It is a conveniently neglected fact, that in March, 1946, the forner colonial ruler of Vietnan officially recognised the existence of an independent Republic of Vietnam under the presidency of Ho Chi Minh, who had won general elections held in Jonuary of the same yetre I quote fron the officiel statenent: "The Government of France recognises the Republic of Vietnan as a free state having its owm governnent ond its parlianent, its irny nd its finances, forning part of the Indo-Chinese federation of the French Unione” It soon became apparmt, however, that France wanted to retain colonial control of the rich, southern province of Indo-Chinae As a result, fighting broke out between the recently recognised Republic of Vietnan, and the French colonial arny. After three years of fighting, to further their attempt to re-establish colonial control, now over the whole of the country, the French set up & puppet State of Vietnan, headed by Bao Dai, who had been puppet emperor under the Japanese and had formally and voluntarily abdicated when the Republic of Vietnan was established and recognised in 1946, It is this wholly illegitinste, foreign imposed puppet state (the terns are literally descriptive) that forns the "legal" basis for all the subsequent Seigon reginess By 1954, the French and their puppet regine h-d lost the war with the Republic of Vietname Rather than press the victory to its ultin-te conclusion and risk nilitary intervention nd possible nuclear bombard= nent by the U.S., however, the Vietnamese agreed to negotiate a cessation of hostilities, “nd to settle the question of representation by an internationally supervised election. This is wh-t the Geneva Accords were aboute The whole basis of the Accords was that an election would be held by June, 1956, to decide which of the two st=tes of Vietnam was the legitinate representative of the Vietnamese people, On the one hand, there was the Republic of Vietnan, headed by Ho Chi Minh, representing a coalition of indigenous nationalist forces, retified by 2 geners1 election umer universal suffrage, which is generally acknowledged by Westem observers to have been indicative of the state of public opinion at the tine, snd recognised by the French as a free strte in 1946. On the other hand, there was the puppet state, headed by Bao Dai, created by a foreign power, supported by a foreign arny, end having no legitinate clain to sovereignty in Vietnm. The elections to decide the issue between the two governnents were never held, Instead, another foreign power, which had recently paid the full nilitary bill of the French colonial war, engineered its own puppet, Ngo Dinh Dien, into control of the quisling regime, and prevented the holding of elections, thus destroying the entire basis of the Geneva Agreenents Nothing thot has happened since has changed the fact thot the Saigon governnent is a regime created by a foreign power, in the interests of a foreign power, is maint:ined by a foreign power, and has no legitin:te basis for its clain to represent the Vietnamese peoples The Diem regine soon found itself faced by a new rebellion. In part this was because of bients ruthless repression of all political forces in the Southe I quote the correspondent ©: the Economist, who was an eyewitness to the first two years of Dien'’s riuie; "Instead of uniting it, Dien has divided the South. Instead of nerely crushing his legitimate enenies, the Comnunists, he has crushed ell opposition of every kind, havever antieconmmunist it night beeeeHe has been “ble t do this, sinply and
Vietnen, the cold war end Labour continued/
solely beceuse of the nassive dollar aid he has hed sicher gate Pacific,
: a
i + in power a nan, who by all the :
pera stitiatt would long ago have fallene Dien" natn supporters
are to be found in North Auerica, not in Free Vietnane
A second elenent in the rebellion was the fact thet ctigts Sf eee
end French puppet regines had won collaborstion fron the we rig ee
classes, so didDien's. Under Ho Chi Minh*s Republic, et as Pacsgrioree
had bear given their lande Hence a situation developed bg eins onesie
ed in U.S. News and World Report in the following conreeaitiecee Seka
aginst the French was over in 1954, the big Vietnanes : ins alan
out of tretirenent* on the French Riviera or in Paris 0 ea oe
with the help of U.S.-trained and UeSe equipped eae one cae aes
the countryside and s.id to the peasants: "All right let's he
back, plus eight years of back renteeee’"
The resistance to this counter-revolution, 9s well as to pamreirar
repression visited by Dien on the population forned the er bt
revived rebellions As the rebellion gained strength, ee. sees
poured in men nd naterial in support of their puppet son nein
Dien was deposed at a tine when, according to reliable cot
negotiating secretly with Hanoi and the Liberation Front nek ere
de Gaullets proposels for the neutmlisation and reeunification o tnale
: : : the
od number of the 9 subsequent regines in Saigon . also fell on
Tests of reports that they were seeking 2 peace and neutrality et a ge
abhorrent to their Anerican mosterse Indeed, we now know that the res
for the bonbing of North Vietnam, begun in February 1965, was that the
Liberation Front was about to achieve a "decisive success" in the South,
and the Sigon regine was on the verge of coning to tertse As Walter
Lippman described the situation: "at the beginning of 1965 not only had
the Seigonese arny lost cotrol of the countryside with the exception
of five or six cities, but the government in Saigon was disintegrating ;
and was on the verge of making a deal with Hanoie" To prevent the pscific-
ation of the Vietnanese war, and their own enforced exit from the area,
ica an their wanton bombing of the jwasant econony in the
eee isk seers of the boubing, esoexesita to" Lippren, pthe ons real
change has been that the governnent in Saigon is now a dictntorship of
four generals who are fully aware that w rsonally they haye every reason
to avoid a truce and to continue the war," This is th87reason the bombing
of the North was begun, Official talk about North Vietnanese aggression
is of course pure doublethink, There is no independent South Vietn>nese
state against which the North Vietnamese could have committed aggressions
The Geneva Agreements re explicitly based on the recognition that there
is only one country, Vietnan, with nore than one"state", however, claining
to represent the Vietnamese peoplee North Vietnam is not a foreign power
with respect to South Vietnam. If there is war nav between the states
in North and South Vietnan, it is a civil war, and the only foreign
powers, the only powers connitting aggression are the U.eS., its se-tellites
and allies,
In fact, norewer, the St-te Departnert White Paper lists only six n tive
North Vietnamese ‘infiltrees* into South Vietnam prior to the bonbing
(it does not mention, of course, the parachuting of South Vietnanese
puppet soldiers into the North from 1961 on) To mke eninently clear
what happened when the UeS. escalated the war, I would like to quote to
you fron a speech made by Senator Wayne Morse of the Senate Foreign
Relations Comnittee, on December 11, 1964, that is two months before the
continued next issuc/
The following is the text of one of the Circulars which "Humberside Voice" is distributing during the General Election caupaign: In Hull, dockers have been striking regularly for many weeks now in support of their dewand for better wages. In Vietnam, peasants and workers have been fighting for many years for the right of self~determination. The two things seem umconnected: we believe that they are part of a coumon struggle, which bears directly on the General Election. The private port employer is a labour contractor: he gets an order to discharge a ship, hires the workers to do the job, and makes a profit from the difference between his charges and his wage bill. He performs no useful service: he is a middleman licensed to make money. The contract could be made directly with the workers' rep~ resentatives., Whilst the private employer exists, he will fight to keep his wage costs down. In these conditions, workers must fight to get their wages - their standard of life - up. So it is with all employment in a capitalist society. The private employer gets between the workers and the coumumity that they would like to serve directly. In fighting for his profit margin, the employer (the property owning class) has many allies: the Press, the Law, the Education system, the State. Workers long ago realised the need to create their own supports and alliances against all this. They were the Trade Unions, and - in this country ~ the Labour Party. With these instruments they have made some inroads into the State, the Law, etc. But when successes come the way of the workers, (and we are speaking of the vast wajority of the people in this country) the ewployers seek to weaken these instruments which have produced the changes. If Trade Unions and the Labour Party can be persuaded to curb, instead of represent, the wishes of their mewbers and supporters, profits can be made safe. This is what the Incomes Policy (a more complicated version of wage restraint) is all about. (We used to all agree, a short time ago, that the right to strike usant the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy). The private, feudal landlord class of Vietnam strove wight and main to reimpose its tyranny on the peasants of the Southern area of that country after the French with drew in 1954. They were encouraged and assisted by the Americans. When the South rose in revolt against the unspeakable terror of the landlord regime, the Americans hastened to suppress their liberation struggle. They were acting for property against workers. That is why it is disgraceful that our Labour Governnent supports American action in Vietnam. In the Incomes Policy and the Vietnam Policy we see two enormously wrong positions for a Labour Government to have adopted. We do not run away from these unpleasant facts because there is an election. We think many Labour votes can be saved and ; won by pointing out that there is a strong body of opinion in the Labour Party an the Unions which is struggling to stem the sharp rightward swing of Governuent : policy. For electors who agree with us, we see absolutely no alternative to voting Labour. Tory Governuent would now, with the unhappy example made for then over the past few months, rush into law an unwholesome attack on Trade Union freedoms, and cheer on the U.S. the wore, in Vietnam.
i igger majority, the We therefore believe that Labour should be returned. With a b : ; struggle for decent Socialist policies - against the Early Warnings Bill and the Vietnam policy - can develop.