One of the highlights of the March 17th weekend, was a large meeting organised by the Vietnam Ad-hoc Committee on the Saturday evening before the Sunday rally. Over 500 packed the small hall -- standing room only. This was especially remarkable as the meeting had been only organised at the last minute with no advertising. People learned of it by word of mouth. Most of those who attended were activists who came from outside of London and many of the foreign delegations were present.
Two films were shown -- one, "October 1967", a documentary of the successful October 22 rally, evoked a warm response.
The two speakers at the meeting were Ralph Milliband and Alain Krivine of the National Vietnam Committee (France). Because we think our readers will find it of interest, we reproduce here the speech by Alain Krivine to the meeting. At a later date we hope to publish Ralph Milliband's.
"Comrades and friends!
In the few minutes I have to speak, I wish to convey to you on behalf of the National Vietnam Committee in France, our complete solidarity with tomorrow's demonstration. The presence of foreign delegates here shows today that more and more people have taken a stand on the necessity to transcend national barriers, and to organise at this time an international reply to the aggression of American imperialism. The youth demonstration in Berlin on February 17th and 18th was an important step in this direction, but the continuing escalation in Vietnam forces us to go further in the struggle.
"We consider that it is possible, and necessary, in Europe to act in accordance with the strategy of Che Guevara when he called for "one, two, or three Vietnams," in order to weaken the imperialist forces. This means, in our case, that we must utilise all possible methods of pressure to weaken imperialism in Europe and above all, to have larger and ever larger mass mobilisations leading to a permanent fight to isolate Johnson and those around him.
"The presence of thousands of people demonstrating in the streets of every European city will contribute to this process of isolation. A definite objective must be to weaken the American military potential. For this we must try to spread among the people the need to refuse to deliver American war equipment, to expose companies and corporations in Europe which supply the war material used in Vietnam. We must agitate against NATO - the instrument of American imperialism in Europe and a weapon to be turned against the labour movement in Europe as we have seen in Greece.
"At this time we must denounce those leaders of mass working class parties who drag the working class in blood towards American imperialism, and who do not hesitate to call in the police against the protest movement, as in Germany. The movement against the war must assume such a level, that the military and political presence of the aggressors in Vietnam will become repugnant to the people of Europe. In this particular field we think solid political work could be carried out among American troops in Europe, in order to strengthen resistance and to strengthen the ideas of opposition within their own forces. In France we decided to stop all American embassy propoganda meetings.
"It was with this perspective that we created the C.V.N. two years ago. The C.V.N. is a democratic organisation based on supporting committees in the universities, schools, factories and urban centres. Today, the C.V.N. encompasses thousands of militants in more than 60 towns of France. On February 21st the C.V.N. occupied the Latin Quarter of Paris, which it then transformed into "The district of heroic Vietnam" and where the name "Heroes of the Vietnamese revolution" was given to a street. For two hours 8 thousand militants took over the district.
"But this is not enough: now the movement must be co-ordinated on a European scale and therefore the C.V.N. is proposing to organise a huge international demonstration in Paris at the end of November and we expect large delegations from all the Western European countries. An international committee could be created for the occasion with the purpose of co-ordinating ideas for the action formulated by the other committees of the international movement.
"It is possible that De Gaulle's government will decide to ban this demonstration, but for us this occasion would show that with regard to the Vietnamese revolution, "neutrality" does not exist.
"You can only be for the victory of the Vietnamese revolution, or on the side of the aggressor. After the Berlin demonstration, the London demonstration is a step along the road to the counter-escalation of anti-imperialist forces.
"Vive la revolution Vietnamienne!"