covered<\/a> by Declassified UK, it has been revealed that while the British government never sent British troops to Vietnam, successive prime ministers did whatever else was possible to aid the US forces in their war, including sending officials from Britain\u2019s Jungle Warfare School in Malaya to South Vietnam to advise on \u2018counter-insurgency\u2019. Support had nothing to do with notions of \u2018protecting democracy\u2019, since the Foreign Office regarded the US-backed regime in Saigon a \u2018a clumsy and heavy-handed dictatorship which is conspicuously lacking in popular appeal\u2019; policy was driven more by fears that regime collapse \u2018would be disastrous to British interests and investments in South East Asia\u2019.<\/p>\nBritain\u2019s old colonial outpost in Hong Kong, which nearly stopped H\u1ed3 Ch\u00ed Minh before he had really begun, played a key role in enabling the US to crank up its aggression at every stage. From there, Britain relayed intelligence to Washington and even launched secret air flights to deliver arms such as napalm and heavy bombs. British intercepts of North Vietnamese military traffic were also handed over for bombing North Vietnam, where 80 percent of the casualties are estimated to have been civilians.<\/p>\n
Britain co-chaired the 1954 Geneva Agreement for preventing further conflict in the country. Yet when the Gulf of Tonkin \u2018incident\u2019 gave the green light for the US to bomb North Vietnam, a Foreign Office private memo speculated that they \u2018did not see how the UN charter could be invoked to justify an attack on North Vietnam\u2019 and that landing 3,500 marines in South Vietnam in 1965 was \u2018in contravention of Article 16 and 17 of the [Geneva] agreement\u2019, remarking that \u2018we have not yet received any protests on the subject.\u2019<\/p>\n
But despite Harold Wilson \u2014 then a young left-winger \u2014 declaring in 1954 that \u2018we must not join with, nor in any way encourage, the anti-Communist crusade in Asia,\u2019 US Secretary of State Dean Rusk thanked Wilson for refusing to criticise US actions in Vietnam in Parliament when pressured to do so by MPs. Later, Wilson would boast that Britain had helped \u2018restrain\u2019 other European and Commonwealth countries articulating \u2018their own apprehensions\u2019 about the US presence in Vietnam.<\/p>\n
While Wilson\u2019s government desperately tried to help US war aims wherever possible, it was incredibly careful to do it in secret to avoid backlash from British public opinion, and from the Tribune Group, whose growing parliamentary significance Wilson felt keenly. On the streets and at trade union meetings, Britain\u2019s anti-Vietnam War movement consistently demanded peace and negotiations, as well as for Britain to end its silence over American actions and fulfil its obligations as a Geneva Agreement signatory.<\/p>\n
Though not as famous as the anti-war movement in the US, Britain\u2019s solidarity campaign with Vietnam was arguably broader than its North American counterpart. Major groups included the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and the British Council for Peace in Vietnam, though early actions were often coordinated by local Communist branches, left-led union branches and student societies.<\/p>\n
The first concerted opposition to the war against Vietnam in Britain came from organised workers. Ben Rubner, a cabinetmaker and veteran of anti-fascist street politics in London\u2019s East End who had risen to lead the Furniture, Timber and Allied Trades Union (FTATU, now part of the GMB union) played a prominent role in organising demonstrations and led an early solidarity delegation of workers to Vietnam in 1964. Workers in Nottingham led by the young communist Bob Allen had been heavily involved in bicycle-buying campaigns for the Viet Cong and eventually made front page news for hoisting the NLF flag over Nottingham City Hall.<\/p>\n
As war drew on, activity grew. During one anti-war protest in 1968 at Sussex University, two students covered an American government official with red paint, resulting in their suspension. On 17 March and 27 October 1968, London thronged with anti-war protesters, with nearly a quarter of a million people attending the October demonstration. On both occasions, protests were directed to Grosvenor Square, the home of the American Embassy, and the latter was met with serious police violence. One protester recalled:<\/p>\n
\nI remember being terrified at being chased down by what seemed like scores of mounted police with truncheons flailing about while the square was blocked off so that none who found themselves on the inside could get out. But the police seemed as frightened as the protesters. I remember also seeing Mick Jagger standing coolly on the steps of a house in the square surveying the chaos.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Though Jagger\u2019s ambiguous lyrics to \u2018Street Fighting Man\u2019 were allegedly based on these clashes, the soundtrack to the British movement was less Rolling Stones and more Ewan MacColl\u2019s \u2018The Ballad of H\u1ed3 Ch\u00ed Minh\u2019. The song, originally recorded after the Viet Minh defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, found popularity in the 1960s folk revival and would be sung by protesters on the street \u2014 and by MacColl and Peggy Seeger at the Hanoi Opera House in 1967.<\/p>\n
\u2018Uncle Ho\u2019 himself enjoyed MacColl\u2019s song for its simplicity and its \u2018deep praise\u2019 for Vietnam; later, it was translated by Vietnamese artist Phu An, securing this Salfordian communist\u2019s song enduring popularity<\/a> in Vietnam today. It also remains popular for trade unionists of all generations to sing after having probably a few too many at labour movement events like the Durham Miners\u2019 Gala \u2014 a pleasing reminder that despite the British elite\u2019s dark role in suppressing Vietnam\u2019s aspirations to freedom, a strong current has always existed of British working people who, in opposing the same rulers heroic Vietnam once opposed, still draw inspiration from their victory today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today, the Vietnamese people celebrate 50 years since the People\u2019s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the National Liberation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-419690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115193999791332284","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}