Cuba vive y la lucha sigue - Labour Party Conference fringe meeting
Campaign News | Friday, 4 October 2024
Steve Turner, Paula Barker MP, Ismara Vargas Walter, Nazifa Zaman, Mary Kelly Foy and Rob Miller
At the Labour Party’s first conference in government since 2009, CSC hosted a successful fringe meeting, ‘Cuban Workers Under Blockade, in the conference venue, with Unite Assistant General Secretary Steve Turner chairing. “Health workers struggle with medical shortages, transport workers without fuel, energy workers fight to keep the country’s lights on in aging power stations and education workers without the most basic of school supplies”, Steve told attendees.
Paula Barker, MP for Liverpool Riverside, told attendees that she will continue to raise the issue of Cuba and the injustice of the blockade in Parliament whenever she can. Only a few weeks previously in Westminster, Paula had put a question to the Foreign Office on “what assessment the FCDO has made on the impact of the blockade on the Cuban economy and on British-Cuba relations.” The response recognised “the impact the blockade has on Cuba’s development and the extra-territorial nature of US sanctions”, but as Paula told the fringe, “there is a lot more that the British government could do to challenge US policy.”
Having visited Cuba last year on the Young Trade Unionists’ May Day Brigade, Nazifa Zaman witnessed first hand the incredible achievements of Cuban health workers. From the start of the brigade at the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology where Cuba developed its own COVID-19 vaccines, to a hospital in Sancti Spiritus where practically all health workers present had volunteered on a medical mission abroad, Nazifa said “Cuba is a shining example of what health justice looks like.” As an organiser in a health union here in the UK, Nazifa asked “if Cuba can do it under the immense pressure it faces at the hands of its imperialist neighbour, the UK should have no trouble achieving this model of healthcare.”
Her Excellency the Ambassador addressed her second meeting of the week, in what was her first Labour Party Conference. “In the face of an aggressive & illegal blockade that has lasted more than 60 years, the Cuban workers -our teachers, doctors, engineers & farmers - are the ones who bear the heaviest burden of this economic war”, she said. The Ambassador emphasised the importance of removing Cuba from the US government’s unilateral designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, which she said “has no grounding in reality”. She thanked Paula and her colleagues for their work ensuring that the blockade continues to be on the parliamentary agenda with the APPG for Cuba and called on delegates to continue to raise their voices in solidarity with her country. “Cuba vive y la lucha sigue” (Cuba lives and the struggle continues) she concluded.
Closing the meeting, CSC Director Rob Miller relayed the news from the Cuba Vive rally the previous night that the appeal had surpassed its original target of £100,000. Urging Labour Party members to get involved with the work of the campaign – by donating to the appeal, joining CSC as members and getting their CLPs and union branches affiliated – Rob echoed the ambassador’s message, that the situation in Cuba is as serious, if not more so, than the crisis of the Special Period in the early 1990’s. Our solidarity with Cuba therefore must take practical form.
