The FBU was one of a number of national trade unions – including UNITE, UNISON and the RMT – to sponsor a conference in London on 1st December on the theme of “Latin America – making another world possible”.

Despite setbacks for the left and the Labour Movement in much of Europe and the developed world in recent years, in Latin America a number of governments have been elected which have spurned the prevailing neo-liberal economic orthodoxy and have attempted to use their natural resources to benefit all of their people rather than a privileged elite.

Led by Venezuela – and inspired by the example of Cuba – governments in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua have all attempted to invest in education and healthcare and to raise the living standards of the poorest people.

More than 600 people attended the conference, hearing first hand from speakers from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua about developments in those countries. Other speakers included Tony Benn, a number of Labour MPs such as Dianne Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn, plus prominent trade unionists and the author and film-maker John Pilger.

It was interesting to hear the contrast between countries such as our own, where a Labour Government has advocated privatisation and has overseen an increase in inequality; and a country like Venezuela, where private oil companies have been brought into state ownership in order to use the profits to benefit the Venezuelan people.

The example that is being set in Latin America represents a major threat to those with wealth and power, particularly in the USA. In the same way as attempts to achieve social justice in Chile in the 1970s and Nicaragua in the 1980s were thwarted by US-inspired and financed coups and destabilisation, so too do governments in Latin America today need to be ever vigilant. One of the ways that defenders of wealth and privilege will attempt to undermine their opponents is through negative propaganda. There has been much evidence of this in the UK media recently, with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez being portrayed as a dictator. The result of the Venezuelan referendum on constitutional reform this month, where Chavez’s opponents were successful and Chavez gracefully accepted the result, demonstrates what nonsense this is.

The experience of Cuba, Venezuela and the other countries of that region does indeed demonstrate that another world is possible – one in which working people can have decent public services and not have their living standards held back whilst a wealthy elite fill their pockets.

The feelings of the conference delegates were summed up by the chair of the final session of the day, Keith Sonnet, Deputy General Secretary of Unison, who said: “A couple of years-ago Hugo Chavez received Cuba’s Jose Martí award in la Plaza de la Revolucíon and said ‘Cuba is an inspiration to me’. It’s been an inspiration to all of us. I just wish our Government would stop providing military aid to Colombia and get into proper dialogue with the Cuban Government,” and by Tony Benn, who said: “It’s vitally important we don’t see what’s happening in the world as a story of doom and gloom, but regard it as a turning point, and that’s why the phrase ‘another world is possible’ is so important…Go away absolutely determined to carry on with the struggle and send our support to those who have got a harder job than we have in facing New Labour, and to never be deflected by the thought it cannot be done.”