TRADE union speakers called for more pressure on the United States to end the “criminal” blockade of Cuba and for solidarity action with socialists battling the far right across Latin America at Saturday’s Adelante conference.

National Education Union joint general secretary Kevin Courtney condemned the blockade as a six-decade crime against humanity and saluted the value of the union’s links to Cuba, noting: “Solidarity is not charity. It is a relationship of equals,” saying British educators had learned a huge amount from their Cuban counterparts.

TUC senior international officer Mariela Kohon called for labour movement observers to go to Brazil’s election next year in which socialist former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will run against Amazon-burning “Trump of the tropics” Jair Bolsonaro.

Unite’s international director Simon Dubbins said unions were maintaining a long tradition of solidarity, from the Rolls Royce workers who refused to repair jet engines for General Pinochet’s bombers to support for the Mexican miners’ leader forced into exile in Canada who is now a key member of the left-wing Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador government, reforming Mexican labour law.