Your solidarity is not taken for granted - AGM message for CSC supporters
Campaign News | Thursday, 17 July 2025
Delegates at the AGM and some of the speakers and motion movers (bottom row l-r) Jayne Fisher, Micaela Tracey-Ramos, Harsev Bains, Simmeron Katbamna, Pablo Ginarte
“We are in solidarity with Cuba, just as Cuba is in solidarity with just struggles around the world,” said CSC Chair Kevin Courtney as he opened CSC’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) in June. With Cuba facing a particularly challenging period, the renewed attacks from a second Trump presidency featured heavily throughout as CSC members and affiliates discussed how to build and strengthen the solidarity movement in the coming months.
Louise Regan, Chair of the National Education Union (NEU) International Committee, welcomed guests to the union’s headquarters at Hamilton House and spoke of her union’s very long record of solidarity with Cuba. Louise was part of the annual NEU delegation in October, when 25 British educators visited the island and witnessed first-hand the strengths of the Cuban system, but also the impact of the blockade on education. “Our members became very aware of its impact and had even encountered its reach in this country, with online fundraising companies shutting down pages,” she recalled. Louise noted that “many of the NEU delegates that visit Cuba become inspired to commit themselves to activism” in the union and elsewhere on their return and said that the NEU will continue to work with CSC to deepen solidarity within the union.
CSC Director Rob Miller presented the annual report, which detailed the previous twelve months’ work. He noted the importance, given the extent of the current shortages, of the second Screen Cuba film festival, which saw a 35 per cent increase in audience numbers, and the continued success of the Young Trade Unionists’ May Day Brigade and other delegations. Rob thanked CSC members and local groups for being “the bedrock” of the campaign’s work.
The AGM was shown a short video of medical workers in Cuba explaining the importance of the donations their institutions had received from the Cuba Vive appeal, and thanking all those who had supported the initiative.
On behalf of the Cuban Embassy, First Secretary for Political Affairs Pablo Ginarte Sampedro expressed “thanks for the unwavering support we received from all CSC members and supporters.” At a time when “Trump and Marco Rubio are engaged in an escalation of the six-decade-old economic war against Cuba,” the solidarity extended to his country from people across Britain “is not taken for granted” he said. Pablo expressed Cuba’s “unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people,” an issue on which he said his people “cannot remain silent.”
Placing Trump’s attacks in the wider global context of efforts to re-impose the Monroe Doctrine and reshape other areas of the world, CSC National Secretary Bernard Regan stressed the need to continue and intensify our solidarity with Cuba as he introduced the annual plan.
CSC Executive Committee members Jayne Fisher, Micaela Tracey-Ramos, Harsev Bains and Bernard Regan moved and seconded motions on Cuba’s medical internationalism and plans to celebrate the centenary of Fidel’s birth in 2026, both of which passed unanimously. An emergency motion responding to the intensification of the blockade and developments of the anti-Cuba lobby, committing CSC to intensifying our efforts to oppose this escalation, also passed unanimously.
The AGM concluded with the election of 36 members onto the Executive Committee to carry out the agreed annual plan.
Cuban Ambassador Ismara Vargas Walter presenting Trish Meehan and Dodie Weppler with a special award for their work on Screen Cuba
