"All the people of the world must stop the criminal hand.... - Le Due Tho While Nixon was being feted in Moscow by Messis Kosygin and Brechner, the PRG and the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam were appealing for worldwide solidarity. At the very moment that Nixon was laying a wreath on the tomb of the "unknown soldier" in Moscow, bombers of the U.S. Air Force were dropp ng bombs on North Vietnamese cities, including a new form of anti-personnel bomb only recently perfected in the laboratories of imperialism with the aid of scientists who claim that they do not wish "to be involved in politia". Nixon's visit to Moscow has been implicitly condemned by Hanoi and for good reason. Like his visit to China it represented an attempt to do a deal with the Big Powers and thus try and isolate Vietnam.
The behaviour of the Soviet bureaucracy is true to form: its own interests and the preservation of the status quo before everything else. The fact that Russian seamen have been killed and wounded in Hanoi and a Russian ship sunk in Haiphong harbour is an untimely irritation. The fact that the bombing of the DR V exceeds that carried out in LBJ's reign bombers armed with yet more sophisticated, computer-guided and laser beamed bombs, 6 aircraft carriers, over 60 other ships pounding the coastal areas of Northern Vietnam and the liberated areas in the South to smithereens every day-is of no real concern to the bureaucrats in Moscow. From Peking the reaction has been equally muted and no doubt some questions are being raised within the Chinese leadership in regard to their bankrupt and opportunist analysis regarding the Asian revolution.
Undaunted by the fact that its two major alies are more concerned with their narrow bureaucratic interests than with proletarian internationalism, the Vietnamese continue to fight. But of course we have to understand that the escalation by U.S, imperialism has had its effects. In the North the offensive has been temporarily slowed down, but in the Mekong Delta region the puppet troops have been forced to admit several defeats in the face of a massive armed uprising led and coordinated by the NLF. The fact that there has been little mention of this in the bourgeois press should not surprise us too much. Inside Northern Vietnam itself morale is as high as before and recent visitors to Hanoi have on June 4th is a welcome beginning and reported on how effectively the evacuation of two-thirds of the population was organised. But the very fact that Nixon can effect a largescale escalation of this nature reveals (apart from the obvious fact of Peking/Moscow's desire to preserve a detente with imperialism) the decline in the solidarity movement in Western Europe and the antiwar movement in the United States itself. ACTIONS ON A CONSISTENT BASIS While the Vietnamese have up till now relied on their own forces and even sought to make a virtue of the fact, the main reason for this has been the lack of a Communist International based in the working class and capable of hastening the victory of the Vietnamese by solidarity actions which cripple imperialism in its But nevertheless the Vietnamese itants have said on many occasions that they also depend on international support for their struggle and include it as part of their political and diplomatic calculations (this makes Soviet peaceful co-existence even more nauscous and treacherous than before at the present moment.) Hence the great emphasis they place on the role of the antiwar movement in the United States, but also elsewhere in the world. The Vietnamese unlike certain groups on the left do not regard these actions as "petty bourgeois protest demonstrations", but appreciate theit real significance. After all the importance of the antiwar movement in the United States made it difficult for the American President to travel in his own country in 1968 and finally forced him to quit politics for good.
The bourgeoisie also appreciates this fact. Leader writers have exhibited a smug complacency while noting the fact that the recent anti-war demonstrations in the United States have not been as large and as effective as in 1968 or even after the invasion of Cambodia in 1970. As a result Nixon's margin of manoeuvre is much greater and he uses his trips to Moscow and Peking to both escalate the war further and win the "72 elections.
In Britain there has been a sharp decline in the solidarity movement. While Ireland and the upsurge in the working class have played a partial role in this process, one has also to blame the impressionism of the groups of the extreme left for this situation. In France, after all, there was and is a bigger upsurge in the workers movement. Nevertheless the Communist League has built an Indochina Solidarity Front and mobilised thousands of people in the streets over the last two years. In the same period there has been nothing of note in Britain (even The Red Mole seems to have re-discovered Indochina only after the Vietnamese offensive!). This shows, more than anything else, the strength of bourgeois ideology and how it can even penetrate the revolutionary movement. The only exception in Britain has been the small group of comrades who have continued to produce the excellent bi-monthly journal Indochina.
The important thing is to try to learn from the lessons of the past and to try to remedy previous weaknesses. The demonstration must be seen as that. While the war continues in Indochina and regardless of misleading bourgeois propaganda, we have to try to co-ordinate regular solidarity actions with the Vietnamese. More demonstrations and meetings have to be planned. Tory ministers and Labour frontbenchers must be effectively dealt with when they visit universities and schools, American tirms
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Vietnamese fighters call for worldwide solidarity.