Hundreds of labour movement activists marched behind trade union banners, in defence of Ukraine’s right to freedom and in opposition to Putin’s war, in central London on Saturday 9 April.
John Moloney, AGS of the civil servants’ union, PCS and a central organiser of the demonstration, said, “I am pleased with the turnout today. British trade unionists know the importance of international working-class solidarity and we back our brothers and sisters in Ukraine."
The march had been formally backed, and at short notice, by PCS, ASLEF, NUM, CWU, TSSA, the Bakers’ Union, GMB and UCU.
At the front of the march, was the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign banner, reading: “Labour Movement Solidarity with Ukraine. Russian Troops out now! Victory to the Ukrainian people!”
As the demonstration moved off, Leeds MP Alex Sobel spoke to pledge his support.
The final rally was chaired by Vicky Blake, President of the university workers' union UCU. Among the speakers were the Labour left MP Nadia Whittome and Chris Kitchen, general secretary of the NUM.
Ruth Cashman of Lambeth Unison read out statements of support from Ukrainian unions.
Ruth read out the words of Mykhailo Volynets, chair of The Ukrainian union federation, KVPU, who wrote:
“Today workers and members of the KVPU work under bullets and shelling, and their families hide in basements in occupied cities. Our brave medical workers save lives of civilians and soldiers. Our railways and transport workers evacuate people from battle zones and carry cargo despite the shelling. The members of the KVPU help people with food, water, medicine and goods, and organize shelter and evacuations for women and children. Also, members of the KVPU have left their workplaces and homes and now are servicemen and servicewomen defending their homeland from Russian occupiers.
“Stand with Ukraine! Help the people of Ukraine to win in the struggle for independence and peace!”
Grygorii Osovyi, President of the Federation of Trade unions of Ukraine, wrote: “All these days the Russian invaders are trying to destroy the Ukrainian people, to raze Ukrainian cities and villages to the ground. But we will resist. And we will fight harder, the more they will attack. We will not give the enemy a single inch of Ukrainian soil, and the enemy must know it.
”Many of our members have been forced to leave their jobs and take up arms to defend their families, their children and their land. Many of them, including trade unionists who in the early days of the war, took up arms and died.
The widespread support for this march in the trade union movement has been opposed by those in the unions – such as the pro-China Stalinists of the Morning Star, and the SWP – who are either actively sympathetic to Russia’s war, or who think the main enemy is at home, and in particular NATO.
But these people, badly exposed during this war, are in a minority. Pete Radcliff of the Nottingham USC and a member of Workers’ Liberty said:
“Russia is an imperialist state, the oligarchs are a capitalist ruling class and no one should repeat Putin’s lies that his war on the Ukrainian people has any justification as a war of defence.
“What we see on the left is a very serious crisis. I am not fan of NATO. But this is not NATO’s war, this is Putin’s war. Anyone who says otherwise is helping Putin.
"NATO is strengthened in Eastern Europe not by war, but because the peoples of Eastern Europe fear Putin’s imperialism."
