The lush paradise of Cuba was once ruled over by an elderly dictator. Many people disliked this dictator, some even tried to have him killed. Although the dictator had many faults it could be said that under his rule Cuba had the finest healthcare system in Latin America. Indeed during the dictaor's rule Cuba’s healthcare system was better than that of many richer European countries including Britain and France. And this dictator’s name? Fulgencio Batista. Yes that’s right in Batista's Cuba life expectancy indices were only narrowly behind America and Canada and there were more doctors per thousand people than in Great Britain, France and Holland. So why doesn’t anyone lament the passing of Batista? Well perhaps because he was an arrogant, murderous dictator. But that begs the question why do people lament the passing of Castro? He was, after all, an arrogant, murderous dictator.

You could forgive the usual suspects for rallying to the revolutionary cause; Galloway has made a career from supporting Third World dictators and the Manic Street Preachers, well they’re just pop stars. Anyone who has had to listen to a speech by Bono will know that musicians make terrible politicians, although Bono, ironically, is also a terrible musician. But even supposedly respectable politicians have been queuing up to shed a tear at Castro’s passing. Harriet Harman went as far as to say that he was a ‘Hero of the Left’. A slightly baffling remark since Trade Unions are banned in Cuba, but perhaps the workers’ lives are so perfect that they don’t require them.

So what is it that makes sane people go all misty eyed about Castro? Maybe it's his love of fine Cuban cigars, his funkily retro army fatigues, his trademark beard, his childish belligerance towards America, the comical attempts on his life or maybe his famously long speeches – ‘Oh Fidel not another eight hour speech about the revolution – What are you like?’ And so on.

And then there’s the Teflon coated myth of the Cuban health service. Never mind the fact that Cuba had had a world class health service for decades before the revolution, or that every single European country managed to set up universal health care systems without the need for fifty year dictatorships, mass executions or the destruction of the economy. Completely forget about the fact that Cuba’s healthcare system is worse now, relative to the rest of the world, than it was in 1957. And of course ignore the reports from Cubans about the terrible problems with the system or the fact that Communist Officials and dollar touting tourists obtain better treatment than ordinary Cubans.

No-one should isolise Mussolini because he made the trains run on time or Hitler because he ended Germany’s economic depression or Stalin because he led the industrialisation of Russia, so why should Castro be any different? After all the Castro regime is responsible for the torture and execution of between 5000 and 35,000 political prisoners. Tens of thousands of political prisoners still languish in Cuba’s prisons. Nobody knows exactly how many because Cuba is one of only a few countries to ban such fascist organisations as the International Red Cross and Amnesty International.

So what do ordinary Cubans think of Castro’s Cuba? Well we don’t really know that either because free speech is banned, the media is controlled by the state and foreign reporters are strictly monitored. Nor are Cubans allowed to hold meetings or rallies, own property, conduct private business, belong to trade unions, move around their own country, move house or, until recently, freely choose their sexuality. Cubans are also banned from leaving their country for the quite sensible reason that no-one would come back. Indeed tens of thousands of Cubans have been executed, drowned or imprisoned after trying to escape to Florida on rafts and dinghies. Around one and a half million Cubans have managed to flee their homeland since 1959, many settling in thriving expatriate community in Miami, to the great benefit of the United States. It is estimated that at least 5 million Cubans have attempted to flee the country since 1959.

Of course dictators rarely restrict misery to their own citizens. Castro has sponsored terrorist campaigns in many Latin American and African countries leading to inevitable war and strife. The man even supported an unprovoked nuclear first strike on the U.S. and he brought the world to the brink of the apocalypse with the placement on Cuban soil of nuclear weapons aimed at Washington.

In 1959 Cuba was a relatively wealthy country with massive economic potential. With a few simple reforms the workers of Cuba could have been as rich as their counterparts in Europe and America. Indeed once poor island states such as Ireland and Iceland now have a GDP greater than that of the USA. Today however Cuba’s economy is judged to be one of the least free in the world, slightly behind North Korea. And that for me is the great tragedy for Cuba; that so much potential wealth, creativity and freedom was destroyed by one man’s arrogance and brutality.

Inevitably Castro's great Communist experiment collapsed and failed like every other centrally planned economy in world history; but for Castro to admit to his mistake would naturally be unthinkable. Instead, desperate for American dollars, he opened Cuba’s pristine beaches up to hordes of Yanquis tourists. Of course ordinary Cubans are banned from these luxurious resorts in their own country, it seems they just don’t have enough dollars for Fidel. However he was kind enough to let one group of citizens in, the armies of jineteras, or prostitutes, are cynically exploited to attract tourists and solve the Government’s economic crisis. So, irony of ironies, we are back where we started. When Castro swept Batista from power he promised to banish the hookers and Yanquis tourists bringing shame to the great Cuban nation. Today, when we survey the poverty stricken prostitutes plying their hapless trade on Cuba’s golden beaches, we are reminded of the final scene from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

“The creatures look from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.”