Protesters outside the Treasury 26th March 2025 (photo Guardian/PA)
I’ve been an activist on the left since the 1970s and the political slogan and demand, welfare not warfare, has always been present. In a sense it is, or until now, was social democratic politics.
Now with spending on defence rocketing while welfare is cut it looks almost like a revolutionary demand.
Of course we need to go beyond the slogan.
The 1945 Attlee Government, even under great financial difficulty, promoted welfare and warfare. That remained broadly the case, even under the Tories, until the oil crisis of 1973/4 and then the financial crash of 2008. Then both welfare and warfare spending were cut.
Of course Labour will say, correctly, that money has been put into the NHS to begin to address the impact of the Tory and Liberal Democrat years from 2010-2024. Its welcome but the direction of travel is clear and its towards warfare. 80 years of social democratic politics have reached a conclusion, and not a good one.
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