hy Ken Arata Those people who wish to defend, within the Labour Party, the view that British Labour owes a debt of solidarity to the Vietnamese people, in their struggles against American invasion, might like to use the following sketch for a speech which my friends and I have compiled, !The foreign policy of the USA is to destroy communism. This is a policy which does two things. First it says that all nationalist movements in Asia are Moscow-inspired, Kremlin«financed, part of a great Russian plot. It fails completely to understand what is happening in Asia, the revolution which is taking place over large parts of the earth's Surface, which se. springs from the natural needs and indigenov® demands of the people ..., the resBitanece movement .., reflects needs which are national and local.'.i(1) 'It would be quite contrary to the whole history of that part of the world to assume that the Indo-Chinese want to become satellites of the Chinese oes Ho Chi Minh might have been Prime Minister in a part of Indo-China - Vietnam - just as some people with whom we have disagreed in the past are now Prime Ministers in the British Commonwealth ... colonialism belongs to a past age. It undoubtedly does in Asia, )(2) 'Weall know it is true that Ho :Chi Minh leads the real national movement in Indo-China, Do not let us be hypoGritical about it. It is time to tell the eee Americans that they are fighting an unjust war in Indo-China ... Ho Chi Minh and his rebels are not Communists by nature, but by compulsion, They are driven to be Communists in order to get national liberation.! (3) 'tIf we accept the Chinese revolution we must accept the Indo-Chinese revolution, and tell our friends not to waste millions of dollars in preserving a few square miles round Saigon.! (4) ‘Everyone here knows, at least every miner, railwayman and agricultural worker knows, that if he were in China he would be a Commmist peasant,! (5) tAgainst the background of world poverty and the surging discontent which it is produgirg among more than half the peoples of the world, the Western nations have so far produced no polic¥Y to match the magnitude of events ... Discontent and the revolt or revolution which it brings in its train, are as natural as the Revolt of Englishmen in the seventeenth century against the claims of Charles I ... It is born of the same spiZit which inspired the pec iy iis the early socialist movement in Britain, It will not be put down.! : 'The responsibility for saying that the issue in Indo-China must be settled by force rests upon those who maintain an Imperialist Government in Indo-~
‘America's record in the recognition of unpopular Governments in the East is so bad that she tends to bring discredit on any Government that she recognises,! (8) 'Of course.' (9) 'There are liberal Americans who are anxious to see Indo-China ... liberated from what they call old-fashioned colonialism, We cannot talk to those Americans;when, at the same, time, weoapproach Washington with: the begging~} bowl. held.out,. because money talksolouder thanowords. I am grieved and shamed when. I; hear that, the contribution which our country can make to international affairs is lost. because of the clatter! of the dollars*into’ the begging-bowl,'(10) oontinued over,
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