By Dr. Malcolm Caldwell, chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
The illusion that the Vietnam war is all but over is dangerously prevalent just now in the protest movement. It has to be scotched. More than ever before, the protest movement needs in reality to sharpen its vigilance, extend and broaden its activities, and re-discover the impetus and momentum it had acquired at its past peak. For the available evidence points to a most disturbing conclusion - namely that the U.S. under President Nixon, fresh to the burdens of office, is seeking in a colossal escalation finally to clinch that elusive military victory so long sought by his predecessors.
It is this message that the Vietnamese are currently pressing with urgency upon all movements and individuals who have supported them and their cause in the past. I have met and discussed matters with Madame Binh twice now - once in Paris, once in London - and she has talked of the unprecedented ferocity of the present American assault on South Vietnam.
At the same time, she fears that the Paris talks have lulled the world's protest movements into a false sense that their campaigning no longer has the relevance it once had. On the contrary, she points out that these movements are needed as much as ever before to keep up the sustained pressure upon the United States to stop the bombing of the South, to start real negotiations in Paris instead of using the talks simply as a screen behind which to escalate with impunity, and to get out of Vietnam - lock, stock and barrel, immediately, irrevocably and unconditionally.
That the Americans have escalated since November is unquestionable, despite the media blanket which has tried to hide this from the public. I.F. Stone has pointed out in his WEEKLY that after the bombing halt came into effect the NLF de-escalated, and thus afforded the Americans' that token of reciprocity they had always said was all they needed to make meaningful talks a reality. From the end of the bombing of the North to the end of last year, the NLF launched only one battalion strength attack - while at the same time the U.S. and puppet troops carried out 1,683 - with the tempo increasing [illegible]. The intensity of U.S. bombings also steadily mounted, to reach levels never before attained even in Vietnam.
This savage escalation behind the smoke-screen of Paris "peace talks" has entailed terrible suffering for the people of Vietnam, victims of "pacification" sweeps and of saturation bombing. The NLF could not but take action to defend the people, and it was for this purpose that there has recently been a succession of brilliant attacks on U.S. bases, destroying millions of pounds worth of war materials and putting out of service dozens of helicopters and aircraft. The hypocritical insincerity of the U.S. Government has again been flagrantly exposed. Now Nixon has solemnly warned that such attacks cannot be allowed to go unanswered, even threatening to resume bombing of the North. Thus, as the protest movement begins again to wake up to the real situation in Vietnam and Paris, he seeks to "justify" further steps of escalation - an escalation the Americans cynically and deliberately themselves initiated.
That Madame Binh's apprehensions about the protest movement have some foundation I can personally confirm. Up and down the country, meetings have been becoming less and less well attended, and supporters have been dropping out of the movement. It is of the very greatest importance that this drift be halted and reversed. For there can be no question that international protest was one of the factors that forced America to the conference table in the first place, smarting from their humiliating defeats during the Tet offensive. Johnson, a tired and prematurely aged man, shrank from the further steps his military advisers had urged upon him.
Nixon, however, is a quite different proposition. He has ALWAYS been a hawk as regards Vietnam. In 1955 he told French troops at the front in Vietnam that they must never lay down their arms until victory had been completely won. In 1954, when the French faced certain defeat, he openly advocated sending American troops in, and two aircraft carriers were dispatched to Vietnamese waters carrying nuclear-armed planes (fortunately international opinion at government level prevented direct U.S. intervention at that time; however, as time showed, intervention was only postponed).
Now Nixon has his hands on the buttons of power. It is a fearful situation.
As for the present, we may leave it to the heroic NLF to hold and turn back the present ferocious U.S. offensive. This they will certainly do. However, it will entail the continuation of immense grievous sufferings of the Vietnamese people. Madame Binh has sent out a call to our movement in every land to exert every possible pressure at our command to halt the American bombardment of the South, to get the Americans in Paris to stop their deliberate blocking tactics, and to force [illegible] ignore. Our response to the shocking American escalation must be an escalation in protest. Thus, together with the courageous resistance of the NLF, which has inflicted tremendous casualties on the U.S. and puppet troops during the spring offensive, we can convert the last desperate search of the U.S. imperialists for a military victory into resounding military and political defeat.
This Easter, in the context of this critical situation, CND is planning an ambitious nation-wide demonstration, ranging from Holy Loch on the northern leg, to Caerwent (a U.S. NATO base) in Wales on the southern. Our concern with Vietnam is of long standing. I have already mentioned the nuclear crisis there in 1954. In the last few years there have been several occasions when use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam has been seriously discussed by U.S. leaders. America has always declared that she would use nuclear weapons if she thought it was in her interest to do so. The danger therefore persists. Vietnam will in consequence be in the forefront of our campaigning at Easter (while at the same time we campaign against Polaris, NATO and CBW).
Now we have been assured by the Home Office that Madame Binh will be granted a visa to be with us at Easter. I want to say that we in CND are very conscious of the debt we owe to VSC in particular and to the protest movement in general for the grant of this visa. We would therefore like sincerely to thank all parties concerned for their pressure on the Government over the years. Now that we have together won this victory, I am sure we can agree that Madame Binh must have the biggest possible audience. In particular, she must be faced with a giant crowd in Trafalgar Square when she speaks there on Easter Monday. She has also agreed to address other meetings, if her visa and the Home Office permit. If our plans are approved, she will be accompanied by a representative of the DRV (the Government has just refused the DRV a visa; one DRV representative was invited to accompany Madame Binh on her recent visit to address the Parliamentary Labour Party). I may emphasise here in passing that pressure on the Government to grant a DRV speaker a visa seems to me an extremely important task for the protest movement at this time.
Details of the full CND Easter demonstration may be had from 14, Gray's Inn Rd., London W.C. 1., but we hope that Madame Binh will speak at Newcastle, Coventry and Southampton as well as in London. Local groups should start working for the success of these meetings now (respective dates are 4th, 5th and 6th for Newcastle, Southampton and Coventry; Easter Monday is the 7th). But, these meetings apart, there is tremendous scope for effective demonstrations at several points along the two routes - we plan local activities at Glasgow, Edinburgh, Middlesborough, [illegible], Sheffield, Ruislip, Burghfield, Aldermaston, Salisbury, Forton, Bristol, Newport, Cardiff and Swansea as well as at the other places I've already named. Obviously, this is an ambitious undertaking. But in view of the circumstances, it must be made a success. In particular I hope that all sections of the protest movement, whatever their past differences, will turn us wherever Madame Binh speaks to demonstrate convincingly our solidarity with the Vietnamese people.