For 44 years Cuba has suffered attempted invasions, terrorist attacks and a vicious and illegal economic blockade by the US. Despite this, the country's many achievements, including its renowned health and education services, have survived. Whatever your views on Cuba, its people do not deserve such aggression. I urge all readers to call on the British government to separate itself from such threats by sending a clear message to the US and the Cuban people that it would not support US military action against the country.

I (along with others) am dedicated to the idea that every country has a right to self-determination. That when a people, such as the people of Cuba, decides to kick out a dictator, as they did to Batista in January 1959, they have a right to organize their freedom anyway they want.

The 'free-loading' capitalist class of the United States don't see it that way. They think that Cuba is theirs - just as they think that every country in Latin America and everywhere else is theirs to plunder.

Whenever a North American capitalist is in trouble, the United States sends its gunboats and armed soldiers to strong-arm anyone who doesn't like being exploited by some American businessman. That's the American way!

Prior to the 1959 revolution Cuba was used as a 'sporting house' and a 'playground' for North American tourists. Brothels, gambling casinos, big hotels, plantations, and factories were all owned and controlled by American businesses. Cuban men, women and children were there to be controlled and to labour so that the exploiters could send their profits to banks within the United States (USA).

Batista, the dictator of Cuba at that time, acted like a hired gun of the United States. He made sure that any Cuban worker who even thought of organizing a union disappeared, rapidly. His job was to keep the Cuban people in their place, on their knees, for the North American capitalist class... Then something happened.

Fidel Castro, Che Guevara (an American Doctor) and other young Cuban rebels decided to try and take back Cuba for its people. And they did - with the support of the overwhelming majority of the Cuban people, who wanted to get the foreign capitalists out of their country. On New Year's Day, 1959, the July 26th Movement took their country away from the 'Yankee' imperialists.

Then they set about taking back their land and turning it over to the Cuban peasants and workers. They closed the brothels and gambling casinos, took the plantations and factories out of the hands of North American robber barons, and stopped the northward drift of profits.

Then, for all Cubans, they set up free medical care, free public education through college, and free childcare. They began to build housing, roads, and airports and nationalized the banking system. They made Cuba a nation of proud, educated and rightly militant people.

Imperialism (UK & USA) hates that kind of thing as it could catch on in other countries within the Western Hemisphere. If one group of workers threw out their capitalist government, then every other small country could do likewise. Even workers within the imperialist countries could get wise and start thinking about a real democracy within their own countries!

Can you imagine the working class voting for their own hours and wages? Can you imagine workers voting to build hospitals and repair schools instead of bombs and tanks?

And the working class voting against bombing Panama or Iraq, saying they had nothing to gain by murdering men, women and children in another country?

Instead, the workers of imperialist countries vote for puppets who go to Washington D.C. and work for their bosses. They have the choice of voting for Candidate #1, who will do what he or she is told to do, or Candidate #2, who will do what he or she is told to do.

Every once in a while there comes Candidate #3, who promises to work for the "people" and then does what he or she is told to by the ruling class. That's the kind of "democracy" in practice in the United States.

In Cuba, workers bypassed that kind of 'democracy' and set up their own kind of government. In fact, when the United States invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban people voted with their guns and drove out the invaders. That was democracy - an event very similar to our own "Boston Tea Party" on Dec. 16, 1773 - a struggle that eventually eliminated control by the British monarchy.

Once again, the U.S. imperialists are on a rampage against Cuba. They have tried everything to choke the life out of that country. Now they want to tighten their fingers around the throat of the Cuban people.

Please go to your search engine and key in Cuba Solidarity Campaign or Hands Off Cuba.

Thanks so much for reading.