“What more can we do to support the Cuban people?”
Campaign News | Wednesday, 8 October 2025
Cuban Ambassador Ismara Vargas Walter at The Casa
On 28 September, CSC hosted a Hands Off Cuba North West Rally at Liverpool’s famous trade union-supporting venue The Casa
Welcoming over 100 guests to her constituency and home city, local MP for Riverside Kim Johnson said that Liverpool was defined by “community and solidarity.” Solidarity with Cuba was also “something that’s been very important to me,” she explained, stressing the importance of “fighting to remove the blockade and working solidly to get Cuba off the state sponsors of terrorism list.”
Sarah Gilligan, Unite North West’s delegate on the May Day Brigade, described the “humbling” feeling of being “welcomed as comrades” by 600,000 Cubans in Havana’s May Day march, an experience that reminded her that “solidarity isn’t symbolic – it’s active, it’s reciprocal, and it’s powerful.”
Richard Burgon MP has a long personal involvement with CSC as former chair of the Leeds CSC group. Addressing the meeting, he stressed the importance of supporting CSC by affiliating trade union branches and supporting the material aid campaigns. “We owe a moral and political duty to support them politically and with practical solidarity,” he argued.
FBU National Officer Mark Rowe brought a message of solidarity from his union and firefighters across the country. He highlighted the cruel impact of the blockade on his counterparts in the Cuban fire service, who often struggle with a lack of equipment, and in 2022 lost seventeen firefighters at an oil storage depot fire.
NEU International Secretary Celia Dignan expressed her union’s “unwavering support for CSC and solidarity with the people of Cuba,” as well as her own excitement at the prospect of witnessing Cuba’s world class education system first-hand during the annual NEU delegation to the island in October.
“How can the US say that it supports the people of Cuba when its policies are causing such devastation?” asked Micaela Tracey-Ramos, vice-chair of UNISON’s International Committee, as she warned that Cuba’s “world class healthcare system is under threat.” Micaela further exposed the hypocrisy of US policy: while “Cuba is included on the state sponsors of terrorism list, they [the US] finance and facilitate a genocide in Gaza.”
Cuban Ambassador Ismara Vargas Walter detailed the staggering human cost of “economic warfare” waged against her country: “This isn’t about numbers. It’s about people. We are denied essential medicines, life-saving equipment… What does this mean in reality? Patients denied pacemakers. Life-saving heart surgeries cancelled. Modern cancer treatments out of reach.” The blockade is “a war on the human body, on our children, our sick, our elderly,” she said.
Thanking friends of Cuba, she went on: “Here tonight in Liverpool, your solidarity is not abstract. The Cuba Vive Medical Aid Appeal is a profound act of defiance. I have said it before and I will say it again: every item of medical aid that is sent will be helping to save a life. Your support for this appeal is a powerful message that you refuse to be complicit in this crime.”
Ending on a defiant note, Ismara told the crowd: “My country will not be broken. Our Revolution is one of resilience and dignity. With your solidarity, we know we are not alone.”
Chris Hazzard MP described his solidarity with Cuba as “resolute” and powerfully drew parallels between the struggles of the Cuban and Irish peoples, quoting a plaque on Calle O’Reilly in Old Havana which described “two island peoples in the same sea of struggle and hope.”
The Sinn Fein MP for South Down questioned whether, with the many other important struggles in the world, people in socialist and progressive movements had “taken their eyes off Cuba” just as “imperialism is really starting to turn the screw.” Lauding the example Cuba has provided for the last 65 years in “showing the rest of the world that you can be defiant, that you can stand up, that another world is possible,” he encouraged people to ask themselves, “what more can we do to support the Cuban people?”
Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP revealed her personal connection to the island’s internationalist missions: “Ghana, where my family are from, benefited directly from Cuba’s medical programmes, and my brother-in-law, now a leading surgeon in Ghana’s main hospital in Accra, was one of the many Ghanaian doctors trained in Cuba.”
The blockade “is designed to break the Cuban spirit and cripple their economy,” she said, and, underlining the importance of strengthening our solidarity, told guests that “Cuba has always stood with us in our struggles for freedom and justice. And now, we must stand with them against the blockade and for their right to self-determination and their right to sovereignty. Because solidarity means nothing if it only flows one way.”
Gawain Little, GFTU General Secretary, brought the rally to a close by celebrating the social gains of the Cuban Revolution in education and healthcare, which he witnessed across three visits to the country. Those gains, he argued, were the result of the Revolution prioritising the needs of the people and the “full participation of working people” across society.
Supporting the Cuba Vive appeal, Gawain said, is “standing in solidarity with Cuba.” But it also is “taking a stand for international solidarity. It’s taking a stand against imperialism, against economic warfare, and it’s taking a stand for the rights of people right across our world to determine their own futures free from interference.”
Richard Burgon MP
Kim Johnson MP
