The Vietnam movement in Britain, and particularly the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign has developed from [illegible]. It now encompasses some 100,000 people, the great majority of whom are in conscious solidarity with the Vietnamese freedom fighters. This came about, partly because a principled stand on the Vietnam issue - that of support for the National Liberation Front and the Democratic Republic - was combined with non-sectarian methods of work, enabling wider sections of the population to be won over; a united front was built on the one issue. More decisive perhaps was that the work done was consistent and based on the assumption - still not universally admitted - that the outcome of the Vietnamese struggle was and remains crucial to the development of the world-wide revolutionary movement. It is the continued escalation of the war by U.S. imperialism and the growing drama of the victorious struggle of the N.L.F., that has made the Vietnam issue so central, and which has inspired massive movements throughout the world in support of a living revolutionary struggle. These movements have grown up largely in spite of the established organisations of the left, and the great burden of the responsibility for the great progress that has been made has fallen on tiny groups of militants who had already broken with such organisations as the social democratic and communist parties. These facts give the key to the weaknesses and problems of the movement.
The tremendous success of the October 27th demonstration has been followed by a feeling of frustration and uncertainty, and has led to a discussion in the movement which raises issues which relate also to the wider revolutionary movement.
Past headaches suffered by the movement could generally be put down simply to a disparity between ends and available means, but we have reached a point where a series of new factors come into play. The successes of the movement have brought their own complications.
In the absence of a mass revolutionary movement in Britain, in the sense of a viable organisation with a rounded out political programme, newly active militants are drawn to the Vietnam movement as the main field where revolutionaries have made progress towards developing a mass movement. It is precisely at this point that the lack of a mass party is felt most acutely, and this is particularly true at the present moment when the advent of the Paris talks raises the question of what must be done by revolutionaries to make further progress once the Vietnam war is over. It would be a serious mistake to assume that the war is nearly over, and it would certainly be so to base future plans on such an assumption. Nevertheless, the question is raised and a current has developed in the movement in favour of utilising the Vietnam movement as a basis for creating a mass revolutionary organisation. The issue is rarely posed directly in these terms, but more commonly in the form of disputation over the future of V.S.C.
A recent V.S.C. National Council adopted a document for recommendation to the coming National Conference. The content of this document can only be described as bowing to the feeling in favour of making the campaign multi-issue. In arguing for the document many comrades stated their opposition to the idea of making the campaign multi-issue. However, the suggestions made were the following: that a facilities for affiliating organisations to the campaign be ended (this was not accepted, but if it had it would have greatly weakened the possibilities for the campaign to make inroads into the trade union movement, where affiliation of a branch could be the first step towards an active commitment); that the building of local branches of the campaign be given more attention, and that in the local groups minorities should be able to utilise the association to facilitate their own projects. These all boil down to changing from a multi-issue organisation united front to a multi-issue organisation, by leaving the question to be settled by local groups. What must be stressed is that so long as the war in Vietnam goes on a special campaign is required to unite all the left tendencies and workers organisations on this one issue.
In the discussions in the movement it has been suggested that the proposals for strengthening local groups were to supplement national campaigns, and were not to be posed against them. That this is a fallacy is clearly seen by the active resistance on the part of the document's supporters to the moves to initiate a new ad hoc committee to call a demonstration in March on the theme of bringing N.L.F. spokesmen into Britain. The opposition was not to having a campaign, but to fixing a date for the demonstration. The suggestion was that it was first necessary to build local groups, when in fact the most effective way of building local groups is to give them a perspective of a national mass activity. The opposition to having another ad hoc committee was on the grounds that V.S.C. was already an ad hoc committee; and that if people wanted to be active in the movement they should join V.S.C. Again the united front concept is brushed aside.
The proposals come down to little more than a very poor substitute for regrouping the left in Britain. Such a regroupment may be very desirable, but can only take place after a careful discussion of the political programme involved, and the type of organisation required. The V.S.C. exists for one purpose only, the defence of the Vietnamese revolution, and any move explicitly or implicitly to change that is doing a disservice to the Vietnamese revolution.
The protagonists of the document in question gained support from the widespread feeling that the October 27th demonstration could have achieved more, and the uncertainty about the future of the development, and the growing recognition of the need for a mass revolutionary movement. In fact, however, their proposal can only do harm to what has been gained so far. It is important that the movement adopts a positive attitude and prepares to take another step forward actively supporting the move to call another mass national demonstration.