration has altered the public language surrounding the dispute but has not yet produced a settlement. However, despite the council's promise to prioritise a resolution, the council has not published a detailed offer or timetable for concluding negotiations. Continued silence cannot become another means by which the voice of the workers and people of Birmingham is marginalised.

The workers have sustained their action in exceptionally difficult conditions and have forced the council to return to the question of a negotiated settlement. Any final proposal must be judged by the workers themselves. It must protect them against the loss of their livelihoods and provide the conditions for a stable, properly staffed waste and recycling service.

At issue throughout has been who is to bear the consequences of the crisis and who decides the future of this essential social programme. The immediate requirement is for the council to complete negotiations and place a satisfactory offer before the bin workers without further delay. A resolution in favour of the rights of the refuse workers would serve the whole city by allowing the waste and recycling service to be rebuilt on the basis of adequate investment, secure employment and the workers' own experience. The voice of the bin workers must prevail in determining that settlement.

(Sources: News agencies, National Shop Stewards Network, Birmingham City Council, Unite the Union, previous Workers' Weekly coverage.)

Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A-and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations and other organisations, protesting
in front of Japan's Diet after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi criticised her country's traditional policy against nuclear
weapons, November 21, 2025

When the US imperialists deliberately dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, these were horrendous crimes against humanity, that intentionally caused mass destruction of human populations. These criminal acts for the narrow self-serving aims of the US - done on the orders of the president alone - set the pattern of impunity and use of executive police powers, widely evident today inside and outside of the US. To stop the advance of the peoples' struggles for peace, freedom and democracy, the US fashioned the Cold War on the basis of racist, anti-communist and anti-worker ideology. The US developed an Anglo-American crusade against communism, the Soviet Union, People's Democracies and to counter the national liberation movements in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not chosen because they had any military significance. Hiroshima was considered a good target because it had not been previously bombed and thus would provide a clear demonstration of the devastating power of the atomic bomb which had never been used before.

The original target for the second bomb was Kokura, but it was clouded over, so the secondary target, Nagasaki, was bombed instead. The bombing of Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima was also intended to test the effects of a plutonium bomb as compared to the uranium bomb used at Hiroshima. This partly explains why the US rushed to execute the second horrific crime against humanity only three days after the first - it wanted to test both types of bombs before a Japanese surrender and establish its military hegemony in the region.

The criminal bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were carried out not to end the war as the US claims, as if this would justify such an act of mass terror, but to threaten the peoples of the world with nuclear annihilation if they did not accept US imperialist dictate and hegemony. In particular, it was aimed at the peoples of the Soviet Union and to serve US plans to establish permanent military bases in Japan and attempt to militarily dominate Asia. The peoples of the Soviet Union played the leading role in the defeat of Nazi fascism, at the cost of some 27 million lives. The Chinese people also suffered terribly at the hands of the Japanese militarists, as did the Korean people and peoples of the regions occupied or annexed by the Empire of Japan until 1945.

In opposition to a world united against fascism and war, the heinous crimes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left no doubt that US imperialism had taken up the Nazi aim to defeat communism and establish its domination over the whole world.

August 6 and 9 are now days when peoples worldwide commemorate those who were slaughtered in these horrendous acts of terrorism by the US. On these days the peoples of the world say Never Again! to such crimes against humanity and reaffirm the demand to end the use of force to sort out conflicts between countries.

Current threats to use pre-emptive nuclear strikes or to retaliate against those declared to be enemies by using nuclear weapons, are part of the outlook that Might Makes Right, and that there is no greater might than the vast arsenal of nuclear weapons in the hands of the nuclear powers. This is the militaristic outlook of the US/NATO alliance and its doctrine of "peace through strength" which was also the outlook of the Nazis. All of it is aimed at terrorising the peoples and block them from seizing the initiative by waging the resistance struggle to advance their own agenda for peace, freedom and democracy.

Far from working to rid the world of nuclear weapons, the US and other big powers, along with NATO members including Britain, are engaged in the militarisation of all of life, putting more and more money into the production of the most modern weapons, in an effort to secure military superiority. Their states are being restructured to permit the broader use of military powers even against their own populations in times of peace.

Of great concern at this time is that the imperialist countries have armed Israel with the most lethal weapons of mass destruction in aid of the Zionist entity's continued occupation of Palestine and genocide of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories. Not only the US but France, Germany, Britain and even Norway secretly sold Israel the material and expertise to make nuclear warheads, or turned a blind eye to its theft. The imperialist powers continue to deny that they have armed the Zionists with nuclear weapons, while they threaten Iran and declare it does not have the right to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes.

Similarly, the US has permanently stationed its troops in south Korea in violation of the armistice agreement reached at the end of the Korean War, and has installed nuclear warheads on the Korean Peninsula aimed at the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). It carries out annual nuclear war games to threaten the DPRK, including computer-simulated exercises for the invasion of the DPRK. When the DPRK was forced to take measures to deter the US by itself acquiring nuclear weapons, the US engineered further threats and sanctions, unjustly accusing the DPRK of being responsible for the tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The threat of Armageddon conjures up the day of reckoning in an alleged battle of humankind between good and evil when the world will end with the exception of a few chosen people. All of it is to spread profound fear among the people and get them to give up their striving for peace, freedom and democracy by fighting for their own empowerment and instead reduce their struggle to demands to ban the bomb. This has never succeeded in getting the peoples of the world to give up their resistance struggles which affirm their right to be.

Humanity's fight to rid the world of nuclear weapons and defeat the US imperialist dictate requires stepping up the struggle to uphold the sovereignty and independence of all nations, and the elimination of the threat or use of force to settle conflicts. It also necessitates that the working class and people organise to build a People's Front against War, and demand the government reject the use of force as a means of settling conflicts between nations and peoples, and withdraw from all aggressive military blocs and treaties such as NATO.

On the occasion of the anniversary of the nuclear bombings, all peace and justice-loving people in Britain and internationally pay their deepest respects to the Japanese victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the Palestinian people and all peoples the world over who have suffered and continue to suffer as a result of imperialist dictate.

The criminal Anglo-American imperialist system can and will be ended by the peoples' resistance and unity in action of all the fighting peoples of the world to establish a new world based on peace, justice, and dignity for all nations and peoples.

No More Hiroshimas and Nagasakis!
No to the Use of Force to Settle Conflicts between Nations!
Dismantle NATO!
All Out to Build the People's Front against War and Organise an Anti-War Government!

(Based on an article published by the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist))