24th INTERNATIONAL MEETING OF COMMUNIST & WORKERS’ PARTIES – HAVANA, CUBA, 7–8 AUGUST 2026:
STATEMENT TO THE 24th IMCWP FROM THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF BRITAIN (CPB)
Dear comrades, on behalf of the Communist Party of Britain we thank our Cuban comrades for their hospitality at this gathering of the world’s forces for revolution and working-class power.
We meet at a time when US imperialism’s drive to war and domination poses a threat of war on a global scale, including nuclear conflagration, unprecedented since 1962.
In the context of the imperialist blockade, siege and threats against the Cuban revolution, it is especially important to exchange analyses and reach a collective understanding of the current stage in what Marx and Engels described in The Communist Manifesto as, “the ever expanding union of the workers”.i
As we analyse the dominant class relations of capitalist production and imperialist rule and the problems that their intensifying crises impose on humanity, we must apply the same historical and materialist analysis to our own movement.
We must record that the law of uneven development applies with special force in this epoch of degenerate capitalism. In every nation where communists fight for the immediate interests of the working class, we understand that every advance is lost unless we fundamentally change the balance of class power and establish working class state power.
In the advanced capitalist economies temporary increases in the social wage, the social gains of comprehensive education and universal health care, publicly owned housing, pensions and social services, were the product of the victory over fascism and the changed balance of class power on a world scale after 1945. Those concessions in North America and Western Europe were won after sustained trade union and popular struggles often led by communists.
Today, a qualitatively new situation in which the drive for profit reaches into every social and economic sector has negated social gains, transforming them into privatised profit centres where every year wages buy fewer of life’s necessities and climate is sacrificed to profit.
As communists we pay particular attention to how capitalist relations penetrate every state, including in the socialist world.
When we analyse the BRICS and ASEAN organisations seeking paths to economic development and political power independent of hegemonic US imperialism, communists must assess and where necessary fiercely criticise the role of national and comprador bourgeoisies exposed by the current US imperialist onslaught.
The historic rise of socialist China to the position of the world’s leading economy, makes us conscious that no state is autonomous within a global economy. For our party therefore, the key question of class struggle under capitalism is always the social destination of the profits arising from the extraction of surplus value.
Our party enjoys increasingly warm and comradely relations with the Communist Party of China. We take every opportunity to study the development of the productive forces and relations of production in the People’s Republic and its expanding role in global economics, international relations and geopolitics.
As we declare our solidarity with the Cuban people’s heroic resistance under the merciless assault of US imperialism on this 100th anniversary of the birth of comrade Fidel Castro Ruz, there is an unavoidable comparison with the shameful abandonment of Venezuela’s independence and sovereignty.
A measure of the degeneration of the leadership of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela lies not simply in its breach of solidarity with Cuba – ending Venezuela’s oil supplies at Trump’s diktat – but also in its embrace of military representatives of Israel’s genocidal regime.
The consequences of the world historical defeat of socialism in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries at the end of the last century manifest themselves today in various ways.
Our party and the world communist movement are in a phase of recovery, but as capitalism decays, one of its morbid symptoms is the determination of our class enemies to disrupt and divide revolutionary forces in every country and continent. This includes promoting the political methods of individualism, egoism, leadership cults, racism and misogyny to deflect from collective action and struggle.
In Britain, following damaging splits in the communist movement in the struggle against revisionism, we discovered a renewed unity of revolutionary elements basing our analysis and action on material class struggles.
The importance of this approach is underlined by new generations now mobilised in the fight for peace, and against the new age of militarisation and imperialism invoked by Marco Rubio. The class struggle for decent living standards and rejection of bourgeois demands for increased military spending, together with the immense movements of solidarity with the Palestinian people, is the basis of the new popular front against imperialism and war.
This mass movement is a distinct and coherent mass base for anti-imperialist thought and action of enormous importance for the future of socialism in our country and beyond.
In Britain we see a fractured two-party system. A corporate-controlled Labour government. A Conservative opposition challenged by ultra-neoliberals, in turn challenged by overt fascists. White-supremacist rhetoric and populist anti-migrant mobilisations across Europe prefigure a reappearance of mainstream fascism, funded by US finance capital, while liberal, left and social democratic parties remain wedded to neoliberal dogmas, unable to respond.
Right-wing bourgeois elements constitute a fifth column promoting their US paymasters’ interests, with fascist candidates winning up to 1 in 12 votes in some UK local elections.
We cannot anticipate how a revolutionary process in Britain will develop, nevertheless the near total domination of Britain’s economy by US finance capital makes our country one of the weakest links in the chain of world imperialism.
Our party’s priorities include mobilising trade unions against remilitarisation, giving greater depth and maturity to anti-racist and anti-fascist movements, winning clear understanding of the material basis of women’s oppression and combatting idealist illusions and identity politics that are rife in our society.
The task of the international communist movement is urgent considering the increased risk of nuclear war. European talk of ‘battlefield use’ of nuclear weapons has led President Putin to abandon Russia’s “no-first use” commitment. Recall The Communist Manifesto,
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. […,] oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another…[a] fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”ii
Prevention of nuclear war now depends on the goodwill and patience of the Russian and Chinese governments in the face of NATO & AUKUS provocations.
Our Party’s demands Britain out of NATO, US bases out of Britain, British bases out of Cyprus and Diego Garcia and an end to British military complicity with US and Israel’s war crimes in Ukraine, Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran and throughout west Asia,
Such is the depth of this capitalist crisis that we cannot be precise about the course of class struggle and must avoid a prescriptive approach. Forums such as this are essential to reach a collective understanding laying the basis for a recovery of ideological and organisational unity. An extension of Solidnet’s role to publish key theoretical and analytical texts from our parties could help develop this unity.
We respect the independence and sovereignty of every party and conduct inter-party relations based on honest exchanges of views uncontaminated by interference in the internal life of each party. Every schism is the basis for another and impedes principled unity.
In Britain we do not instruct comrades working in other conditions on how to think and act. Our party is an example of a recomposition of communists in Britain. We guard our political and organisational unity because it was won in the anti-imperialist struggle for peace and against the tendency towards class collaboration in our labour and trade union movement.
We pledge to increase practical solidarity with Cuba’s people who bear the wounds of the imperialist assault. Practically, comrades, this must mean breaking the imperialist blockade by encouraging transport and logistics workers to work closely with the Centre of Cuban Workers (CTC) to deliver the thousands of shipping containers for Cuba currently stranded in ports around the world and across the Carribean.
Our party works closely in Britain through the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, trades unions and popular movements representing millions of workers, to raise money and material aid for Cuba. Our appeal is to common humanity, but a deepening class and internationalist consciousness results f this rom work and turns extraordinary levels of popular support for Cuban socialism into material aid.
The ¡Cuba Vive! appeal has raised half a million pounds sterling for this socialist island. This campaign raises consciousness of the illegal US blockade amongst workers in Britain. Our party is instrumental in this initiative, and our own comrades recently exceeded our target of raising £26,000 by 26 July to fund our own communist container of medical and food aid.
At this 24th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties, we salute the enduring achievements and resilience of Cuba’s Revolution. We salute the priceless heritage of Fidel. We celebrate Cuba’s decades of anti-imperialist initiatives, which have served working peoples of so many countries in health, education, public administration and in Southern Africa, brought military victory over imperialism.
¡Viva Cuba!
¡Viva el socialismo!
¡Viva Fidel!
¡Hasta la victoria, siempre!
Long live the International Communist Movement
Alex Gordon, General Secretary, Communist Party of Britain
Lorraine Douglas, Chair, Communist Party of Britain
2nd August 2026