The objective was to establish a small organising committee, plan a series of events in east London leading up to the Venezuelan elections and maintain regular Latin American solidarity activity over the next few months.

The organising committee is compact enough to make a Sony engineer jealous. At the moment it comprises the two of us who turned up. At least we managed to agree a plan of action.

· Try again in early September for an organising meeting.
· Have a video screening at the end of the month.
· Invite Jeremy Dear to report back from the TUC delegation to Venezuela in
October
· Try to get somebody from the Venezuelan embassy, George Galloway and John Mc
Donnell for a larger meeting in November.
· Report back from the delegation to the Venezuelan elections and a Christmas do.

I know there is a strong likelihood that Mc Donnell may have been elected leader of the Labour Party by the end of the year but we’ll try anyway.

I hadn’t been expecting a big meeting, maybe six or ten people. But I had thought that there was enough firm interest in Latin America to get a solidarity network going. Oh well. We’ll fail better next time.

Some evening when I’m drunk and maudlin I’ll write an account of the various efforts at organising a branch of the Troops Out Movement and the East London Irish Action Committee I was involved in. Some of what we did was very good and I think that it can be replicated and improved on around Latin America.