Eulogising Castro… and re-writing Cuban history

Fidel Castro, it is said, opposed personality cults and prohibited naming streets, public squares or institutions after himself. He likewise banned statues and monuments in his likeness.

So we can only wonder what he would have made of the Morning Star of 13 August — his centenary — which was pretty much a Fidel fanzine.

Starting with the nonsensical front-page headline (“100 Years Of Solidarity: From Havana To London”), the paper went on to devote an editorial and a further eight pages of breathless adulation to Fidel and Fidelismo — what the paper called “the life and legacy of a revolutionary giant.”

Contributors included Her Excellency Ismara Mercedes Vargas Walter, Ambassador of the Republic of Cuba to the United Kingdom, Dr Stephen Wilkinson, editor of the International Journal of Cuban Studies, and Kevan Nelson, international secretary of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB).

Then there was a report (“Eyewitness from Cuba”) by CPB General Secretary Alex Gordon and party Chair Lorraine Douglas from a very important-sounding conference in Havana (the 24th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties).

The CPB comrades reported that despite the devastating suffering being inflicted on ordinary Cubans by Trump’s blockade, the Cuban Communist Party leadership were “exemplary hosts [who] accommodated us in top class hotels, ensured we were well fed, transported and looked after, and proved that they can and want to provide a fantastic experience for people visiting the Island”. CPB bigwigs always relish a good overseas junket, with Gordon’s predecessor, Robert Griffiths, hilariously reporting on the splendid lunches, theatre performances, and solemn ceremonies he enjoyed on his freebies to China.

But the most interesting aspect of the Gordon/Douglas report is the account they give of Cuban history since the revolution of 1958/9, claiming Cuba “has given more to the world than any other country, with the possible exception of the Soviet Union which defeated fascism in the 20th century.”

Examined

One claim, in particular, needs to be examined in some detail: that none of the social advances that came with the Castroite revolution (notably the mass literacy campaign and the creation of a decent health service) “would have been possible without the Communist Party of Cuba, which has succeeded against the greatest odds imaginable in creating a proud nation defying the most powerful, imperialist force just 90 miles to the north of Havana.”

But the Communist Party of Cuba was not founded until 1965 and did not hold its first congress until 1975.

Castro’s July 26 Movement (M26J) did include some individual Stalinists (Raul Castro and Che Guevara). It had some support, at best half-hearted, from a Stalinist party (the Popular Socialist Party) but was overwhelmingly a middle-class nationalist movement. Even the National Association of Cuban industrialists welcomed the new government. Fidel Castro balanced between the different factions.

Coalition

The broad coalition that overthrew the corrupt Batista regime was for a bourgeois-democratic republic. Fidel Castro explicitly rejected nationalisation and made no pretence of being in favour of workers’ control. When, in February 1959, Shell oil workers threatened to strike for better wages, Castro argued that strikes were not appropriate and shortly afterwards invoked a six-month no-strike pledge. Castro personally intervened in the Cuban trade union (CTC) Congress in 1959 to impose a new leadership that would be subservient to the government.

After the US turned against the new regime in late 1959, following the expropriation of US-owned sugar plantations, Castro turned to the USSR and began the process of replacing capitalism with a new form of bureaucratic class society. Now the trade unions would be not just curbed, but integrated into the state.

Castro’s group fused with the Cuban Stalinists to form the Integrated Revolutionary Organisations (1961), the United Revolutionary Socialist Party (PURS) in 1963 and — eventually — the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) in 1965.

So to argue that the Cuban Communist Party was crucial to a revolution that happened six years before that party even existed, and sixteen years before it held its first congress, is either profoundly dishonest or profoundly ignorant.

But then, Stalinists do have something of a record when it comes to re-writing history.

• JD would like to acknowledge the extensive use he has made of articles by Paul Hampton for Solidarity and Workers’ Liberty, and in particular his piece Castro and the Cuban Revolution