BY JONATHAN SILBERMAN
LONDON - The UK government broke from its traditional abstention in the annual UN vote on trading with Cuba November 12. London joined the other European Union members in voting against Washington, citing the so-called Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, also known as the Helms-Burton Act, for the change. This law provides for U.S. economic sanctions and lawsuits against companies in third countries that do business in Cuba.

"In the past, Britain has abstained, because we regarded the blockade as a bilateral matter between the U.S. and Cuba," a Foreign Office spokesperson said. "The Helms- Burton Act changes this situation, making the matter one of multilateral relations, which is why we voted against this time."

The decision, however, has not altered the support by the British rulers for Washington's 37-year effort to crush the Cuban revolution. In a May 29, 1996, speech criticizing the Helms-Burton law at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., British foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind said, "We do not quarrel with Congress's aims." Leon Brittan, the European commissioner and a former UK government minister, recently assured Europe's willingness to do what he described as "promoting democracy" in Cuba.

The UK government's vote reflects London's attempts to defend British interests, not a concession to Cuba's fight for national self-determination. London has the longest and most rapacious history of colonial oppression and plunder of any imperialist power. At times, the British imperialists have spoken out against reactionary measures by other oppressor countries, but they have done so only to advance their own specific imperial interests. London's agitation over the years in favor of free trade is always aimed at breaking ties to colonies by other powers to open them up for British exploitation.

Ken Gill, chairperson of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in Britain, gave a different view. Gill said, "We welcome the fact that the British government has finally come off the fence and sided with its European Union partners on this issue" of the embargo on Cuba.

A step forward for Cuba?
A wide-ranging discussion has developed among Cuba solidarity fighters and others on these questions. A meeting organized by the North-East London Cuba Solidarity Campaign in November decided to picket the prime minister's residence at Downing Street to demand massive humanitarian aid for Cuba in the face of damage caused by Hurricane Lili. One participant at the meeting argued strongly against such action. "Celebrating" London's UN vote, he argued that "all our fire should be on Washington. London is not the enemy of Cuba."

In a November 14 editorial titled "A choice for Bill Clinton," the Morning Star, the newspaper associated with the Communist Party of Britain, said that the vote by the British government should sound alarm bells in the White House. "President Clinton has a great opportunity now to have his period in office remembered in the future as the administration that brought hostility to Cuba to an end and fostered reconciliation," the editorial continued. "Helping US allies, including Britain, to assist President Clinton to make the right decision - to accept the Cuban people's right to decide their own political and economic system - will be made easier by a sharp stepping-up of international solidarity with Cuba."

Cuba has asked Britain, among other countries, to provide one-time export credits totaling 500 million (1 = US$1.67) to help offset damage caused by Hurricane Lili and to ease the burden of rising food and oil import costs. But, as Financial Times correspondent Pascal Fletcher wrote November 6, "the governments approached are reacting cautiously," cynically suggesting that Cuba is overstating the effects of the hurricane.

British imperialism in Cuba
Britain's rulers have a more than 200-year history of imperialist policy toward Cuba. This includes an 11-month occupation of Havana by British forces in 1762-63 at the end of the Seven Years War, which among other matters settled disputes between Spanish and British colonialists. The island was opened up to the slave trade, in which Britain was the leading player.

In the face of sharp Spanish and U.S. competition, London was not able to be the chief imperialist power dominating Cuba, but the English capitalists sought to extract the maximum economically. In the nineteenth century the British bourgeoise exported substantial capital to Cuba, and some 70 percent of capital in the Cuban rail system was British. By the 1920s, Britain was Cuba's second biggest customer.

London supported all Cuban governments that would defend such trade and investments and was deeply hostile to the revolutionary struggle led by Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement in the 1950s.

In April 1958, London took advantage of a U.S. arms embargo on the Batista government and sold 17 Sea Fury piston fighter planes to the Cuban dictator. The planes were to be supplied with a large quantity of air-to-ground missiles, and tanks were also to be supplied, though only 12 aircraft reached Cuba while Batista still in power. Shipments stopped in mid-December as the revolution was nearing victory. British capitalists also worked with Batista to put together a large joint Anglo-Cuban venture to build shipyard and numerous service facilities at the port city of Mariel, which was finally ratified in November 1958. The leading company in the British consortium was Hawker Siddley, which was also the manufacturer of the Sea Fury aircraft.

The July 26 Movement took up a campaign against the British government. The November 18 issue of the July 26 Movement's official organ, Revolución, reported that London sold the Cuban regime amphibious tanks as well as jets, which Batista "bought for the criminal bombardment of the rural population." A full-page poster in the bulletin called for a boycott of British products, and in particular, of the Anglo-Dutch company Shell. The "President of Shell was one of the principle agents and promoters of the sale of English planes to the dictatorship," it explained. "It's also known that Batista and other henchmen have big investments in the company." Revolución reported on the successes scored by the revolutionary movement against Shell, with the burning down of petroleum storage tanks in Holguín and Manzanillo. The weekly bulletin of the July 26 Movement, Sierra Maestra, reported that a Labour member of parliament, H.J. Delargy, had condemned "this dirty and sad arms trafficking carried out on the backs of the British people" and published an appeal that the British people be informed that the government was selling arms to Batista.

In the 38 years since the triumph of the revolution, no British government - Tory or Labour - has apologized for its support for Batista. Nor has it condemned the terrorism perpetrated by Washington against the revolution, its Bay of Pigs invasion, or the U.S. rulers' criminal economic war against the Cuban people. These were, after all, "bilateral" matters between the Washington and Havana.

And in 1988, British secret MI5 agents actively worked with the CIA in targeting the then Cuban commercial attaché to London, Carlos Medina Pérez. When Medina defended himself by shooting Cuban defector and CIA operative Florentino Aspillaga, he response of the British government was to expel the then Cuban ambassador to Britain, Oscar Fenández Mell.

The British rulers do not see a contradiction between their desire to see the Cuban revolution overthrown and their willingness to trade with Cuba, though they exclude strategic weaponry from such trade. After the revolution, for example, London refused Castro's request to replace Sea Furies ordered by Batista with equal number of Hawker Hunter Mark V jet fighters. British foreign minister Selwyn Lloyd worked closely on this with Washington.

But on non-strategic arms sales, London has acted on the assumption that if it doesn't trade others will. The most famous deal was that signed by Leyland in 1964, through which the British company re-equipped Havana transport system with 600 buses. This was a continuation of trade in buses with pre-revolutionary Cuba. The British government guaranteed export credit for the 1964 deal.

The bus deal and subsequent Anglo-Cuban trade has resulted in ongoing friction with Britain's U.S. allies. A lead article in the Jan. 14, 1964, New York Times commented that through the bus deal, "the British are in effect declaring that Castro will not be overthrown by economic pressure."

Washington sent a memorandum to London expressing "continued concern" over U.K. government trade with Cuba. U.S. embassy officials instructed to make the U.K. government-at the time under Conservative prime minister Alec Douglas Home- aware of the depth of "U.S. sensitivity [to] the Cuban problem" and the "U.S. determination [to] maintain pressure on [the] GOC [government of Cuba]." What followed was an official condemnation from the state department and one direct phone call from the president to the prime minister.

On May 7, 1964, the NATO council voted 15 to 1 against the British government's stance allowing trade with Cuba. The only retaliation from Washington, however, was a small cutoff in U.S. military aid and the blacklisting of U.K. ships carrying Cuba-bound cargo. Following imposition of the U.S. black list in January 1963, 230 British vessels visited Cuba, more than twice that of any other capitalist country.

U.S. pressure did pay off though: rulers in Japan, Norway, Denmark and Liberia withdrew their trade in face of the U.S. shipping blacklist.

British capital was under a different pressure from its rivals, having experienced a precipitate decline in its position as producer and exporter of manufactures. In 1950 British industry was generating 25.5 percent of world exports of manufactures. This fell to 16.5 percent by 1960, and below 10 percent in the 1970s.

London faced increasing Japanese, German, and American competition in the Commonwealth, and other traditional markets. The United Kingdom sought to compensate for this with exports to the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Cuba. Between 1950 and 1963 British exports to these countries went from 26 million to 123 million, doubling in the five years 1959-63. Under U.S. pressure, London withdrew all export credit guarantees to Cuba in 1964-66, and prime minister Douglas Home gave assurances to Washington that British trade would not be allowed to rise above certain levels.

In fact, British trade with Cuba remained quite limited, accounting for just 2.3 percent of Cuban trade in 1975.

The Leyland bus order was followed by trade in Leyland trucks, and with a few other prominent British capitalist firms. In the late 1960s, Simon-Carves built a 10 million fertilizer plant in Cienfuegos backed by government credit guarantees. Britain's annual exports to Cuba in the 1970s - principally fertilizers, herbicides, chemicals, milk products, motor vehicle tires and spare parts -averaged $60 million and imports $24 million. This trade contracted significantly following the sharp crisis in the Cuban economy in the 1990s. In 1980, the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher legislated the Protection of Trading Interests Act, which prohibits compliance with trade measures imposed by third countries.

There has been increased trade this year between Britain and Cuba. A British government minister, Janet Young, has led three recent British business visit to Cuba. But the Cuban deputy minister of foreign trade, Orlando Hernández Guillén, said of the trade between the two countries, "Despite everything, the level of British exports does not yet meet the requirements of the Cuban market, and the level of Cuban exports to Britain continues to be low."

In fact, under pressure of the Helms-Burton law three important British engineering companies have, according to Cuba Business president Gareth Jenkins, "apparently backed out of contract to build industrial plants in Cuba." Jenkins continues, "At least one merchant bank will not be working on any more Cuba related projects. Redpath, the Canadian subsidiary of [British sugar giant] Tate and Lyle has stopped buying Cuban sugar."  
 
 
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