(This article was included in our submission to TWT 2025 alongside 5 practical proposals for party organising, focused on workers and trade unions, renters and tenant unions, social infrastructure & culture, anti-imperialism and party branches.)
Our analysis of the conjuncture
Imperialism cannot be reduced to militarism alone, but in this conjuncture, the need for anti-militarist struggles in Britain cannot be overstated. Britain is an active participant in the genocide in Gaza and is remilitarising, with Starmer declaring his government “NATO-first” and cutting welfare to move towards the aspirational 5% GDP spending on defence. Imperialist interventions in this era can be rationalised in different forms: from “humanitarian intervention” to “just wars”.
More broadly, the role of British imperialism under the umbrella of the broader US-led imperialist system has been to preserve a globally uneven geography of power. By strangling or subverting any semblance of sovereignty among states of the Global South through political, economic or military means, the US and its allies have been increasingly able to impose their own interests upon them. The fragile gains of decolonisation are undone while Western capitalists profit from the (super)exploitation of labour, land and resources.
Militarism goes hand in hand with the British state’s use of “soft power”, its defence of corporate power on the world stage in international, multilateral and bilateral institutions and agreements, and its increasing attempts to undermine the political sovereignty of states abroad. These include foreign aid, sanctions and the non-recognition of elected governments, culminating in premature death from seizure of state assets or denial of access to basic necessities. Britain and other European states support repressive and violent political forces in the South, in order to secure their neocolonial interests, and so these forces can “manage” and restrict the movement of migrant populations into Europe.
The Labour Party is attempting to entangle reindustrialisation with the expansion of the defence industry as part of its broader project of ‘national renewal’. This is cynical and unlikely to go smoothly for various reasons, but this underscores the need for resistance to militarisation as a mass politics: on the cultural front and within the labour movement, alongside the political battle. The vote at the latest TUC congress to reverse its previous policy in support of defence spending increases is welcome, but the ingrained tendency towards vulgar economism and labourism among British trade unions, especially those representing defence workers, must be actively challenged and combatted. We must struggle against this tendency and for the transition of jobs in destructive industries towards socially-useful ends.
The machinations of militarisation and British imperialism go hand in hand with the deployment of repressive national security apparatuses. So too must these issues be combined in our anti-imperialist organising. That much has been made starkly clear with the widescale use of counter-terror powers against pro-Palestine activists in the last two years of the Gaza genocide, culminating in the proscription of Palestine Action in July. Increasingly, ‘War on Terror’-era counter-terror policies are being supplanted by laws targeting ‘hostile states’ – namely China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – and the criminalisation of anti-war campaigners through the National Security Act 2023.
There is a much longer history of British terror laws being used to criminalise anti-imperialist movements and diaspora communities in Britain alongside national liberation movements abroad – from the Irish to the Tamils, Kurds, Arabs and Palestinians, and more. This criminalisation also sought to redefine the terms of international solidarity to a form of organising mediated more through polished international NGO networks and polite civic activism than militant struggle. Therefore, anti-imperialism must include a principled support for the politics of national liberation, opposition to the criminalisation of militant modes of anti-imperialist organising, and extending solidarity with unjustly criminalised diaspora communities in Britain.
Opposing British imperialism and weakening its global stranglehold is a key responsibility of the British left. We must fight the idea that we can accept tactical or strategic compromise or convergence of interests with British imperialism: the tools of imperialism can never be deployed in the service of liberation. This means fighting against calls for the British state to undertake military intervention, regime change and other forms of imperialist political meddling in any and all states, no matter their political character. The main enemy is at home.
There is a lot of political room for the construction of a mass anti-militarist politics today. After all, the condition on which a new political project is premised is the development of a mass anti-imperialist and broad left politics via the mass movement in solidarity with Palestine and against the Zionist genocide in Gaza. Remilitarisation is premised on cuts to already squeezed social spending on welfare, targeting the disabled, elderly and poor.
All of this is happening at a time when we are heading towards 3-4C above pre-industrial levels, with climate catastrophe already destroying the lives of millions in the global South. We have to fight for social spending to go to socially useful ends, like care and healthcare, education, welfare and public infrastructure. Any hope for a green transition requires us to decommodify and common social necessities like housing, energy, and food, to disentangle them from the imperialist finance capital that is also profiting from, and ultimately pushing, war and climate collapse. It also has an international dimension: we need to be actively theorising how we can use Britain’s imperialist wealth to support climate resilience and transition in Southern nations that have been de-developed and made vulnerable to climate disaster.
Organising proposals
As a basebuilding tendency, we know that we won’t be handed down the anti-imperialist party we want by those at the top. So whilst we argue for the new party to enact the following (and more), we are also committed to working with others to build these structures, processes and practices within the party, and invite others to get in touch to build together towards an anti-imperialist party at every level, that empowers all members, and the wider working-class, to struggle meaningfully against British imperialism
We will organise for the party to:
- Support, with finances, infrastructure and other resources as appropriate, to build worker and popular cultural opposition to military reindustrialisation and British imperialism in all its forms. This organising should be done at a local and national level, in unions and in coalition/support of other groups and campaigns. All branches should be supporting and organising around anti-imperialist struggles.
- Develop anti-imperialist political education resources and programmes to develop members’ and non-members’ understanding of imperialism and militarism, its relation to capitalism, climate catastrophe, migration, surveillance, and racism, and contemporary and historical dynamics around British and US-led imperialism, e.g. NATO, the Special Relationship, the UN, and FIVE EYES. This political education should be accessible so that all branches and members can access, engage and popularise it, but also deep enough that our anti-imperialist politics are developing, not stagnating or defaulting to the liberal anti-imperialism that plagues much of the left.
- Set up infrastructure to support criminalised comrades and communities facing state repression and support organising against counter-terror and surveillance legislation. This can take many forms, from prisoner solidarity and court support to national-level campaigning against state repression.
- Establish an international committee to build links with those struggling against imperialism in the Global South, and an anti-imperialist committee to develop party work in this area.
- Support efforts by workers, rank-and-file networks, unions, and campaign groups theorising how to transition socially destructive jobs towards socially useful ones and how Britain and other Northern states can materially support Southern states to adapt to the impacts of the climate catastrophe.
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