Description
Both prior to and since the 2023 escalation of Israel’s genocidal violence in Palestine, trade unions around the world have been important drivers of direction action to stop material support for Israel provided by their governments. One — perhaps unexpected — site for this organising has been the UK Civil Service, whose obligation to be politically neutral typically prevents or hinders efforts to frustrate government policies with which civil servants disagree. This paper examines how trade union members in government departments are using collective action to build opposition to British trade with Israel in support of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. Based on in-depth interviews with civil servants, it asks whether and how trade union organising can offer possibilities for solidaristic anti-militarist and anti-colonial resistance in institutions otherwise reproductive of hegemonic militaristic and colonial foreign policy practices. I argue that legal protections for trade union activity and the defence of ‘strong beliefs’ create some opportunities for critiques of imperialism to circulate in spaces of power that are otherwise hostile to them, and for using collective labour to organise resistance. However, drawing on Marxist feminist scholarship on institutional ideologies and liberatory praxis, I suggest that the possibilities for ‘change from within’ are limited, and the transformative potential of this work depends on building and cementing links with wider anti-imperialist and labour movements.
