Australian Vietnam Day Committee

I have been asked to write to you on behalf of a number of groups, and bring to your attention the following item...A free folk-song concert was held in the Myer Music Bowl (Melbourne) on Sunday 28th November. The concert was organised by a number of groups who believe that there is a need for far greater intellectual and also spiritual understanding of the vistas opening up before youth - both the terrible dangers and the splendid opporte unities. To this end, young people were given the chance for public self-expression in the idiom which they themselves have chosen < the folk SONgs Between 8,000 and 10,000 people crammed the lawns of the gardens to listen to a three-hour programme of "Folk Songs with a Message = Songs of Peace and Love" from twelve leading Australian folk singers, During brief interludes, the Reverend David Pope drew attemtion to the moral dangers to peace and Dr. Jim Cairns, prominent left wing Labour Member of Parliament, referred to the political threats to peace, Both speeches were followed with close attention and drew appreciative applause from the audience. The Reverend David Pope outlined the pressures, both direct and implied, used to discredit those who hold unpopular opinions and those who oppose Government policy.e He spoke of the ease of the use of the label "Communist", pointing out the danger of forgetting the human being obscured by the term. This was related to the callous use of terms such as "megadeaths" and such as “savage brutality" compared with our "wise severity". This is certainly a contradiction of morality, he said, in that it caste the enemy as totally inhuman and forces as totally human. Dr. J. Fe Cairns, speaking of the political threats to peace, indicated firstly that he would not speak of politics in the normal sense of the words He said that Australia is a country in which it is easy to be free if one wants .to bes "Not enough of us want to be free," he said, “Every person who wants to be himself, speak, act and sing for himself is pressed back into line. In Australia, we have to be normal. Anyone who is unconventinrnal is thought of as a bit of a rat-bag, We have a right to resist these press= ures and threats which inhibit freedom, ,We need a kind of resistance movement." Dr, Cairns also said that wel a’ Fight to protect Australia from external threats. “But we have no right to go thousands of miles away from Australia into somebody else's country claiming we are defending ourselves," he added. Sponsoring this concert were: Victoria Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Australian Labour Party (Victoria. Branch), Vietnam Day Committee, Australian and New Zealand Conzress for International Co-operation and Disarmament, Melbourne University Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Melbourne University Folk Music Club, Melbourne University Democratic Socialist Club, Youth Campaign Against Conscription, Blackburn Women for Peace, Unitarian Peace Memorial Churches There is much with which to be satisfied about this concert, We can be satisified with the number of prominent people willing to be associated with this function..with the sin:ers willing to give their services free, and with the great number of people willing to spend an afternoon listening to songs and messages of peace and, in some measure, committing themselves to the free expression of proteste * secretary of the Australian Vietnam Day Committee, 34, Morrah Ste, Parkville, Victoria, Australia,