Paula Barker

Template:TOCnestleft Paula Barker

Cuba letter

April 2020, 32 members of parliament, across various parties in the UK, signed an open letter asking for the US blockade to be lifted, at least temporarily, to help Cuba fight the coronavirus at home and abroad.

Grahame Morris MP signed the open letter, adding, "it's time for the international community to reciprocate and to lift the U.S. imposed blockade and end the embargo at the very least on a temporary basis."

Paula Barker MP said, “I call on the British Government to urgently request the US Government to cease the illegal blockade with immediate effect. The Cuban people have helped us in our time of need we must do the same.”

Cuba Solidarity at Labour Party Conference

Cuba Solidarity Campaign Monday, 4 October 2021.

After eighteen months and twenty online public meetings CSC was delighted to participate in and host our first face-to-face public meetings, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, in September.

At the Labour Party Conference in Brighton we were invited to speak at ‘The World Transformed’, the Young Labour rally, as well as organising a fringe meeting as part of the main conference fringe programme.

CSC’s conference exhibition stall was extremely busy all week. Several MPs had their photographs taken with our ‘End the US blockade, 60 years too long’ poster, and it was great to see many existing CSC members visit to say hello and give their support, as well as Labour Party delegates who came to ask questions, buy gifts and join. More than 20 new members were recruited during the week.

On Saturday 25 September, CSC’s Natasha Hickman spoke at two events. Joining speakers from Colombia, Brazil, and Bolivia at The World Transformed Festival running concurrently with the Labour Party Conference, she contrasted the lack of mainstream media coverage for the mass demonstrations against imperialism and right-wing governments that had been taking place in these countries for many months compared to the way that the same media had responded to localised and much smaller events in Cuba. The meeting, ‘Latin America Rising: Imperialism, Resistance and Solidarity,’ hosted by Alborada attracted more than 100 people. Later the same evening, Natasha told a crowd of 200 at the Young Labour Rally that there was nothing controversial about standing up against the US blockade whose aim was to starve the Cuban people into submission. Other speakers at the rally included MPs Jeremy Corbyn, Richard Burgon and Zarah Sultana.

On Monday 27 September a further 150 people listened to Cuban Ambassador Barbara Montalvo Alvarez speak at her first fringe meeting since arriving in the UK in March 2020. CSC’s meeting ‘Solidarity and resistance: Cuba’s fight against COVID and the US blockade’, was sponsored by Unite the Union, and chaired by the union’s Assistant General Secretary Steve Turner.

Grahame Morris MP told the audience about the measures taken both in and out of parliament by MPs to pressure the Biden administration to reverse sanctions imposed by Trump including allowing Cuban Americans to send family remittances to the island.

Labour NEC youth representative and junior doctor Lara McNeill shared her first-hand experience of training as a doctor in Havana and told the audience what it was like to work in Cuba’s world class healthcare system. She compared the cost of training to become a doctor in the UK and the debts students would rack up here with Cuba where medical training is free and as a result doctors came from much more diverse backgrounds than in Britain.

CSC Director Rob Miller closed the meeting with a call for solidarity given the current difficulties the island faced. “Cuba has given so much to the world, it is time for us to give something back” he said.

Labour MPs Mick Whitley, Navendu Mishra, Paula Barker, Rachel Hopkins, Kim Johnson and Sinn Fein’s Chris Hazzard and Mickey Brady attended the meeting and expressed their ongoing support.

Cuba and Covid

Morning Star article

Supporting Cuban doctors

Havana, Cuba (CMC)— A proposal to award the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to a contingent of Cuban doctors who specialise in disaster situations and serious epidemics, has been endorsed by four members of the British Parliament.

According to the official site of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in the United Kingdom, the four members of the House of Commons – Paula Barker, Ian Byrne, Dan Carden and Kim Johnson, highlighted the humanitarian aid provided by Cuba and the Henry Reeve International Contingent of Doctors.

With the four formal nominations of the legislators, 16 requests submitted by British parliamentarians are accumulated, to which another eight were sent by academics from the United Kingdom.

Nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize have a deadline of January 31 of each year and can only be made by parliamentarians, academics, awardees, judges of international courts, and active or retired members of the Committee.

The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that, since its creation in 2005, the Henry Reeve International Contingent of Doctors Specialized in Disaster Situations and Serious Epidemics has saved hundreds of thousands of lives in areas of Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia, which have been hit by earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and epidemics.

Diplomatic Zoom

Ambassador Barbara Montalvo Alvarez Cuban Ambassador to Britain, Rob Miller, Salim Lamrani, Paula Barker MP, Ambassador Pedro Pedroso Cuban Ambassador to UN.

Play for Cuba

We had a fantastic event on 17 February for the Play for Cuba appeal at El Cuba Libre restaurant in Hyde. We raised over £300, and this was matched by the restaurant who gave us another £300 from a previous event!

We had some great speakers: Carole Regan and Julie Lamin (NEU), Paula Barker (UNISON) and Leigh Drennan (Labour Party).

All the instruments are now in the process of being itemised and packed ready to be sent off to Cuba from NEU conference. We have had a great response to the appeal in the North West.

Sue Piper

A Peoples Brexit

Larry Elliott The Guardian, Grace Blakely, Graham Stringer MP, Costas Lapavitsas Syriza, Mick Cash, Robert Griffiths CPB, John Rees, Paula Barker MP.

References

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