Defend Cuba! Working-Class Action to Break the Blockade!

By Gary Henson

Last Saturday I attended a 50-100 strong demo at the Cuban Embassy in London. Like the other groups and individuals in attendance, I was determined to show solidarity with Cuba and oppose the cruel imperialist blockade of food, fuel and medicines. Passionate speeches were backed up by music and loud cries of “¡Viva Cuba socialista!”, which created a lively and defiant atmosphere, but fails to convey the situation Cuba faces today.

Cuba is not socialist. After the 1959 revolution it became what Marxists call a deformed workers’ state, a country where property and the means of production have been collectivised but a parasitic bureaucracy rules. In the absence of democratic control by the masses, the workers’ state issuing from the revolution was deformed from its inception. The Stalinists running the island are no friend of the working class.

This means it is important to defend Cuba both from external imperialist attack and from internal capitalist counter-revolution.

Protests like this one outside the Cuban Embassy show solidarity, but demonstrations should also take place outside the Foreign Office, Downing Street and Labour Party headquarters because our rulers back every move Trump makes – they too are part of the problem.

We applaud the official Cuban Solidarity Campaign organising containers of medical and education aid from British trade unions to Cuba, but their main focus of petitions and writing to MPs is a dead end. What is needed is action by the organised working class, here in Britain, but particularly in the Americas, to demand the fuel blockade on Cuba is broken.

I lived in Cuba in 1999 and I have visited every year since. I campaigned there for the release of former Black Panther Mumia Abu Jamal, wrongfully imprisoned in Pennsylvania since 1981. It wasn’t hard to build support because Mumia had a high profile in Cuba, especially with young people who saw the need for international solidarity against their common enemy, US imperialism. For similar reasons, Mumia’s struggle has been supported in the US by trade unionists who have walked out on strike demanding his freedom.

That is the kind of action we should look to at this dangerous time for the Cuban revolution. Unfortunately there was no visible Your Party presence outside the Cuban Embassy, but this is an issue that we should address. We should speak out in defence of Cuba, and our members and branches should organise and build within the trade unions, not to parrot the rulers in Havana but to build organisations of solidarity with the Cuban working class. Only by taking the revolution further and establishing real workers’ power and international collaboration will we ever get “Cuba socialista”.