26

The mass movement in solidaritywith _theVietnamese peopleagainsT imperialism was amajor feature of 1968 in Britain.It was the focus for theradicalisation of an entiregeneration: a radicalisation whichwent beyond the single issue ofVietnam and led manythousands to embrace varyingforms of revolutionarypolitics.TESSA VAN GELDERENspoke to PAT JORDAN andTARIQ ALI, both foundingmembers and leading figures inthe Vietnam SolidarityCampaign (VSC).

Pat Jordan was a full timeworker for the campaign duringthe mass demonstrationsof 1967and 1968. He was a member ofthe International Marxist Groupat the time and has been alifelong fighter for socialism. Patis currently recovering from theeffects of a stroke.

In 1967-68 Tariq Ali’s picturewas never far from the frontpages of the press. An editorialboard member of Black Dwarf, hebecame a symbol of the massdemonstrations and occupations.His book about the period, StreetFighting Years: An Autobiographycfthe Sixties, is reviewed elsewherein this issue.

PAT JORDAN

CND WAS THE left campaign ofthe fifties, its main activity wasa once—yearly march from Al-dermaston. The march was like

a revolutionary university — people ar-guing, tactics and strategy debated,thousands of papers bought and sold.

The main organisation to gain fromthis was, rather surprisingly, the LabourParty Young Socialists (this was beforethe Socialist Labour League’s control inthe sixties).

t9 resist

L to«

The orientation of CND was to get theLabour Party to adopt unilateralism.Then Aneurin Bevan, after initially sup-porting unilateralism, made his famoussomersault. This rapidly disillusionedpeople. They realised that they neededsomething else other than this simpleorientationwhich was entirely within theframework of supporting the LabourParty, at that time under the leadershipof Gaitskell.

Many CND activists were people whohad left the Communist Party at aboutthe time of the Hungarian revolution in

SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 7 May/June 1988

1956. As a result of these developmentsthe Committee of 100 emerged and ar-gued for direct action.

One of the people involved with thiswas Ralph Schoenman who persuadedBertrand Russell to support the com-mittee. The Bertrand Russell PeaceFoundation was established. The namewas to make bridges, Schoenman wasthe driving force.

When Schoenman went on a visit toVietnam he was told by the Vietnamesecommunists that they were very dissatis-fied with the anti-war movement in Bri-

SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 7 Mayllune 1988

tain. This was the British Council forPeace in Vietnam (BCPV) which was ledby the Communist Party. The first lineof its founding statement was ‘we do nottake sides, we want peace in Vietnam’.Quite rightly the Vietnamese did notlike this as it took out the anti-imperialistessence of their fight.

In Nottingham The Week group was inthe Labour Party. At the Labour Partyconference in 1966 it produced a dailybulletin. There was a resolution fromNottingham South CLP which ended upwith ‘Vietnam for the Vietnamese’.

There was also a resolution on theagenda which had been inspired by theBCPV which called on the Wilsongovernment to take an initiative ‘tobring this dreadful war to an end’.

Nottingham South’s delegate, PeterPrice, came under immense pressurefrom the Tribunites to withdraw hisresolution: they supported the BCPV.They did horrific things like waking himup at two o’clock in the morning, bully-ing him. They argued that if the Nott-ingham South resolution remained onthe agenda it would jeopardise the pass-ing of the BCPV resolution.

We were, of course, totally opposed towithdrawing the resolution. In the end itgot a not insignificant number of votes asdid the BCPV resolution.

This then was the background to theestablishment of the Vietnam SolidarityCampaign. Schoenmann was part ofthese discussions and observed the pro-duction of The Week bulletin. He came tous with a proposal that we start a diffe-rent type of movement against the war inVietnam. He’d discuss it with Ken Coa-tes, who was a member of the FourthInternational and worked for the Ber-trand Russell Peace Foundation.

I moved to London from Nottinghamto work for the Peace Foundation to setup such an organisation. I did that inJanuary 1967 and we held the foundingconference of the Vietnam SolidarityCampaign in June 1967.

We tried to intervene with all groupsof people including CND, arguing thatthey should support the struggle in Viet-nam where it was possible that nuclearweapons could be used. We had no joyfrom them, although individuals didsupport us. We also had support fromvarious maoist groups. New Left Reviewgave us facilities. We produced a photo-graphic exhibition of the war in Vietnamwhich was shown round the universities.

There were a few hundred delegates atthe founding conference, a large propor-tion were students but there were asprinkling of trade unionists and anumber of people from Labour parties.Local groups were established to mo-bilise for national demonstrations andlocal activities. A favourite passtime wasstalking Labour prime minister Harold 27

Wilson who said: ‘Everywhere I go, I getfollowed by people picketing me aboutVietnam’.

There was an attempt to prevent La-bour foreign secretary Michael Stewartfrom speaking at the Oxford Union.This raised the whole question of ‘freespeech’. You have to remember that theVietnam war was on the televisionnearly every evening and there was arevulsion against Wilson who was givingsupport, at least in a political sense, tothe Americans. People were outraged.

We were well aware of our weaknessesin terms of social compositon. We tooksteps to try to remedy that. We orga-nised a trade union conference and ayouth conference.

‘a favourite pastime wasstalking Harold Wilson, whosaid “Everywhere I go I getfollowed by people picketing

me about Vietnam” ’

The steering committee of VSC metweekly over this period. There weremany fights and packing of meetings. Itwas usually a fight between the Inter-national Marxist Group and the mao-ists. At the first conference of the VSC themaoists had wanted to write into theconstitution support for the ‘13 points’and the ‘10 points’. These were nego-tiating points put forward by the Viet-namese. We were opposed to thatbecause it would have tied us hook, lineand sinker to the North Vietnamesegovernment’s position. It would haveallowed us no political freedom what-soever.

The first large demonstration was inOctober 1967. It was huge by our stan-dards: 10,000 people.

The VSC became the focus for manyorganisations and individuals to expresstheir opposition to the Wilson govern-ment. We would have placards on VSCdemonstrations with ‘victory to the NLF,we want higher pensions’; ‘victory to theNLF, workers’ control in the shipyards’.People spontaneously reacted. Theyknew they were anti-Wilson’s govern-ment. They knew the demonstrationwas against something the Wilsongovernment was doing, so they wantedto go on it.

The Communist Party campaigned,at first, vigorously against the VSC.There was a strange amalgam of forcesopposed to us: the CP, the pacifists andthe Socialist Labour League (SLL, laterto become the Workers RevolutionaryParty). The latter produced a leaflet for

28 one of the mass demonstrationsentitled

L

‘why we’re not marching’!The great strengthwe had was that we

were part of a world-wide movement. Ifwe talk about the objective effects, whatthe VSC did in part was to reinforce theAmerican anti-war movement which inturn was one of the factors demoralisingthe American army of occupation. Themain factor demoralising them was thefight put up by the Vietnamese and thefact that they were completely sociallyisolated in Vietnam. Only the scum ofVietnamese society would have any dea-lings with them.

This was expressed in various ways.Many were drug takers, the level ofdiscipline started to collapse. If Ameri-can imperialism had not been forced towithdraw its army it would have had amutiny on its hands. In its widest scena-rio that’s the kind of job that will have tobe done in relation to central America.There should be an internationally coor-dinated campaign.

Vietnam was the first military defeatsuffered by the United States. After-wards the Fourth International drew theconclusion that it was virtually im-possible for American imperialism tointervene again because therewas such revulsion to the Viet-nam experience. I wish they’dbeen right.

TARIQ ALI

THE SOLIDARITY movementwith Vietnam was not sponta-neous — it had to be organised.It was in part the result of a

decision taken by the Fourth Inter-national at its eighth world congress in1965 when it decided to make solidaritywith the Vietnamese revolution the mainpriority for its sections all over theworld. It was that big central push whichthrew cadres of the organisation every-where — even in countries where therewere only a few — into building themovement.

This coincided with a political con-juncture which was extremely favour-able so that it became a mass inter-national movement. The whole unique-ness of the Vietnam Solidarity Cam-paign is that it became an umbrella for anewly developed revolutionary con-sciousness amongst a fairly substantialand significant number of youth — pri-marily students but not exclusively so.

Vietnam lit the fuse and enabledpeople to go way, way beyond a singleissue and embrace varying forms ofrevolutionary politics. I think that’s

what gave that whole period its politicalmeaning and left its mark on an entiregeneration all over the world. The Viet-namese were a focal point in that.

It’s foolish to imagine that the Viet-nam exprerience can be mechanicallyrepeated now. If the political situationchanges in Europe, anything’s possible.But even then I don’t think that theparticular conjuncture will be repeatedbecause its a conjuncture that happensvery rarely in a century.

There’s been nothing like it. Peoplesay it was like the twenties and thirties.Yes and no. The Spanish civil war was avery big event in Europe. It did notbring about a world-wide radicalisation.The Russian revolution did, so the twen-ties are more comparable. But the wholebusiness about 1968 is that it was notconfined to Europe.

It is true that many important thingshappened in Europe: the general strikein France, the creeping general strike inItaly, the overthrow of a senile bonapart-ist regime in Portugal.

But you also had a general strike inPakistan in 1969 which toppled a milit-ary dictatorship and led to the break upof the country. There was a massivepeasant uprising in different parts ofIndia, the beginnings of a struggle inLatin America, the fight against thePortuguese in Angola, Guinea Bissauand Mozambique and successive strikewaves in Argentina. There was theuprising in Sri Lanka. And there was theanti-war movement in the United Stateswhich was without precedent in the hi-story of that country. So it was reallyglobal and that’s what made it so uni-que.

The struggle of the Vietnamese some-how symbolised all that: the determina-tion to resist and the confidence to win.The fact that the Americans could notdefeat the Vietnamese played a very bigpart in the radicalisation in Europe.

But the victory in Vietnam was notrepeated elsewhere; in fact the setbacksin Europe were pretty decisive. Thegeneral strike in France — the largestgeneral strike in the history of capitalism

-shook the regime, but did not topple

it. In the subsequent general election thegaullists were re-elected and that had avery demoralising effect — not imme-diatley but a few years later.

The other important event in Europewas the Portuguese revolution in 1974-75. There too, we had a very big set-back. In my view, the far left collectivelyand the Portuguese Communist Partybear part of the responsibility for thatdefeat. They failed to understand thecentral question which agitated largenumbers of people in that country — the

SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 7 Mayllune I988

links between socialism and democracy.The revolutionary upsurge was not de-feated by a bloody counter-revolution;itwas defeated by the victory of MarioSoares and the Portuguese Socialist Par-ty.

November 1975 marked the end, byand large, of the period of radicalisationwhich had opened up in Europe in1967-68. From that time on there was acontinual drift to the right.

This depresses some people. It doesnot particularly depress me. There aremany examples in history where afterevery revolutionary wave and upsurgeyou have a period of regression. Youhave reaction which is triumphant andas the tide goes back it leaves all sorts offlotsam and jetsam in its wake. That is

‘Vietnam lit the fuse andenabled people to go waybeyond a single issue andembrace varying forms of

revolutionary politics’

how the historical process operates. It isnot permanent.

There were people so hypnotised bythe fifties that they could not see whatwas going on in the sixties. It would be atragedy if people were so mesmerised bythe victory of reaction in the late seven-ties and eighties that they totally fail tosee what is possible in the next decades.

The success of the solidarity move-ment in the United States and in westernEurope marginalised during that periodall those political parties that were essen-tialy putting forward either a pacifist or apopular front approach. Our movementshowed that you could mobilise far morepeople on a clear solidarity position. Thefact that this could be done first split theYoung Communist League, thendivided the Communist Party andfinally the Morning Star started reportingVSC actvities in a sympathetic way. Li-kewise in other west European coun-tries.

In the United States it was morecomplex in that the CP was not the onlyorganisation opposed to solidarity slo-gans. The US Socialist Workers Partyslogan was ‘bring the boys back home’which was not sufficient.

The group in the US that made thebiggest gains was the Students for aDemocratic Society (SDS) which mobi-lised around ‘victory to the NLF’.Because the SWP(US) cut itself off fromthis layer it won over very few peoplewhich was a tragedy; many of them wentto different ‘organisations and some ofthem ended up defending individual

SOCIALISTOUTLOOK no 7 Mayllune 1988

Eterrorism. This could have beenavoided.

The stalinist parties refused to acceptthat what was taking place was a revol-ution. We did. The Vietnamese them-selves were very open and invited us toVietnam to collaborate with them. Theywere present at the founding conferenceof the VSC. The Vietnamese CP belongedto the stalinist family. Cadres were edu-cated and formed in a period when theCommunist International was domi-nated by stalinism. Yet this party alsomade a revolution and led a successfulstruggle against three different imperial-ist powers: the French, the Japanese, theFrench again and finally the USA. So youcould not call it a party which was aidingcounter-revolution.

It also did many reprehensible things.Sections of the CP in the south played avery bad role in drowning out dissent,including killing trotskyists. At the sametime it was in a united front with thetrotskyists in Saigon and there was ajoint slate. So it was not a simple issue.

For us in the Fourth International, it

was not a problem which prevented usfrom throwing everything into defend-ing that revolution. Its success wouldhave enormous repercussions through-out the world and on that we wereabsolutely right. The reason why theAmericans have not occupied Nicaraguatoday is because there is still revulsion inthe United States because of Vietnam.

You have to be on the side of those instruggle. You can do this without capitu-lating to their political conceptions. Inthe VSC and in our press we did it. It’snot that we were uncritical.

I remember writing in Socialist Chal-lenge that the issue of democracy was notunimportant and should not be, ignoredby the Vietnamese. Many of the thingsGorbachev is saying now we were sayingyears ago and I think some of the lessonsof glasnoxt can and should be applied tocountries like Vietnam and Cuba. Theyneed them for their own health. Theseare tactical questions but the tactics arenot unimportant. I am very proud thatour current in the labour movement wasamong the first to recognise this.

In 1968 people came out of the La-bour Party because the Wilson govern-ment was so reactionary it was verydifficult to do anything inside the La-bour Party. The Labour left, at the timeled by people like Michael Foot, wassimply incapable of exerting any press-ure whatsoever. By and large they de-fended Wilson’s policies. So there wasno possibility of a fightback in the La-bour Party and thousands of people left.I think in retrospect that this was abso-lutely correct. It was the only way we

could build a movement outside theLabour Party.

I would say that the far left waswrong, throughout western Europe, inassuming that this radicalised layer fromthe sixties onwards would be sufficientfor providing the base for building massrevolutionary parties. We are now 20

years away and in not a single country inEurope has this happened. It can’t justbe an accident. The far left has gotsmaller.

The only exception, I think, is Ger-many, ironically enough, where youhave the Greens, which are not a classicrevolutionary party but represent a left,radical populist force with a strongsocialist component to the left of tra-ditional social democracy and are mak-ing an impact.

‘the reason why the Americanshave not occupied Nicaraguatoday is because there is still

revulsion because of Vietnam’

Some things could have been diffe-rent. I think in Portugal it is an openquestion if the far left and the CP had hada different strategy and a different set oftactics. If you had a revolution that wassocialist and democratic it would havebeen a model for the whole of Europe.

Many people have written, includingMarx and Engels, that students are avery good barometerof changes about tohappen and in 1968 they were the firston the streets. But the sixties were notjust one big street demonstration. It wasuniversity occupations that led to factoryoccupations.‘

You had a working class upsurge inBritain unprecedented since the twen-ties. There were the 1972 and 1974miners’ strikes, very different from theminers’ strike in 1984-85. There was bigsupport for them from other sections ofthe working class which is why they won.One of these strikes directly broughtabout the end of the Heath government.

Britain is a bit peculiar because of itsantiquated electoral system. It forcesLabour to represent all segments of opi-nion. There’s no way out of it. If youhad a system of proportional representa-tion, I think it would be worth having anelectoral front. At the moment its utterlyuseless.

Nothing will happen unless there is abreach in the ranks of labourism. I don’tsay you can’t do anything. But there willbe nothing big politically whichwill affect national politics un-less something happens in thatformation.