Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No. 49, May 1985
When the tanks and artillery of the National Liberation Front smashed down the gates to the presidential palace in Saigon on 30 April 1975 they punctured the myth of US invincibility. Ten years later the habitual liar Kissinger for once told the truth, ‘The pain of the day will not go away’. Doubt and hesitation struck deep into the capitalist brain.
In the wake of the Vietnamese revolution the peoples of Laos, Afghanistan, Grenada, Nicaragua and Zimbabwe swiftly drove on to victories. But the Vietnamese gave the world a tremendous sacrifice: perhaps four million dead, the true loss will never be known, fighting Japanese, French and US occupation forces.
The Horror
In 1946 Ho Chi Minh warned the French colonialists clinging onto South Vietnam ‘You will kill ten of our men and we will kill one of yours. In the end it will be you who will tire of it’. His words were prophetic for the USA.
The French garrison at Dien Bien Phu surrendered to the forces of General Giap on 8 May 1954. Into their shoes stepped the US, who escalated supplies to the Southern puppet regime. By November 1963 and Kennedy’s assassination 16,000 US military ‘advisers’ were stationed in Vietnam. Developing classical guerrilla tactics Ho Chi Minh had long before threatened the foreign colossus with its fate, ‘Today it is a case of the grasshopper pitted against the elephant. But tomorrow the elephant will have its guts ripped out’. Imperialism, impotent and frustrated, the US Airforce began bombing the North in February 1965. US strategists believed that if the Southern resistance could be isolated from its Northern support it could easily be destroyed or would simply rot.
At the commencement of the bombing, the US economy accounted for a third of the world’s industrial output, 80 per cent of Vietnam’s population were peasants. A total of 14.5 million tons of explosive rained down on Vietnam, the equivalent in explosive terms of 700 Hiroshimas. More than the entire bomb load dispatched by all sides in World War Two! 400,000 tons of napalm, 72 million litres of chemical defoliants turned great tracts of the land into dust and ashes. By 1968 over half a million US troops were operating in Vietnam. They left behind half a million prostitutes and as many drug addicts. Officially the US suffered 58,655 deaths out of the more than 3 million soldiers who served there. The US Senate estimated the cost of the war to the USA at some $240 billion. Words like ‘carpet bombing’, ‘free-fire zone’, ‘strategic hamlet’, ‘search and destroy mission’, My Lai, ran non-stop for a decade through the news wires.
The Tet Offensive
‘The Americans will lose the war on the day when their military might is at its maximum and the great machine they’ve put together can’t move any more. That is we’ll beat them at the moment when they have the most men, the most arms, and the greatest hope of winning. Because all that money and strength will be a stone around their neck. It’s inevitable’. General Giap.
The 1968 Tet Offensive by the People’s Liberation Army proved the decisive superiority of people’s war over imperialist armoury and strategy. Relying upon the people’s support, resourcefulness and ingenuity the guerrilla soldiers were able to capture provincial capitals, besiege US bases, and even occupy part of the US embassy in Saigon itself. The Johnson administration’s confidence ‘burst like a soap bubble’, and the liberation forces melted back into the towns, villages and countryside. The war was turned in the people’s favour, futility and disillusionment sapped the will of the US troops and public.
Political leadership
‘The first work of Lenin I ever read was his thesis on national and colonial questions. Having read this work I wept for joy…’ Ho Chi Minh.
The tenacity of the Vietnamese people, their ability to make such sacrifices, was forged in the sure knowledge that they were fighting to become rulers of their own land and labour, in Vietnam as in Ireland this required a united nation. Every soldier of the People’s Army swore to fight for ‘the cause of national independence, democracy and socialism, under the leadership of the Vietnam Workers Party’. At every stage of the struggle the military strategy followed the political line. This never wavered, never compromised its objective for the brandishments of imperialist schemes. Land reform and the overthrow of feudal authority galvanised the peasantry to communist leadership. The leadership merged with the peasantry and shared its suffering. Ho Chi Minh, himself once gaoled by the British in Hong Kong, noted in 1960 that ‘speaking merely of the Party Central Committee, 14 have been shot, guillotined, or beaten to death in prison’ since 1930.
British Imperialism and Labour’s Guilt
The British ruling class and Labour Party backed the French and US occupation forces throughout. While still at war with Japan the 1945 Labour government released Japanese prisoners of war, armed them, put them in police uniforms and directed them to impose French rule over the Vietnamese people. The British-run Jungle Warfare School in Malaya trained US troops. SAS officers were seconded to US battalions. Senior civil servant Sir Robert Thompson, head of the British Advisory Mission, helped devise the ‘strategic hamlets’ programme which rounded up 39 per cent of South Vietnam’s population. Those outside the ‘hamlet’ could expect to be shot on sight! Hong Kong was made available for US supplies and warships. British capital provided warships. British capital provided everything from aero-engines to Hovercraft for the US war effort. Labour Prime Minister Wilson announced in 1964 ‘We have repeatedly said … that we support US policy in Vietnam.’ A year after the US bombing had begun the Labour Party Conference of 1966 threw out a motion critical of US policy. As late as 1975 the Labour government used the intelligence resources at GCHQ Cheltenham and in Hong Kong to monitor liberation force movements and keep the US informed.
Reagan, describing the US war as ‘a noble cause’, has tried to wipe the scar from the memory of the US people. As an imperialist war it was racist. Significantly, a black US youth was twice as likely to be killed in Vietnam as his white counterpart, and, once enlisted, though constituting 16 per cent of the combatants they received half the dishonourable discharges! Malcolm X, George Jackson and the Black Panthers supported and were inspired by the Vietnamese liberation struggle. ‘First women and children in a ditch in Vietnam, ultimately executions in the civic centres of every look-alike county in this country.’ George Jackson.
Vietnam showed that imperialism will go to any lengths to maintain its rule, with or without local stooges, anywhere in the world. It showed they can be beaten by a united people, in this case North and South, peasants and workers, led by communists, supported militarily and economically by the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. We saw what this century has underlined with scores of millions of lives, that the imperialist ruling classes will commit any crime, kill any number of people, for as long as no anti-imperialist movement emerges from among the working and oppressed peoples in the metropolitan heartlands to challenge them.
Above all Vietnam was a laboratory for people’s war. The Vietnamese people are cherished the world over. They have handed the flame of freedom to their brothers and sisters in Africa, Asia and Latin America. We owe them a great debt.
Trevor Rayne
Solidarity message from the Revolutionary Communist Group and its paper Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! on the 10th anniversary of the victory of the Vietnamese Revolution.
Comrades!
The Revolutionary Communist Group and the paper Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! congratulates the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on the 10th anniversary of the defeat of US imperialism. The Vietnamese people’s victory demonstrated to the world that even the most barbaric methods of warfare, backed by the enormous resources of the world’s mightiest imperialist power, and supported at every turn by British governments, Labour and Conservative alike, could not defeat the risen people. The tremendous sacrifice of the Vietnamese people has inspired the oppressed masses across Asia, Africa and Latin America to fight for freedom, justice and national liberation.
We also salute the Soviet Union and other socialist countries for their exemplary internationalist solidarity in supporting the national liberation movement to victory and in helping to build a socialist Vietnam.
This day is truly a momentous day in the calendar of the struggle of the oppressed masses for freedom and socialism.
LONG LIVE THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM! LONG LIVE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY! VICTORY TO THE WORKERS AND OPPRESSED PEOPLES OF THE WORLD!
ANNIVERSARY MEETING
Despite the enormous devastation inflicted on Vietnam during the war, Vietnam will be self-sufficient in food in two years, stated the Vietnamese Ambassador at a meeting in County Hall, London, held on 30 April 1985 to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Vietnam’s victory. He affirmed his country’s continuing internationalist commitment to the peoples of Laos and Kampuchea. This was recognised by a representative of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, who pointed out that Britain was withdrawing its embassy from Laos because of ‘lack of funds’. Funds are always available for a British embassy and several consulates in South Africa!
An excellent speech by Mrs Joan Yuille (Britain-Vietnam Association, organisers of the meeting) described in detail the vital role played by British imperialism in oppressing the Vietnamese people, from the restoration of Vietnam to the French in 1945 to the 1964 Labour government’s consistent support for the war. A speaker from the Soviet Embassy stressed the USSR’s continuing support for Vietnam; and remembering the solidarity shown by the miners of Vietnam during the strike, the Kent NUM presented a bouquet of flowers to the Ambassador.
