“The most controversial element is the freeze on Venezuela’s gold bullion. Stored in London by the Venezuelan government in the 1980s, it amounts to around 15% of Venezuela’s foreign currency reserves.”
This week, Kate Hudson, Vice-President of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), addressed an online meeting hosted by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign to call for an end to the sanctions and for the Bank of England to return Venezuela’s gold.
You can read an edited version of her speech below and watch the event back in full here
Thanks to VSC for organising this very timely meeting; ending the sanctions is urgent to save lives, and defend Venezuela’s national sovereignty.
I would like to say a bit about the impact of sanctions on the people on which they are imposed and how other countries’ experience sheds light on US intentions today. Because there is no doubt that sanctions are a weapon of war whose primary and most devastating impact is on the civilian population.
This is something that we have been very aware of in the peace movement now for some decades, since the UN first imposed sanctions on Iraq in August 1990. These sanctions lasted for thirteen years, until the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. They marked a new phase in sanctions – almost universal sanctions via the United Nations. During the Cold War it had been impossible to get a consensus at the UN security council but in the unipolar post-Cold War world, the US could do pretty much what it wanted, including bullying and blackmail to get the votes it wanted in the UN. For example, when Yemen abstained on the Iraq sanctions vote, a US diplomat said to the Yemeni ambassador, ‘That will be the most expensive no vote you ever cast’. Three days later the US cancelled its $70 million aid budget for Yemen. The same bullying and blackmail continues today. This is often accompanied by unfounded political accusations to discredit national leaders e.g. narcoterrorism in the case of Venezuela. The aim of course is always to destabilise governments that are non-compliant with US policies.
The UN sanctions on Iraq prohibited the import and export of goods to and from Iraq, except for medicines and limited provision of foodstuffs in ‘humanitarian circumstances’. In reality all food imports were blocked even though Iraq relied on imports for 70% of its food. This led to severe humanitarian distress, economic collapse and the degradation of public infrastructure. Child and infant mortality massively increased, driven by widespread malnutrition. Healthcare collapsed. It was impossible to import water purification chemicals like chlorine, and spare parts for sewage plants, so there were epidemics of typhoid, cholera and gastroenteritis. Education went into decline as schools and universities lacked modern textbooks, scientific equipment, digital connectivity, and a whole generation of professionals like doctors and engineers were isolated. In total up to 2 million people are understood to have died as a result of the sanctions. This was the first wave of US war against Iraq, and the second phase came with the military war in 2003; the intention of the sanctions was not only to weaken the Iraqi state, but to turn the population against its government, supposedly making it willing to welcome the US forces as liberators.
US sanctions on Iran began in 1979 after the revolution against the US-backed Shah, who had actually been put in power by a US/UK organised coup in 1953, against democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. The sanctions have been on-off ever since, and the clear intention there is to provoke regime change, causing intense economic hardship for ordinary citizens and leading to social unrest. The sanctions are clearly nothing to do with the Iranian nuclear programme, as is claimed; that issue had been peacefully resolved via the Iran Nuclear Deal under President Obama. Trump withdrew from the Deal, clearly in order to reimpose sanctions, as Iran’s economy was recovering well and was reassuming its role as a strong regional economy.
Britain has participated in both Iraq and Iran sanctions; it has not supported the US comprehensive trade blockade of Cuba, but is currently playing a very negative role with regard to Venezuela. It imposes sanctions on Venezuela in the form of an arms embargo, asset freezes, and travel bans. The most controversial element is the freeze on Venezuela’s gold bullion. Stored in London by the Venezuelan government in the 1980s, it amounts to around 15% of Venezuela’s foreign currency reserves. Its value in 2020 was around £1.4bn and will now be worth much more. The gold price has more than doubled since then. Since 2018, Venezuela has been blocked from repatriating the gold, according to John Bolton’s memoirs, at the request of the US.
The UK government refuses to recognise the Venezuelan government and hand back the gold because it supposedly wants to use it as a weapon to push for a so-called transition to democracy. Meanwhile Venezuela is in desperate need of the assets to help rebuild and recover from the devastating earthquakes. Again it comes down to the basic issue – total political and economic compliance is required by the sanctioning powers, otherwise they will continue to bleed countries dry, to prepare them for regime change, eventually using military might if necessary.
Our job, as ever, is to practically demonstrate our solidarity with Venezuela and to uphold its national sovereignty; today, this means ending the sanctions, and sending back the gold.
- This is an edited version of the speech given by Kate Hudson, Vice-President of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), at the online meeting Emergency in Venezuela – End all sanctions, give back the gold! hosted by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign on 28 July 2026. You can watch it back in full here.
- You can follow Kate on Twitter/X; and follow the CND on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X.
- You can follow the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign on Facebook and Twitter/X.
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