CUBA is firmly at the top of the international agenda at Unison’s national delegate conference in Brighton. Following a highly anticipated fringe event featuring Unison’s general secretary Andrea Egan and the director of the Cuban Centre for Neuroscience, delegates will this morning vote on a motion to redouble their solidarity with the Caribbean nation.

The debate could not have come at a more critical time. Not content with imposing a decades-long blockade, Donald Trump’s administration has been tightening the screw on Cuba in the hope of forcing regime change and gaining influence over the island.

The US’s brazen attack on Venezuela in early January deprived Cuba of its main source of oil. Just weeks later, Trump signed an executive order that baselessly categorised Cuba as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security and threatened tariffs on any third country that sells oil to the island. As a result, Cuba has received only one shipment of oil since December last year.

While over five million people nationwide, including three young members of Unison Scotland in Havana, marched in celebration of May Day and Cuban sovereignty, Trump announced a further round of sweeping sanctions targeting the island’s energy, finance, mining and defence sectors.

The effect of the blockade on daily life and public services has been harrowing. Cuba’s healthcare system, once the envy of the world, is under severe pressure. The infant mortality rate has increased 148 per cent since 2018, as medical professionals work without essential equipment or medication.

Despite significant investment in renewable energy, blackouts are now frequent and prolonged, leaving food to rot in fridges and compromising hospital incubators. Fuel shortages threaten to bring vital services to a halt, from ambulances and bin lorries to food supply chains. Clearly, the US government has no qualms about spreading hunger, disease and despair to get what it wants in Cuba.

Under an economic siege that would have brought many to their knees, our colleagues in Cuba keep showing up for their communities — a testament to their resilience and commitment to public service. Yet their working conditions are becoming even more volatile, as the US begins to lay the groundwork for open military aggression.

On May 20, the US Department of Justice announced a criminal indictment against Cuba’s 95-year-old general of the armed forces and former president, Raul Castro. Cynically, he has been charged with four counts of murder for the downing of an aircraft belonging to the Miami-based Cuban exile group, Brothers to the Rescue, which violated Cuban airspace in 1996.

This latest move has sparked outrage in Cuba. At the time of the incident, Cuba regularly faced threats from Miami-based organisations, including a series of hotel bombings that killed an Italian tourist. Cuban government records show that every attempt was made to engage Washington through diplomatic channels during the incident, to no avail.

These charges are a quite transparent pretext for a US military intervention in Cuba: indeed, they are strikingly similar to the ludicrous drug-trafficking accusations levied against Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro prior to his kidnapping.

Unison has a proud record of solidarity with Cuba. In 2000, we sent reconditioned ambulances to support its health system during an acute economic crisis, and we have been affiliated to the Cuba Solidarity Campaign (CSC) since 2002. In 2023, after a North West regional delegation observed the effects of the US blockade at a polyclinic in Matanzas, Unison worked with the CSC to launch the Cuba Vive Appeal, which has since shipped almost £500,000 worth of vital medical aid and hurricane relief to the island.

Now, as the US ramps up its aggression, Unison must redouble our material and political solidarity. Recognising the developing crisis in Cuba, we have again partnered with the CSC to fundraise for a container of food aid. This will be a lifeline for Cubans, and we are appealing to branches and individual members to contribute as generously as possible. We must also push the British government to clearly condemn the US blockade as a violation of international law and recognise the Cuban people’s right to determine their own future, free from imperial threats and coercion.

Ronan Ogilvy sits on the Unison Scotland international committee and attended the 2026 May Day Brigade with the Cuba Solidarity Campaign.

To donate to the Cuba Vive appeal visit cubavive.org.uk/donate.