Update: In July 2025 the biennial policy conference of Unite, the UK’s second largest and largest private sector union, passed the Ukraine solidarity policy mentioned below; and in October Unite decided to affiliate to our campaign.
See also this on the RMT Annual General Meeting in June 2025.
By Sacha Ismail
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, more and more UK trade unions have taken stances of solidarity with Ukraine. Each annual round of union conferences has brought new developments on that score. This year, too, has seen a further shift in this direction.
In 2023, after a series of unions took pro-Ukraine positions, TUC Congress voted overwhelmingly for a solidarity motion. In 2024, the big developments were in post-16 education union UCU and giant public sector union UNISON. Following campaigning by members, UCU Congress effectively overturned the Stop the War Coalition-type position it had adopted in 2023, backed Ukrainian resistance and affiliated to Ukraine Solidarity Campaign (more below); and UNISON’s National Delegate Conference, finally discussing Ukraine for the first time, easily passed a solidarity motion and affiliated.
This year attempts to shift some unions away from a pro-Ukraine stance have so far come to nothing, while there has been one very big gain for solidarity:
• The gain was in half million-strong teachers’ and school workers’ union NEU. After three years of being blocked from voting on solidarity motions by increasingly undemocratic means, and being limited to voting down Stop the War motions, its conference delegates finally got the chance to vote for a pro-Ukraine stance, thanks to the campaigning efforts of the NEU Ukraine Solidarity Network. In the end it wasn’t close: the recorded vote against one of the two STW-type wrecking amendments was 63-37pc, while the final vote for the unamended motion was bigger.
• Civil service union PCS was the first union to affiliate to USC after the full-scale invasion, with its conference voted overwhelming to back Ukraine in 2022 and 2023, and the union has organised extensive practical solidarity. This year a motion to overturn this position, dismissing Ukraine’s struggle as a Western proxy war and committing the union to campaign for an end to military aid, got the backing of a narrow majority of the PCS national executive. Since the departure of General Secretary Mark Serwotka, a strong supporter of Ukraine, last year, many in the faction he was associated with, “Left Unity”, have moved in a sort of neo-Stalinist direction. The Socialist Party and some of their allies also backed the anti-Ukraine motion.
In the end, with industrial debates, a blow up about trans rights and Palestine understandably dominating the agenda, Ukraine was not reached. We can’t know for sure, obviously, but in the run up to and at the conference the momentum seemed very much on our side. In any case, PCS’s pro-Ukraine position stands. Well done to many branches and delegates who helped, but particularly the activists of PCS Independent Left.
• There was nothing on the agenda of UCU Congress to actually overturn the position won last year, but there was a motion angling in that direction. Two motions were entitled “Welfare not warfare”: the first was actually about militarisation in the UK, and did not mention Ukraine, but the second used Keir Starmer’s posturing about UK peacekeeping troops to sort of nod against a pro-Ukraine position (while not actually opposing military aid). Together with UCU Members for Ukraine we argued to oppose the second motion. Delegates voted to pass the first while remitting the second to their national executive.
NEU and UCU displayed a similar trend (also seen elsewhere) in that delegates voted strongly for motions opposing higher UK military spending, Western militarism, etc: but also rejected Stop the War’s attempts to link this to opposition to the Ukrainian struggle.
• Just after the invasion in 2022 the national executive of firefighters’ union FBU passed a STWesque position; and FBU was one of only two unions to oppose the TUC Congress motion in 2023. However, its conference has never discussed Ukraine. This year there was a resolution up for the first time – a good one, including opposition to Russia’s war and support for Ukrainian self-determination, practical solidarity with Ukrainian firefighters and affiliation to USC. Unfortunately it was withdrawn shortly after the conference started. I don’t know yet exactly what happened.
• A Ukraine solidarity motion was also submitted to the National Union of Journalists’s Delegate Meeting, but not reached.
Working with our supporters in each union, Ukraine Solidarity Campaign produced special bulletins or leaflets for the PCS, UCU and FBU conferences; at PCS and UCU, due to their affiliation, we had stalls inside the conference centres.
What happened in FBU was disappointing, but getting a resolution submitted was a good step forward. Importantly it came on the basis of increased solidarity work in the union, with a growing support for USC’s financial appeals for Ukrainian firefighters and rescue workers, and one FBU region, West Midlands, recently affiliating to the campaign. In other unions too, the recent period has seen increased connections and networking and increased practical solidarity for Ukraine’s labour movement. We are in a good position to build further in the months ahead.
More union conferences are coming up, including those of the three biggest UK unions, UNISON, Unite and GMB. The biennial policy conference of general union Unite (7-11 July, Brighton) has a motion up to activate the links and practical solidarity with Ukrainian workers and unions agreed last time around, in 2023, but not actioned.
Just before UK union conference season began, the Central Executive Council of general union GMB also agreed to affiliate the union to USC, making it the sixth national UK union to do so – with UNISON, PCS, ASLEF, UCU and NUM.
For more on solidarity organising in various UK unions, see here. For a September 2024 analysis of UK trade unions’ positions on Ukraine, discussing a wider range of unions than this article, see here.
Evasion and lies
Conflicts about Ukraine have highlighted radically different methods on the two sides of the debate.
In a number of instances, most strikingly in the NEU, Stop the War supporters have gone out of their way to avoid or even prevent union conferences discussing Ukraine. In contrast we have pushed for wide discussion and democratic decision-making, on principle and in the knowledge that it generally benefits our side of the debate.
Ukraine Solidarity Campaign has done a lot to inform the labour movement of decisions taken by union conferences – even when they have not gone our way. We reported extensively about the setback in UCU in 2023, and in 2024 provided detail information about the motion that changed the union’s stance, including its flaws and some amendments on which we had lost.
In contrast Socialist Worker, for instance, which in the early days of the invasion regularly published articles reporting union conference debates on Ukraine – from a bad political point of view, and not without distortions, but broadly accurately – now more often stays quiet about them. It published about debates at NEU conference in 2022; but not in 2025, when the union finally adopted a position.
Even more troublingly, it seems Socialist Workers Party members are lying about what UCU Congress decided last year (and about other unions too?)
From the platform of the Stop the War fringe meeting at UCU Congress 2025, UCU national executive member and SWP member Sean Vernell claimed that last year STW had won in UCU; specifically that supporters of Ukraine had tried to block a STW motion and been defeated. This almost completely inverts what actually happened in 2024: the only motion up was a pro-Ukraine one, and the bulk of amendments to gut it were rejected by the Congress. As well as the clear pro-Ukraine tenor of the motion passed, there were specific votes to support an appeal from Ukrainian unions and to affiliate to USC, despite vehement opposition from Vernell and his comrades.
No doubt Stop the War people find trade unions’ rejection of their position on Ukraine galling; that does not make lying about it acceptable!
Those trying to hide trade unions’ pro-Ukraine decisions through lying and misrepresentation should be held to account.
• Republished from southlondonsocialist.wordpress.com
Ukraine Solidarity Campaign (Кампанія Солідарності з Україною) 