May Day in Cuba

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban literacy brigades – in which mass literacy was brought to working people and peasants for the first time – and the Cuban victory over US-imperialism at the Bay of Pigs. For over half a century Cuba has thrived despite foreign intervention, international isolation and an illegal and pernicious blockade of the country.

In the face of ongoing adversity Cuba continues to prioritise people over profit and – with 35 000 Cuban health workers in developing countries – Cuba represents an enduring example of internationalism, solidarity and fraternity.
Each May Day the Cuban people mobilise to celebrate the achievements of the Cuban Revolution in towns and cities across the island. This year, both Pete and I had the pleasure of attending the May Day Parade in Havana. With a population of just over 11 million people, nearly 10% of the population marched through Revolution Square – not to mention other rallies across the country.
As the sun rose over Revolution Square in Havana – illuminating the permanent tributes to revolutionary heroes Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos – nearly one million proud Cubans paraded past the monument to Cuba’s Jose Marti waving flags, placards and chanting enthusiastically.
We were welcomed into the homes and communities of local Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, heard about trade unionism in Cuba and met with members of the Federation of Cuban Women.
We also had honour of meeting family members of the Miami Five – who remain unjustly incarcerated within American prisons – and their ongoing struggle for justice illustrates the continuing need for support from the international community.
Here are some photos from our trip. Viva Cuba!

Solidarity with the Hardest Hit March

Tomorrow, one year on from the formation of the coalition government, thousands of disabled people, their families, supporters and charities, will march in London to protest against the government’s plans to reform (read: minimise) the welfare state.

The coalition's Welfare Reform Bill sets out some measures that will effectively cut services available to disabled people, and make it harder to claim benefits. For example, abolishing the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and replacing it with the Personal Independence Payment, which by the way, has has 20% less in its budget than the DLA. The coalition also plans to reassess everyone claiming incapacity benefit, and abolish crisis loans and community care grants. Add into the mix cuts to local services and other benefits on which they depend, its no wonder 9 out of 10 disabled people are worried about how these cuts are going to affect them.

Since the Welfare Reform Bill was announced last October, concern has been voiced by disabled people, their families and carers about how the cuts would leave people struggling to cope and avoid poverty. The Hardest Hit March tomorrow will represent a culmination of the concern voiced over the past 6 months.

Did David Cameron really say “we will always look after the needy, the disadvantaged, the elderly, the frail and the poorest of our country” last May. Really?

The Rejection of AV – Better Luck Next Time (if there is a Next Time)

As a supporter of the 'Yes to AV' campaign, naturally I have been disappointed by the result of 68% of the 42 % Turnout voting to reject AV.

The reason I voted ‘Yes’ to AV wasn’t because I believe it’s the best system available, but it was the best system on offer. Proportional Representation would have been the ideal, but seeing as there was no chance of this system being put forward to the electorate, I felt compelled to support something that was a step closer to it.

I’ve read and heard plenty of reasons why people voted to reject AV and don’t want to sound like a ‘sore loser’ about this. At the end of the day, the No campaign was clearly very effective, regardless of it being patronising and bent on scaring people, having more high profile support or more wealthy individual donors.

Clearly the right-wing media have whipped up a storm over this, stating that many No voters rejected AV to spite Nick Clegg and give the Liberal Democrats a kicking. I honestly hope people weren’t so shallow about a chance to change the future of democracy in this country for the sake of ill feeling to one individual or to a political party. There was plenty of opportunity for ‘punishing’ Lib Dems in the Local Elections themselves, which has obviously resulted in massive losses for them.

In my opinion, an opportunity has definitely been missed here to push this country’s electoral system towards being fairer and more proportional. I think to reject the Alternative Vote system as, in Clegg's own words, a ‘miserable little compromise’ to Proportional Representation was a mistake. It was still a chance to make some progress. How could it be assumed that adopting AV would ever stop PR from being a possibility further down the line? “It’s a start...” is part of a comment from Rupert Read (Green Party Councillor for Norwich) on a Left Foot Forward blog post from last year. This would have been useful for people to remember at the ballot box on Thursday.

Will this resounding ‘No’ be twisted by the two main parties and used as an excuse not to offer a referendum on any other Electoral Reform? AV is clearly not going to be raised as an option again, but I fear that Electoral Reform as an issue in itself will now slip to the bottom of the political agenda, obviously for the Tories, but probably now also for Labour after their rather muted support for the Yes campaign.

So we are stuck with First Past The Post for the foreseeable future, left wondering when another chance will come to change it for a fairer voting system. My guess? Not for a generation. I sincerely hope I’m proved wrong.

AV Vote and Local Council Elections– A Referendum on the Lib-Dems?

Unless you’re living under a rock or inside a hermetically-sealed chamber of some kind, you’ll know that yesterday the country went to the polls to vote in various local council elections as well as the referendum on introducing the Alternative Vote. We’ve already outlined the leftist argument against AV in a previous blog – that it could lead to people competing for the centre ground (which is now in fact located somewhere on the centre-right), creating even more bland candidates and even a potential consolidation of a right-wing, neo-liberal politics. The argument progressives and leftists in favour of AV would put is that it is a step closer to true proportional representation and that it would in fact lead to candidates attempting to stand out more rather than blend in as they would feel they had more appeal that way. As one of our commenters put it:

Do you have to be a dull generic centrist to win majority support? Is that what makes a candidate popular? Most parties used a form of AV to elect their leaders - are Ed Milliband, Nick Clegg and Caroline Lucas "dull centrists"? Are Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson who won mayoral elections under AV "dull centrists"? I think that to win high preferences you need to stand out. You need to understand problems and have creative solutions to them. It won't be enough to appeal to armchair ideology of a small faithful. More importantly, independents and smaller parties will no longer be squeezed by tactical voting. With new contenders having a fairer chance, I think that voters will have more choice.

It’s too early to call at the time of writing – the counting of the AV referendum votes doesn’t even begin until 4pm today – but the ramifications of both results will be felt for some time. If the Lib-Dems have a bad night in the local elections, which is looking very likely, the pressure on Clegg and the Lib-Dem leadership in Westminster will increase to distance themselves from their Tory bedfellows and put more strain on the coalition. Similarly, if the AV referendum returns a ‘No’ result Clegg will have failed to achieve one of his main aims in going into coalition with the Tories and risking – well, destroying is probably a better word – his party’s credibility. Conversely, if a ‘Yes’ result is returned this will bring its own strains for the Con-Dem government with the Conservatives most likely looking to put as many obstacles in the way of voting reform as they can. Whatever the results, the next few months are going to be turbulent times for the government and the country. With things in flux like this there has never been a better time for leftists of all stripes to come together and take control of the political agenda and fight back against the neo-liberal, free-marketeer dominated political landscape.

The Death of Osama bin Laden: The Closing of a Chapter?

If the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed by US special forces this weekend was surprising, the media's reaction was morbidly predictable. With all major newspapers and television stations repeating the mantra that this could be 'the end of a chapter' and that 'justice has been done', coupled with the scenes of jubilant crowds chanting triumphantly outside the White House and elsewhere, you could be forgiven for thinking that America had just overthrown a modern day Hitler and not simply spent huge amounts of resources on tracking down one man.

The fact of the matter is that this is not the end of a chapter but just another sign that the US is continuing the violent imperialism it has always engaged in. Obama is being praised from most corners for this - even the 'liberal' media hasn't criticised this unilateral US action, only questioned how much the Pakistani state knew - but therein lies the danger: Obama has always played the dove while acting the hawk.

One of Obama's first acts as president was to order the bombing of villages in Afghanistan, and throughout his premiership he has not only followed in the footsteps of the Bush administration, continuing its brazen disregard for Pakistani sovereignty (which has no doubt added to its difficulties in the middle east rather than alleviated them), he has in fact escalated the number of drone attacks across the region and overseen large troop increases in Afghanistan (to little avail).

All this contradicts the image we are asked to accept of Obama - the reasonable, intelligent centre-leftist who was simply a victim of circumstance in the problems he inherited from the previous right-wing government. While very few will weep over the death of bin Laden, he was after all responsible for heinous crimes, the acts of celebrating and glorying in any killing are deeply divisive and counter-productive. Another killing, no matter who the target was, will not mark the end of a chapter, but be just another grubby footnote in the continuing saga of US imperialism.