A capacity audience of 500 took part in the meeting held at Mahatma Gandhi Hall on Tuesday, to pay tribute to Ernesto Che Guevara. The particular atmosphere of the meeting and the feelings expressed by the audience were certainly in harmony with what Che would have wanted. A feeling of grief was also present, and this could hardly have been otherwise as to all cf us Che's life, and final sacrifice were an expression of our deepest hopes and aspirations. But the overriding mood was one of solidarity with all that Che stood for and gave his life for. Perhaps Robin Blackburn summed it up best of all at the beginning of his speech: "No words can pay tribute to Che .... the real tribute to Che was paid on Sunday evening outside the U.S. Embassy". The comment was greeted by great applause. Stan Newens (Labour) M.P. representing the movement for Colonial freedom spoke of his Internationalism and the heroic example of his action of leaving his work in Cuba to carry on again the fight against Imperialism on another front in South America, Stan Newens also spoke of the necessity of injecting this consciousness of International Solidarity and especially alignment with the third World struggles, into the British Labour Movement. Ken Coates spoke of the humanism and purity of Guevara's attitude towards the task of building socialism in Cuba. He spoke of Guevara's influence in directing the Cuban revolution towards Socialism, and his struggles for the establishment of Socialist values in Cuba by the replacement of "Material incentive" with "Moral incentive". Che's great contribution and example to us was his life, his deeds. His written work was a weapon. And although his writings were few, there richness and intensity were great. Ken Coates expressed his belief that Guevara would be given a place in history alongside such other revolutionaries as Rosa Luxemburg
Present on the platform was Santiago Diaz from Cuba, who received a tremendous ovation from the audience - a fine expression of Solidarity with Cuba, and the people ef that ecuntry who feel the less »f Che nere than anysne. Pat Jordan was Chairman and the meeting was sponsored by MCF, NLR, and BRPF.