RATB mobilised its members to attend meetings on Cuba at the European Social Forum held in October (see article page 3). Cuban speakers included Che Guevara’s daughter Aleida Guevara, UJC member Raul Van Troi Navarro and Noel Carillo, member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The meetings were packed, showing a real enthusiasm for hearing about the example of the Cuban Revolution. Aleida Guevara’s contributions revealed a principled fighter for socialism, giving no concessions to social democratic trends. At the opening speech she said ‘socialism is still a possibility, solidarity is of paramount importance’. A doctor, working at the children’s hospital in Havana, who has worked in Angola, Ecuador and Nicaragua, Aleida Guevara said ‘neoliberal policies are destroying my continent…A better world is possible, the challenge lies in being able to act, rather than just talk’. She defended armed struggle and quoted the recent experiences in Venezuela to show that there is a place for armed struggle to give people back power.
In this context, the SWP, always so ready to spread their poison about Cuba when there is no-one to challenge them, lacked the guts to stand up and put their questions to Aleida Guevara. Instead, leading members sat mutely in the audience; meanwhile, in another part of London, SWP leader Chris Harman continued to spew the reactionary party line at an SWP meeting on Cuba.
Meanwhile, in November, an RATB member in Spain noticed an advert for a meeting to be addressed by the SWP’s Mike Gonzales in Madrid on the afternoon he was due to catch his plane home. Fresh from pursuing Mike Gonzales around Britain this autumn to denounce his reactionary new book on Che Guevara, the comrade raced to the meeting and was on his feet as soon as Gonzales had finished speaking, refuting the SWP’s lies and ensuring the Spanish students at the meeting heard a revolutionary position on Cuba. Gonzales had little option but to slink away the moment the meeting was over. Oh, Mike, you can run…but you can’t hide from the truth about Cuba.
But opportunism takes many forms, not least that of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign. Rob Miller of the CSC claimed as the CSC’s major achievement the fact that a number of Labour MPs, including Peter Hain and Tony Blair, had agreed, in response to a CSC questionnaire, that ‘were the US to declare its intention tomorrow to force regime change on Cuba by military means it could not count on the support of British MPs’. The Cubans must be relieved! We know that such assurances are not worth the paper they are written on. What happened to all those Labour MPs who claimed to oppose the war in Iraq when the attack actually came? At a time when the warmongering British Labour government is manifestly as cravenly bound to US imperialism as at any point in its history, to suggest some kind of ‘crack’ in the Special Relationship – as a result of the CSC’s ‘12 years of patient efforts’ – over Cuba is to sow illusions and disarm the solidarity movement.
Get active with RATB
Meanwhile, RATB continues to work to build an active movement in solidarity with Cuban socialism. Prior to the ESF, we spent an evening of discussion and questions with Raul Van Troi Navarro of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) in Cuba, in Britain as part of the Cuban delegation.
In October, RATB in London marked the 47th anniversary of Che Guevara’s murder in Bolivia with an evening of political readings, singers, musicians and poets, rounded off by an enthusiastic rendition of Guantanamera. All money raised has been donated to the Che Guevara Study Centre in Havana.
The first Rebel Music night at Barfly in Glasgow in November was very successful and a second is taking place in December. This is part of RATB’s fundraising for material aid for the UJC, to take a sound system to Caimanera in the eastern region of Cuba next year. A brigade of people committed to building a movement for socialism in Britain and defending the Cuban Revolution will take out the equipment for the UJC to use for recreational and political purposes. We hope to link up with the World Youth Festival in Caracas, Venezuela in early August.
FRFI 182 December 2004 / January 2005
