Comrades.
What a pleasure it is to be with you tonight.
Thank you to (organisers) for putting this event on, for the invite and for the opportunity to listen to and speak with you.
To be in the company of speakers that have such a comprehensive knowledge of the unfair, unjust treatment Cuba has, and continues to be the victim of, is enlightening and a pleasure.
As both a current MP and as the Parliamentary Chair of Liberation, my main focus this evening will be on the current state of British foreign policy and the need for us to break from being a subordinate to…and an auxiliary of, the United States.
But before that, if I may touch lightly, on Cuba.
Comrades, everyone is aware that for over 6 decades now, Cuba has been the victim of economic and diplomatic warfare.
From the economic sanctions designed to impoverish the Cuban people and cripple their economy…
A programme of almost relentless pressure being placed on the international community from the US to treat Cuba as a pariah state…
The state sponsored attempted coup that was the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961…
The Missile Crisis a year later in 1962…with the world on the brink of nuclear war…
To the 1980s, with the designation of Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism by President Ronald Reagan…all at the same time the American President’s own foreign policy pursued Cold War confrontation, with his administration funding anti-communist forces in Afghanistan, Angola and…by covertly selling arms to Iran to then fund the Contras in Nicaragua.
With the American hypocrisy of labelling Cuba as sponsors of terrorism being both incredible and laughable.
To now, most recently, we have President Trump’s memorandum that will impose even tighter sanctions on Cuba.
But why is Cuba so feared? Why is Cuba deemed worthy of the ignominy of being placed under stifling economic and diplomatic sanctions. Standing accused of sponsoring terrorism…
Cuba is feared because Marx’s analysis of capitalism gets to the very heart of politics all over the world, the issue of class struggle and who holds power.
Because for over those 6 decades Cuba has shown up the weakness and insecurity of capitalism, imperialism and neo-colonialism.
And for the UK, with our imperial and colonial past that once covered a third of the globe…it may seem a peculiar claim for me to make, but Britain is now a victim of the same imperial force we used to wield.
Because when it comes to our foreign policy, we are subservient to the United States.
British foreign policy is not formed, shaped or even robustly debated within the corridors of Whitehall.
British foreign policy does not draw on the historic morally just changes achieved through decades of decolonisation, or the political gains achieved by the working class either at home OR abroad.
Nor is it based on domestic or international struggles, campaigns or causes like Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament or the Civil Rights Movement.
Rather, both current British domestic AND foreign policy can be summed up as being driven by a passion for militarism.
At home, the government is embarking on a programme to make us a quote unquote, a “Defence Industrial Powerhouse”.
Politicians are queuing up to extol the virtues of this increased military expenditure as a method of driving economic growth. Of improving people’s living standards.
But the reality is that the UK economy continues to stall. Millions of Britons are still getting poorer.
What the government doesn’t want politicians to do is to tell the truth that this increase in military spending comes at the expense of funding the vital social needs the UK has after a decade and a half of crippling austerity. Austerity that has exaggerated existing inequalities, created new ones, immiserated communities and caused hundreds of excess deaths.
Instead of building hospitals to save lives, schools to educate, upgrading infrastructure and investing in public services to improve living conditions…the government have chosen to embark on a spending spree of tens of billions of pounds on military hardware with that expenditure inevitably flowing to private capital.
And as British military spending supports less than 1% of the UK workforce…it will be weapons manufacturers that benefit from the so called “defence dividend”.
Of course, this defence spending is inextricably linked to our foreign policy.
With this drive to rearmament and defence spending, we see that arms manufacturers are being allowed an extraordinary influence in British policy making and decision taking.
The highest and most powerful politicians in the land are painting a bleak picture. Trying to convince the public that being on a war footing is not only necessary but will keep us safe internationally.
The Chancellor warns that the world is changing. The Secretary of State for Defence warns that warfare is changing. The Prime Minister warns that “Britain must become a battle ready armour clad nation”.
But this rhetoric is not designed to keep us safe. No. It is a tactic to exploit fear. A tactic to promote private capital and imperial interests.
The Prime Minister even framed the decision to cut Overseas Development Aid as necessary as it was a direct choice between security at home or helping some of the most impoverished people in the world living in the gravest of danger.
Frankly, that is not a foreign policy that this country should ever adopt.
Earlier this year, on International Women’s day…Liberation organised for 5 women to attend Parliament. Women from Gaza, Iraq, Iran, Western Sahara and Sudan detailed the persecution, the apartheid, the sexual violence, the grinding penury, and the ever present threat of death that they have to live with in their homelands.
Our Overseas Development Budget does so much to alleviate those frightening circumstances.
And now, as the world is more unequal and more dangerous than it has ever been, British foreign policy is to copy that of the United States.
President Trump has cut billions of Dollars – that was already approved by Congress – from American International Development. The White House states that the Trump Administration will cut government spending that is woke, weaponised and wasteful.
There’s $3 billion cut from USAID, $800 million for international peacekeeping operations and more than $300 million to encourage democratic values and practices in other countries.
And by mirroring this policy and cutting our own Overseas Development Aid, the UK is contributing to that growing global danger faced by the most vulnerable people in the world…and we further compound this by continuing to sell arms to nation states that abuse human rights.
This is politics that divide people, that sow’s discord and disharmony, that creates division and a world where the attitude is “to hell with your neighbour”.
Not only is this immoral brand of politics the antithesis of the socialist tradition of internationalism. It is also a totally false economy.
Because to choose rearmament over foreign aid so that corporations make obscene profits and shareholders get their dividends will not make the world a safer place.
Comrades, Britain’s passion for rearmament is inherently wrong and serves to deliver a doomed British foreign policy.
In Europe, we know that the war in Ukraine has come at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. The displacement of millions. Global economic turmoil and a heightened chance of those nuclear weapons our government is committed to acquiring being used.
And it’s not just in the UK that economic policies are being abandoned for military spending. Other European nations are also undertaking huge rearmament programmes.
This grotesque military expenditure is a pan European effort to curry favour with the United States. Western and Central Europe will be full of missiles and nuclear weapons while war rages on in the east of the continent.
With European nations preoccupied with this as NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte said it means the long held US plan to pivot towards Asia can be realised.
So the foreign policy that our government is trying to convince the British public of, that we will achieve peace through rearmament and that we will achieve improved living standards through military expenditure is close to a terrifying Orwellian view where Britain is Airstrip One – an island that is no more than a strategically important military base.
When it comes to having American nuclear weapons on British soil and our wider foreign policy, the UK’s servitude to the United States is symptomatic of imperialism and neo-colonialism.
This is the reality and it is against the majority of the British public’s wishes because there is growing opposition to both US nuclear weapons and military bases being here.
These nuclear weapons and those military bases do not strengthen our economy, our safety and they definitely do not strengthen our democracy.
Nor are they a deterrent, in fact, contrary to deterring, they only serve to increase nuclear proliferation.
It is a nonsense for the government to suggest that American nuclear weapons, missiles or arms are part of a domestic industrial strategy or should be essential parts of our foreign policy.
Because even if we discount the moral argument, having American nuclear weapons here means our foreign policy is certainly not independent.
The UK could only use these weapons of death with the authorisation of President Trump and his newly branded “Department of War”.
The colonisation of Britain’s foreign policy has been a long term project.
Instead, the UK should adopt an independent, progressive and ethical foreign policy. One that abandons both austerity and militarism and us being the junior partner to the United States.
Our foreign policy should be one rooted in humanity.
One that a fellow Scot, the ex-Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, spoke of when he called for a truly ethical British foreign policy.
He spoke of the need to make human rights a global reality…a commitment to prevent war…to stop arms sales to repressive regimes…to follow and uphold international law…and that by pursuing that moral cause, Britain would benefit at home and abroad.
As would the collective international community.
And that is what many MP’s in the House of Commons will always campaign for.
Thank you comrades.
This is the speech delivered by Brian Leishman #OFFTHELIST – Against Trump’s War on Cuba! was held in Brighton Tuesday 23 September. Other speakers were:
Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, The First Secretary for Consular Affairs, Cuban Embassy:
Radhika Desai. International Manifesto Group:
Plus Georgina Andrews, UNISON, Ann Hallam, Brighton Cuba Solidarity Campaign, GFTU executive member Andi Kocsondi of Napo Trade Union and Professional Association,
Watch the whole meeting (on Youtube): https://youtu.be/QZpHlW68lTc
With thanks to Unison branches, University of Sussex branch and University of Brighton and the Unite Brighton branch for your generous support to enable this meeting.
