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Fidel’s grandson tells MPs: US blockade is a humiliating assault on British independence
Washington’s decades-long blockade of Cuba is eroding not only the island’s economy but Britain’s own sovereignty, Fidel Antonio Castro Smirnov tells the all-party parliamentary group on Cuba
Fidel Antonio Castro Smirnov (third from right) in London
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WASHINGTON’S economic war on Cuba is not just an attempt to strangle a socialist nation but a direct violation of British sovereignty, Fidel Castro’s grandson told a packed room of parliamentarians this week.
Dr Fidel Antonio Castro Smirnov, a nuclear physicist and scientific adviser to the Cuban Council of State, issued a blistering indictment of the “extraterritorial” reach of US sanctions, warning MPs that British subservience to US laws is undermining Britain’s own political independence.
Addressing the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on Cuba, Dr Castro Smirnov — invited to Britain by the Cuba Solidarity Campaign (CSC) — dismantled the logic of the 60-year blockade.
Moving beyond sentimentality, the physicist posed a sharp challenge to British lawmakers regarding the compliance of British banks with US Treasury orders.
“Does it make sense, in the 21st century, for a British bank to reject a transfer of medical supplies destined for children in Havana, simply for fear of a fine from Washington?” he asked.
He argued that when British institutions enforce US foreign policy against their own interests and ethical standards, it represents a “silent but brutal erosion” of national sovereignty. “Sovereignty is not negotiable; it is the oxygen of a nation,” he stated, echoing the principles of his grandfather, the revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
Dr Castro Smirnov contrasted the “apartheid of vaccines” seen in the capitalist West during the pandemic with Cuba’s socialist approach. While “great powers hoarded doses for profit,” he noted, Cuba’s state-owned biotech sector developed five indigenous vaccines and shared them with the global South, despite a suffocating financial siege.
For Cuba, he explained, science is not a commercial enterprise but a tool for survival and social justice.
He highlighted the Latin American School of Medicine (Elam) in Havana — which has trained over 30,000 doctors from 120 countries for free — as the antithesis of the Western military-industrial complex.
“Doctors and not bombs,” he urged, quoting the late commander in chief. “A weapon that kills treacherously is not a ‘smart’ weapon. Intelligence saves lives.”
Despite the tightening of sanctions under recent US administrations, Dr Castro Smirnov’s message to the British left was one of defiance, not victimhood.
Rejecting the narrative of isolation, he pointed to the growing international solidarity and the resilience of the Cuban youth.
“Entropy — disorder — is natural in physics,” he told the audience of MPs, trade unionists and activists. “But building bridges is an act of revolutionary will.”
The meeting concluded with a renewed commitment from attendees to pressure the British government to enforce its own laws against US extraterritorial aggression.
