A celebration of trade union internationalism
Campaign News | Wednesday, 25 June 2025
Clockwise from top left: Omar Puente and Raíces Cubanas, Eddie Dempsey, 2025 May Day brigade members with the Cuban ambassador, raffle winner Rhys Harmer, Chris Hazzard MP, Maryam Eslamdoust
Tickets for the 2025 RMT Garden Party on 11 June sold out in advance, and those lucky enough to get one enjoyed a balmy summer’s evening at the RMT’s Maritime House in Clapham with food, drink, dancing, and music from legendary Cuban violinist Omar Puente and his salsa band Raíces Cubanas.
A great platform of speakers reminded people of the aim of the event – to raise money for medical aid for Cuba and awareness of the impact of the US blockade.
This year’s party was the first addressed by Eddie Dempsey as the union’s newly elected General Secretary, though not the first he has attended. Welcoming guests to the “very important and special event in the RMT’s calendar,” he recalled going to the party ten years earlier as a young activist and meeting his future wife for the first time.
Our movement is not just the workers’ movement here in Britain, Dempsey said: “We’re an international movement and we stand for national liberation and socialism around the world. And that’s what we celebrate here tonight in our support for Cuba. And that’s what we’re raising money for here tonight for Cuba… We’ve always enjoyed getting people here to talk not just about the usual stuff we do in the trade union movement: the conditions of the working class here in Britain, terms and conditions, how we’re faring, the condition of the labour movement. We’re here to talk about socialism and internationalism and the right of peoples around the world to be free. The right of the Palestinian people to be free. The right of the Cuban people to be free – to be free of the blockade and to be free of US imperialism. We’re very proud to support that in the RMT and we’re absolutely unapologetic about it.”
Maryam Eslamdoust, General Secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association gave a blistering condemnation of imperialism and medical sanctions: “Britain’s trade unions are proud to stand with Cuba. The workers’ struggle and the anti-imperialist struggle are one and the same. And Cuba is a shining beacon of what can be achieved when workers take control, even when faced with enormous pressure from imperialist powers and international capital. The reasons they try so hard to break Cuba, the Cuban people, are the same reasons they try hard to break our trade unions. It’s vital to capital and vital to imperialist powers to convince us that working people in the global majority cannot run our own affairs, cannot work together and cannot succeed without them. Trade unions prove them wrong and Cuba proves them wrong. So we, as trade unions, must continue to support Cuba.”
Maryam had personal experience of medical sanctions and said they were an issue “I care about deeply, not just in theory, because I’ve lived it. I’ve experienced the impact of medical sanctions first-hand. So this is deeply personal to me. Medical sanctions are not diplomatic tools. They are a form of warfare when medicines and treatments are blocked. It’s not governments that suffer. It’s ordinary people and all too often it’s children. That’s just unfair. It’s inhumane. This is what modern day imperialism looks like. It must end.”
“When I think about Cuba, I think that it’s more than a country. It really is an example of internationalism in practice,” said Bell Ribeiro-Addy, local MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill. Bell also had a personal story relating to Cuba, as her brother who lives in Ghana had benefited from a medical scholarship: “Having studied in Cuba, he now works in one of the major hospitals in Ghana, giving life-saving treatment, particularly to children. Cuba continues to show that solidarity across the world with their healing hands, choked by US imperialism.” Bell finished by thanking everyone for continuing to show up and show solidarity with Cuba.
Rhys Harmer was one of 41 young trade unionists to take part in CSC’s 2025 May Day Brigade and mentioned some of the highlights of the “life-changing” experience as an RMT delegate on the trip.
Witnessing 600,000 Cubans march in Havana on May Day “completely changed my view on how Western imperialists view Cuba,” he said “Because on that same day, US publications were saying that it was all fake. There was no one in Revolution Square. And that’s complete nonsense. The way America and Western Europe still view Cuba and the Cubans is disgraceful.”
“We did volunteer work, on farms and universities. We attended lectures from feminists to understand how women are seen as equals.” Addressing a lively group of fifteen fellow brigadistas in the crowd, he praised the medical aid delivered by the group. “When we went to one of the hospitals near Havana, these beautiful people here brought suitcases of medical aid from Britain to the delight of the staff in the local policlinic.”
Sinn Féin MP Chris Hazzard thanked the RMT for hosting, but also for their solidarity, not just with Cuba but with the peoples of Latin America and Palestine. “Over the last number of years we also extend our solidarity to the people of Palestine as they face the barbarism that not just comes from Israel but of course is sponsored, aided and embedded by government here in London and in Washington and in the European Union.”
Quoting Cuban national hero and poet Jose Martí, who called on people of Latin America to march in close ranks like silver in the veins of the Andes, he called on “progressive-minded socialist people from across Europe and further afield to march in close ranks for Palestine, for Cuba, for Venezuela and of course comrades, for England’s oldest colony – for Ireland.”
CSC National Chair Bernard Regan described the party as a wonderful legacy of former RMT General Secretary Bob Crow. He thanked everyone who had donated to Cuba Vive, which has raised more than £180,000 for medical aid which was “already being put to good use, quite literally saving lives of Cuban people.”
He compared the “absolutely fantastic record” of the 600,000 medical practitioners that Cuba had sent across the globe since 1963, and compared it to the UK, “a population six times the size of Cuba. So that would mean that Britain should be sending somewhere in the region of three and a half million medical practitioners to echo what Cuba has been doing.” He recalled a recent delegation to Cuba with the NEU where “we met some of the more than 250 Palestinian doctors who were being trained in Cuba at Cuba’s expense,” and said that Cuba had medics on standby, sponsored by the Algerian government and ready to help in Gaza, when possible.”
Cuban ambassador Ismara Vargas Walter thanked the RMT for the “special night” and reminded people why the US continued its “cruel and inhumane” blockade: because of the Cuban people’s determination to ignore superpowers and our “determination to create, to build and to live in a different society, a society that is not perfect, but one that is shaped according to our needs and our historic conditions.”
She urged people to continue to stand in solidarity with Cuba, “a small island nation trying to breathe, trying to create, to innovate, and above all, trying to live in peace.”
Ismara concluded by reminding people of “the tragedy that our brothers and sisters in Palestine are facing,” and pledging that Cuba would not let them down and would continue to give solidarity and “to condemn the aggression and the genocide that is taking place in Palestine these days.”
Raffle tickets were sold throughout the night for the amazing first prize of two return flights to Cuba or £1,200 cash. Rhys Harmer (cited above), who had only recently returned from Cuba as part of the 2025 May Day Brigade, was surprised and delighted to win the top prize.
The garden party raised thousands of pounds for the Cuba Vive Medical Aid Appeal and CSC is very grateful to the RMT for their ongoing solidarity and support.
