It was a pleasure to be invited to speak at TUC Congress fringe meeting ‘Supporting Education, Resisting the Blockade’ in Brighton earlier this week:

As chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Cuba, I want to express our solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Cuba who are living through extreme hardship as the US blockade of their country enters its seventh decade.

As a result of the policies of Donald Trump, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the world economic situation, Cuba is experiencing its most severe shortages in food, medicine and fuel since the Special Period in the late 1990s.

I am extremely disappointed that President Joe Biden has not delivered on any of his election promises to reverse Trump’s measures. This is why I and many of my parliamentary colleagues have been calling for action for months. Last year I tabled an Early Day Motion which called on the Biden administration to remove Cuba from the US ‘state sponsors of terrorism’ list. It is ludicrous that Cuba is still on this list when it has done so much to support peace in the region, and has itself been the target of so many terrorist attacks over the last sixty years.

At a minimum, the Biden administration could have reversed those Trump sanctions which prevent Cubans living abroad from providing financial help to family on the island. However, little has been done in the first eighteen months of his presidency, despite a growing food and medicine crisis as a direct result of US action.

Just this week, Republican Senator for Florida, Marco Rubio, claimed responsibility for designing Trump’s Cuba policy. This policy ended the historic US-Cuba détente and devastated Cuba’s economy, leading to widespread scarcities for Cuban families, not seen in Cuba for thirty years. This is nothing to brag about.

US policy towards Cuba is driven too much by the politics of confrontation and personal interests from those in Florida, when it would be better driven by compassion and cooperation. Sanctions harm the Cuban people most. They also alienate the US in the international community, as shown by this last year’s United Nations General Assembly vote, where 184 countries voted for the blockade to end, against just two – the US and Israel.

Our own experience in the UK is that cooperation and dialogue between the UK and Cuba has opened the door to constructive relations which have been beneficial to both parties. During the pandemic, Cuba provided safe docking for a Covid-19 stricken British cruise ship, the MS Braemar, and in August 2020 Cuban doctors provided medical support to British Overseas Territories. For its own part, the UK has helped with training and provided scholarships for Cuban students to study in the UK.

I am glad that Britain and Cuba have relatively positive relations and exchanges which are beneficial to both countries and people. However, there is a lot more that the British government could do to challenge blockade policy towards the island which so hampers this relationship.

Last year, my colleague Zarah Sultana asked the Foreign Secretary if the Foreign Office had done anything recently to encourage the US administration to end the blockade of Cuba. She received a response from the Department stating that the UK votes against the blockade at the United Nations General Assembly and regularly engages with US officials on the matter, including “raising” it with the US State Department.

We should not just be “raising it” with the US State Department. We should be making an urgent humanitarian case for the US government to stop threatening and fining foreign banks and companies, including those in Britain, from working with Cuba. The British government should implement the existing antidote legislation that it already has on its books which threatens to penalise UK companies that kowtow to US blockade legislation. This would not only help facilitate trade and relations between UK and Cuba, but it would go some way to protect the sovereignty of the UK in the face of continuing outrageous threats and fines against UK companies and individuals who just want to carry out perfectly legal trade with Cuba.

It is criminal that the blockade remains and has been tightened during a global health crisis, and this vindictive US policy is undoubtedly costing lives in Cuba.

This was devastatingly illustrated by the US response to the tragic fires at an oil depot in Matanzas. While other countries, notably Mexico and Venezuela, responded immediately to Cuba’s request for help by sending firefighting teams and equipment to help quell the fires which raged for several days, the US made a meagre offer of ‘advice’.

The APPG on Cuba sent a message of condolence to the Cuban people, the injured, and the families of the sixteen deceased firefighters. We thanked those countries which provided help, as Cuba has always supported other countries in times of need.

I am pleased that the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, of which I am a member, has condemned any attempts by the US government or others to use Cuba’s difficulties to call for foreign intervention. As the statement said, the greatest cause of shortages and suffering in Cuba is as a result of the US blockade, and any calls for intervention on humanitarian grounds are dangerous and disingenuous.

Together with my colleagues, I welcome genuine efforts to support and deliver aid to the Cuban people at this time. I also applaud the efforts of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign including their members and trade union affiliates in the UK who raised more than £150,000 in the last two years to by medicines and syringes to help treat Covid patients and deliver the vaccination programme in Cuba.

Finally, I hope that the Viva La Educacion campaign, which the Cuba Solidarity Campaign is running jointly with the National Education Union to deliver educational aid to Cuba next year, will also succeed in delivering much needed support to Cuban students and teachers. This is an example of real, practical solidarity and support which will directly help people in Cuba.