Call to defend Cuba
WORKERS, JUNE 2007 ISSUE
There is widespread admiration and support in Britain for Cuba. There may need to be a readiness to translate that support into something more tangible soon, a speaker at the CPBML's May Day rally in London revealed. "It's not widely known in Britain, but thanks to our links with the Cuban Communist Party it is known to us, that the north Americans have established for Cuba all the things they established for Iraq before they invaded that sovereign country."
A colonial administrator (for Iraq Paul Bremer, for Cuba Caleb McCarry), American legislation providing for a future American occupation of Cuba, and the huge financial resources ploughed into pro-American stooges are running at $80 million so far.
And there are secret military preparations to invade Cuba, a sovereign member of the UN. They have even got as far as determining what exactly they'll do when they've defeated the Cubans, as they cockily believe they will.
"They'll privatise everything in Cuba," the speaker said. "That's a polite way of saying that they'll give everything back to the Yanks, mafia and other criminals the Cubans took it from during the Revolution. This would leave millions homeless, and would destroy the most successful healthcare and education systems ever developed within one generation."
Then the repression would start. Anyone supporting the Party, trade unions or any other mass organisation such as women's and youth organisations – that is, pretty much everyone in Cuba – would be subject to what the US themselves call repressive measures. Bush says the list will be very long.
"So when the Yanks try to make this happen – and they are only waiting for Fidel to die to do that," said the speaker, "We must be on the streets as will be millions across the world, to support the millions who will be on the streets in Havana and Santiago, in Cienfeugos and Pinar del Rio." He added, though, that if it comes to that we might be too late.
It was the refusal of British, and other workers across the world, to support the Soviet Union that led to it eventually being crushed in a vice. Too many of us were concerned at what our enemies didn't like about the USSR rather than realise what it represented – workers running a country. "We mustn't let such squeamishness affect us over Cuba," he said, adding that, "The best way to support Cuba is to act here, in Britain."
The speaker called on workers to turn against the US, and all here who support its crusade against Cuba, including those in the Labour Party like Ian McCartney who recently claimed that there were 10,000 political prisoners in Cuba. "Even the Yanks only claim there are 40!" he said.