Britain’s war economy - why we need an alternative

Britain’s public services - education, healthcare, local government, mail, and transport – are all suffering from chronic neglect and underinvestment.

The North West ranks as the second most deprived area in the country. In Manchester, a high of 41% of neighbourhoods are classed as deprived whilst Barrow, host to BAE Systems’ nuclear submarine programme, has a considerable concentration of unemployment and high rates of child poverty.

Massive public investment is needed to rebuild the social and economic fabric of working-class communities. Yet amidst intensifying global conflict, escalating climate crisis and soaring inequality, in its Strategic Defence Review in 2025, the Labour government committed to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP. At the same time, it decided to cut spending on education.

And now, under political pressure from Trump, as Starmer moves the country towards actual ‘war-fighting readiness’, the military spend is expected to ratchet up to 5 per cent of GDP.

The government presents the increase in arms manufacturing as the way out for the country’s economic and social problems, announcing new jobs in the sector as good for local communities as a whole.

But the ever-higher expenditure on arms means less money for our education, health, and councils, and the green transition: the plans will not only exacerbate our problems but tie us ever more closely to the US, carrying us rapidly along the path to major power war.

To the country’s, and the NW region’s shame British participation in the F-35 programme has implicated us in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

And now, Starmer’s whole of society approach towards militarisation is reaching out into wider societies and schools.

A resolution on Wages not Weapons, was passed last year by the TUC Congress, calling for the reversal of policy, dating from 2022, of support for immediate increases in defence spending. Noting that ‘actively campaigning for ever-higher spending on arms risks signalling approval of a wider drive to war, it called on the trade union movement to ‘stand, in our best traditions, for peace and against militarisation’.

The Northwest, home to leading arms companies including BAE systems, MBDA, Thales and WFEL, is seen as a ‘national strategic asset’. Potential sites for new munitions factories have been identified in the region whilst the UK's National Cyber Force (NCF) has recently been opened by BAE Systems in Lancashire, which builds our nuclear submarines as well as key parts for the F35s, MBDA and so on .

Based on CND’s recent Alternative Defence Review, this conference aims to raise awareness of militarisation and its wider impact on the Northwest and to come up with concrete strategies for taking the TUC motion into workplaces and communities focusing on developing practical ideas on:

What are the costs and consequences of increasing military spending? How do we stop the race to war?

How can we tackle the government’s arguments that investment in the military sector is good for the country? How should TUs and communities respond? How can we shift industrial strategy from war production to defence diversification?

There will be a panel session featuring leading figures in the peace movement, Kate Hudson (Vice-President of CND) and Alex Gordon (National Officer of Stop the War Coalition and formerly President of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, plus contributions from peace campaigners in Germany and Belgium.

But mostly, this conference is about what you can do. There will be breakout sessions focusing on specific areas of work, such as:

· how to initiate conversations in workplaces and communities

· how to link concerns of workers in service sector and military manufacture

· how put our leading positions in education, science and innovation to use to foster peace and development not confrontation

· how to build new networks for peace bringing industry, local government and universities and research centres together

Saturday 7th March, Cross St Chapel, Cross St, Manchester M2 1NL, from 1pm-4.30pm. There will be the opportunity for refreshments.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher ADR-Northwest