Brent Trades Union Council (Brent TUC) is the local workers' council for the London Borough of Brent, one of the 32 London boroughs. I write as its secretary on its behalf, as instructed at a quorate meeting held last night.
It is great that you are asserting yourselves, and discovering your strength, by taking action, and saying that you and your members have the right to decide upon on international political issues.
This is something UK unions used to do but cannot do any more.
In 1920, for example, London dockers refused to load a ship called the 'Jolly George' which was going to carry arms to the Polish government to wage war on the Soviet Union. Before this too, railway workers in Lancashire decided they would not transport munitions that would help British forces prolong the war in Ireland.
There are two reasons why it is more difficult for workers in Britain today to consider taking industrial action such as they did in the past, or as the workers in Durban and San Francisco are taking.
One is the use of outsourcing and casualisation to break up workforces.
Two, the use of anti-union legislation introduced by the Tories, kept by Labour and adhered to by trade union leaders, which outlaws picketing a workplace that is not your own, or taking action in support of other workers, while allowing employers to sack and replace workers who go on strike.
The Liverpool dockers were sacked for refusing to cross a picket line mounted by their sons employed with different conditions by another firm. Heathrow airport workers were victimised for stopping in support of Gate Gourmet catering workers - many of them members of their own families - whose work used to be done 'in house', and who were being replaced by agency staff. Their union, TGWU Unite, decided it could not risk massive fines by calling or even supporting an all-out stoppage.
We hope that you will beat the injunction being served against you and begin an international campaign of workers' action that will stop the injustice in Iraq and Afghanistan being perpetrated in our names.
We have also noted the appeal for travel funding and accommodation and will help if we can.
Yours comradely
Ben Rickman
Secretary
Brent Trades Union Council
www.brenttuc.org.uk