CUBA PARTY HONOURS TONY BENN

www.rmt.org.uk :: june 2006 :: RMTnews 5 T his year’s annual June garden party for Cuba at Maritime House, South London was also an opportunity to present veteran socialist campaigner Tony with the union’s first ever RMT honourary membership. Tony, who is a garden party regular, was “absolutely delighted and honoured” to receive his honourary membership which was presented in recognition of his huge contribution to the labour movement. The sun once again shone on the fourth annual event and revellers enjoyed a sultry evening of solidarity, live music and dancing. Cuban Ambassador Rene J Mujica Cantelar thanked the union for the unstinting solidarity with the people of Cuba. “Despite the vicious US blockade of my country we are rich to have friends like the RMT,” she said. John McDonnell MP reported that, despite the blockade, the UN had recently announced that Cuba is the only country in Latin America that has no malnutrition. “The World Health Organisation has commended Cuba for outstanding literacy levels and rates of infant mortality and life expectancy that outstrip Washington DC,” he said. He said that Cuba's international work also deserves recognition. “It is operating humanitarian missions in 68 countries and, in 2005 alone, 1,800 doctors from 47 developing countries graduated in Cuba under a free scholarship scheme,” he said. TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber also brought greetings from the TUC and paid tribute to the Cuban struggle for dignity and its right to self- determination. R MT has told Transport for London that it is moving in the wrong direction by proceeding with plans to privatise the Tube’s East London Line and re-privatise the North London Line. As TfL announced the preferred bidders to run the two lines, RMT general secretary Bob Crow called for the private-sector plan to be abandoned and said the union would defend members' jobs and conditions. "All our experience, report after report and the vast majority of public opinion agree that rail privatisation has been a complete and total failure, for passengers, for rail workers and for the environment. "It is scandalous that TfL should even contemplate taking the East London Line out of London Underground and handing it to the privateers when there is no earthly reason for them to do so,” he said. He slammed the fact that the Mayor’s office should take control of the North London Line only to put National Express back on the approved list to run it again. "National Express have been handed well over £300 million in subsidy for Silverlink and taken nearly £40 million in profits out of it, but anyone who uses or works on the North London Line will tell you that it is still an overcrowded nightmare with too few trains, too few staff and too little investment,” he said. The union argued that the private sector's only contribution to the Tube so far is to siphon £2 million a week out of it while failing to deliver improvements, and it has been been extracting up to £1 billion a year from the railways for a decade. EAST LONDON DOES NOT NEED PRIVATISATION CUBA PARTY HONOURS TONY BENN Tony Benn picks up some moves from a young dancer