- The Guardian
- Issue #2176
The Guardian is pleased to publish this speech given by Comrade Warren Smith to the 2025 Peace is Union Business conference in Sydney.
Comrades, friends, unionists – Our movement has never just been about wages and conditions in the narrow sense; it has always been about whose lives matter, whose voices count, and what kind of world working people will inherit. Peace is union business because war is always a class question, and working people always pay the highest price in war.
SETTING THE SCENE AND PURPOSE
This conference has been called because the world is sliding into a more dangerous phase of permanent war and militarisation. From Palestine to Venezuela, from Europe to Africa ordinary workers, their families and their communities are the ones being killed, displaced, surveilled and silenced, while corporations and political elites profit. The objectives that brought us here are clear: to rebuild a broad, militant movement of unions for peace and social justice, to reconnect the labour movement with its own proud peace traditions, and to leave here with practical organising plans that mobilise our workplaces, our communities and our unions against war, racism and fascism.
UNIONS ARE MORE THAN ‘INTEREST GROUPS’
There is a view, pushed hard by employers and conservative politicians, that unions should stick to “bread and butter” issues: a pay rise here, a safety win there, but no “politics” in the union, no place for unions to have “foreign policy” views, no role for unions in questions of “war and peace.” That argument is designed to remove the organised working class from the biggest decisions about war, peace and national priorities, and to leave those decisions in the boardrooms, with the generals and the spooks. Unions are the largest democratic organisations of working people in this country; if we accept being confined to a narrow economic role, we abandon the field on the very questions that determine whether our members live, die, are conscripted, are bombed, or see their social services, as well as their wages and conditions gutted to pay for the war machine.
From the beginning, unions have understood this broader role. In the First World War era, labour activists and peace campaigners – including unionists linked to the Australian Peace Alliance and anti‑conscription committees – led mass campaigns that defeated conscription twice and asserted that workers should not be blindly fed into imperial slaughter. During the Vietnam era, unions did not just pass resolutions; maritime workers and others placed industrial bans on war‑related cargoes and helped build the momentum that led to the massive Moratorium marches and ultimately to the withdrawal of Australian troops.
PEACE IS ALREADY IN OUR HISTORY
“Peace is union business” is not a slogan invented for this conference; it describes what unions in this country have done at some of the most important moments in our history. In 1938, waterside workers at Port Kembla refused to load pig iron onto the Dalfram, bound for Japan’s war machine, in an action that became known as the Dalfram dispute and earned Robert Menzies the nickname “Pig Iron Bob.” Wharfies in other ports followed with bans on scrap iron arguing they would not load cargoes that would be turned into weapons used against civilians and come back as bombs and bullets.
The same spirit ran through the union movement’s long campaign against apartheid in South Africa, where the Seamen’s Union of Australia and the Waterside Workers’ Federation repeatedly banned South African ships and cargo, helped drive an international maritime oil embargo, and later received personal thanks from Nelson Mandela for their role in the freedom struggle. When unions put peace and anti‑racism at the centre of their work, they do more than express solidarity; they make exploitation, war and fascism harder to organise.
BEYOND THE WATERFRONT – TEACHERS, BUILDERS, NURSES AND MORE
The peace tradition is not confined to maritime and transport unions. Teachers’ unions, including the NSW Teachers Federation represented on the organising committee of this conference, have a long record of opposing war, defending curriculum space for peace education, and resisting attempts to turn schools into recruitment grounds for the military. Health and nurses’ unions have campaigned against nuclear weapons and against wars that create mass civilian casualties and refugee crises which then overwhelm public hospitals and health systems.
The builders’ labourers’ Green Bans are often remembered as an environmental story, but they were also profoundly about peace and social justice: unions using industrial bans to stop socially destructive developments, to defend communities, and to say that workers will not build every project that capital demands. In the same tradition, rail and public transport unions have challenged attempts to militarise infrastructure and have demanded that public money go to socially useful services rather than war preparation. Across sectors, the lesson is consistent: when unions act collectively and politically, they can reshape what is possible, far beyond the immediate workplace.
TODAY’S CONTEXT: AUKUS, PALESTINE AND THE PACIFIC
This conference meets at a time when the Australian government is signing up to AUKUS and committing hundreds of billions of dollars to nuclear‑powered submarines and deeper integration into United States and British war‑fighting strategies. Those resources are being torn away from health, education, housing, climate transition and public services, at the very moment when inequality is soaring and workers are under intense economic pressure. The labour movement cannot be neutral on whether public money goes to nuclear submarines or to schools, hospitals, public housing and the climate jobs we desperately need. We must reject the false narrative that China is our enemy and is a threat to Australia. The threat to Australia comes from our chosen allies and their perpetual drive to war for corporate profits and expanded markets.
At the same time, the genocidal devastation in Gaza and the broader occupation of Palestine have exposed, in real time, how military alliances, arms deals and diplomatic cover enable the mass killing of civilians. Workers here are already responding: public sector workers taking solidarity actions, health staff speaking out about attacks on medical facilities, education workers refusing to be silent, and unions debating how to turn statements into industrial and political leverage.
In the Pacific, workers’ organisations are raising the alarm that their islands are being treated as bases, buffers, and bargaining chips in great‑power rivalry, while communities on the front line of climate change still wait for justice. The same Pacific that lives with the legacy of nuclear testing is now expected to host a military build‑up in the name of “deterrence.”
WHY WAR IS A UNION ISSUE
War is not an unfortunate accident that occasionally interrupts “normal” economic life; it is built into a system that puts private profit and imperialist rivalry above human need. The forces that fight to casualise labour, smash unions, privatise public services and deepen inequality are the same forces that lobby for weapons contracts, foreign bases and new theatres of war. When governments legislate to weaken unions at home and legislate to expand war‑making powers abroad, they are pursuing one integrated project – the concentration of wealth and power in fewer hands, backed by the threat and reality of organised ruling class violence.
For workers, this plays out in multiple ways. It means workers, are the ones who fill the ranks of the armed forces, often for lack of other secure opportunities. It means our communities are the ones whose social services are cut to pay for defence spending that now runs into tens of billions of dollars per year and is rising steeply over the coming decade. The Australian government currently spends $191.8 million per day on the military. This is $8 million per hour. It means our workplaces, from ports to universities to research labs, are integrated into military supply chains and weapons development, often via opaque “partnerships” and “security” arrangements that shut down debate. To say “peace is union business” is to say that unions must contest this whole agenda, not just its symptoms.
LEARNING FROM OUR OWN VICTORIES
History shows that when unions take peace seriously, they can change outcomes. The anti‑conscription victories in 1916 and 1917 were won by broad alliances of labour, peace organisations, women’s groups and churches, using tactics that ranged from mass meetings and street marches to workplace agitation and voting power. The Vietnam Moratoriums were consciously modelled on labour‑led protests in the United States, but in Australia they drew enormous strength from union involvement – from bans on troopships and munitions to explicit commitments by the Australian Council of Trade Unions and key unions to oppose the war.
The anti‑apartheid movement likewise demonstrates that sustained union action can help delegitimise and economically isolate a regime that many governments were willing to tolerate or even support. When maritime workers, transport workers and others refused to handle South African cargo and sporting tours, they endured legal and political attacks but shifted public opinion and made concrete the idea that racism and oppression abroad were trade union issues here.
Australian unions played a central, often decisive, role in the Australian anti‑nuclear movement, from early resistance to French tests and uranium mining through to current opposition to nuclear submarines under AUKUS. From the mid‑1970s into the early 1980s, several unions used direct industrial action to disrupt the uranium industry and associated infrastructure shaping ALP and ACTU policies for decades and leaving an anti-nuclear federal government legacy today despite being under constant threat of erosion.
Today, as unions consider their responsibilities on issues like Palestine, AUKUS and far‑right mobilisation, these experiences are not just inspiring stories; they are guides to action.
THE FAR RIGHT, RACISM, AND WAR
One of the themes of this conference is combating the far right, white supremacist and neo‑Nazi movements that are targeting the working class. These forces thrive in conditions of economic insecurity, militarism, and racist fear‑mongering, and they are consciously cultivated by sections of capital and the political class that benefit from division and fear. The labour movement has confronted this before: from campaigning against local fascist groups in the 1930s, to opposing racism and apartheid, to challenging the racist Northern Territory Intervention and more recent anti‑Muslim and anti‑refugee politics.
Today’s far right wraps itself in national flags, talks endlessly about “security” and “the West”, and tries to turn anger at the cost‑of‑living crisis into hatred of migrants, Muslims, First Nations people and the organised left. When unions campaign for peace, for an independent foreign policy, for refugee rights and for First Nations justice, they do more than adopt good moral positions; they cut across the recruitment base of the far right and assert a different kind of patriotism – one based on solidarity, equality and collective security.
THE ROLE OF THIS CONFERENCE
This conference has been deliberately framed around key themes that invite unions to see themselves as central forces in the struggle for peace. “Freedom struggles in a world at war,” “An independent Australia and Pacific,” “Unions for peace and justice – a history of struggle against war, racism and fascism,” “Organising for peace,” and “Combating the ultra‑right” – these are not separate boxes; together they describe a political project to put workers, unions and communities at the heart of an alternative vision. The program reflects that: sessions on Palestine and occupation, on AUKUS and strategic analysis, on organising in union towns, and on linking peace work with social justice and anti‑racism.
The aim is not just to listen to experts, but to build connections between unions, between regions, and between sectors that can translate into real campaigns in the months and years ahead. That means mapping where military and security projects intersect with our workplaces; sharing experiences of industrial bans, community campaigning and political lobbying; and identifying concrete national demands that can unite unions around an agenda for peace and justice. We are here to strengthen the links between unions and organisations like the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN), peace groups, faith communities, First Nations organisations and migrant community groups, because a serious peace movement has to be broad, rooted and representative.
FROM ANALYSIS TO MOBILISATION
If peace is union business, then every union in this room has to ask: what does that mean for us, in practice, when we leave here? For some, it might mean committing to educate delegates and members about AUKUS, military spending and the alternatives – using workplace meetings, training courses and union communications to make the connections between war budgets and wage theft, between arms corporations and union‑busting employers. For others, it might mean reviewing investment policies and superannuation portfolios to identify and challenge ties to arms manufacturers, military contractors and companies profiting from occupation and war.
In strategic industries – ports, logistics, transport, education, health, public services, construction, communications and manufacturing – unions can begin discussing when and how industrial power could be used to oppose specific wars, deployments, weapons systems or contracts, just as earlier generations did with pig iron, apartheid cargoes, and nuclear testing. That does not start with a call for a sudden, isolated action; it starts with building member understanding, democratic mandates, alliances with affected communities, and plans that can withstand legal and political attack. Our movement is already under severe industrial law constraints, and any serious peace strategy has to take that into account, but history shows that when unions are united, prepared and linked to broad social support, they can act in ways that shift what is considered “legal” and “possible.”
AN INDEPENDENT, PEACEFUL AUSTRALIA
A thread running through much of this discussion is the question of independence – not in some abstract nationalist sense, but independence from imperialist alliances and war‑fighting strategies that are not in the interests of working people here or in our region. For decades, Australia has locked itself into US‑led wars – from Korea and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan – often on false pretences and almost always against the wishes of large parts of the population. US bases and joint facilities on Australian soil help enable drone wars, nuclear targeting and military surveillance, making our communities potential targets while undermining genuine sovereignty.
An independent, peaceful Australia would mean stepping away from the US nuclear alliance, rejecting nuclear weapons and nuclear‑armed or nuclear‑powered platforms, and signing and implementing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which the Australian government has so far refused to do. It would mean re‑orienting foreign policy towards diplomacy, development, climate action and genuine partnership with our neighbours, especially in the Pacific, instead of treating them as strategic chess pieces. And it would mean redirecting defence spending away from offensive capability designed for distant wars, and towards civil defence in the broadest sense: housing, health, education, climate resilience, public transport, and jobs that actually defend and sustain life.
BUILDING A LIVING MOVEMENT, NOT A ONE‑OFF EVENT
If this conference is to matter, it has to be the beginning or the deepening of a process, not just a well‑attended event with a good agenda. That means leaving here with a plan: a national union peace network or coordinating body; regular cross‑union meetings; agreed campaigning possibilities; and mechanisms for sharing resources, research and strategies. It means each union here naming peace as core business in its own constitutional objectives, policies and education programs, and ensuring that peace questions are on the agenda of union meetings and activity.
We also need to consciously bring through new generations of rank‑and‑file leaders for whom peace work is normal union work, not an optional extra or the hobby of a few. That involves mentoring younger activists, prioritising the leadership of women, First Nations members, and migrant workers, and resourcing them to organise in their workplaces and communities around peace, anti‑racism and social justice. The forces that profit from war plan for the long term; our movement must do the same.
A CLEAR MANDATE
Peace has always been union business, because unions exist to defend and advance the lives of working people, and nothing threatens those lives more fundamentally than war, fascism, and the militarisation of society. Our history – from anti‑conscription struggles, to pig‑iron bans, to Vietnam and apartheid, to nuclear and anti‑base campaigns – shows that when unions step up, they can help stop wars, topple racist regimes, and win a different kind of security based on justice, not domination.
Over the next two days, let this conference give itself a clear mandate: to make peace a core industrial, political and cultural priority of the Australian union movement; to map and contest the links between our workplaces and the war machine; to stand with peoples resisting occupation, racism and fascism; and to help build an independent, peaceful Australia in solidarity with workers across the world.
If that is the direction we take, then in years to come, unionists will look back on this gathering as one of those moments when our movement remembered who it is, reclaimed its peace traditions, and chose to act together for a world where the resources, creativity and labour of working people are used to sustain life, not destroy it.
