Vietnam: U_thant or Solidarity

Many thousands of people will be taking part in Vietnam activity this week end. One of the main slogans of the CND contingent will be Support U Thant. Other will be marching with NLF flags and with solidarity slogans. Who is right? Is the difference really important? The Week has been a supporter of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign since it was formed and its supporters are marching behind the Campaign's banner. However, this support has been always on the assumption that the majority of people who support other organisations are very well-intentioned people whose desire to end the Vietnam war and help the Vietnamese people cannot be called into question. That is why we have always refrained from making attacks on other organisations even thoagh we disagree with their line. We welcome what we consider a shift to the left in certain of these organisations on the question of Vietnam. But unless this shift to the left continues there is the danger of further confusion and a lot of work being dissipated along the wrong lines. Point two of U Thant's proposals calls upon the North Vietnamese to stop supporting the NLF in the south in exchange for the cessation of the bombing of the North, This "reasonable" approach has been rejected outright by Ho Chi Minh and we believe he is absolutely correct. This approach confuse the nature of the war in Vietnam and helps Johnson to weaken resistance in the United States against the war. It helps Wilson to dismiss opposition to the Labour Government's support of Johnson by claiming that the solution to the war "lies in Hanoi." It is based upon the assumption that the American's right to be in south Vietnam should be negotiated by the Vietnamese. It can be argued that in a certain sense the Americans would welcome a cease-fire to regroup their forces which are increasingly feeling the strain of the war. Such a regroupment for the Americans would be very good providing they could stop the Vietnamese from also regrouping. An agreement by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to stop supporting the N.L.F. would amount to just that. Thus, despite their intentions supporters of the slogans about U Thant are giving a political cover to some of the objectives - political and military of the American administration. That is why we instead advance the idea of consistent solidarity with the Vietnamese as the best way of fighting the war and helping the Vietnamese to win self-determination. Really what we should be discussing is how we can - as Jean-Paul Sartre a put it - escalate opposition to the war in direct relationship to the U.S. . escalation of the war against the Vietnamese, We have already drawn attention to the nature of the Guam conference. Our worst fears were justified when we read the press reports of that conference. Sartre has posed the question of volunteers for Vietnam. This is certainly a question which warrants serious and concrete discussion. The moral effect alone of thousands pledging themselves to go if called for would be immense. In the meantime we have to step our exposure of the British Government physical and political complicity,