March With Us [Leaflet for anarchist bloc on anti-Vietnam War demo, London, 27 Octover 1968]

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No, we won’t be marching in support of Ho-Chi-Minh on Sunday, October, 27. We will be marching for sure that day in the London demonstration on Vietnam, but in support of the Vietnamese people - not in adulation of the stalinist hack who heads the North Vietnam government and dictatorship

We will be marching to denounce the American government and its war machine. We will be marching to denounce the war itself and the manner in which the American military are carrying it out. We will be marching to denounce the corrupt gang of the self-constituted Saigon regime who make millions out of the suffering of the Vietnamese people. We will be marching to denounce the British government for its complicity in this war, for aiding & abetting its American counterpart, if only (for practical reasons) on a minor scale. We will be marching for all these reasons and our placards will say so.

But we won’t be shouting “Ho, Ho, Ho-Chi-Minh”, or anything like it, for the simple reason that we refuse to give an ounce of fraternal feeling to a man and a political set-up which murdered our fellow Leftists in Vietnam (in 1946), which consistently supported the purges, frame-ups, trials and executions of Communist Party members (during the stalinist era) and which came out in open support of the invasion of Czechoslovakia a few weeks ago.

We will denounce the American ‘presence’ in Vietnam. We will denounce the Russian ‘presence’ in Czechoslovakia.

We know that, in the present circumstances, we are duty bound to give our support to those who are fighting the military struggle against the American war machine in Vietnam. Some even think it legitimate to call for “Victory for the Vietcong”. But none of us are going to shut our eyes and, by saying nothing else, support Ho-Chi-Minh and the stalinist politics he represents.

We are for a Vietnam run by freely constituted workers and peasants councils and a Vietnam in which there is freedom of speech, of assembly, of organisation and of dissent. This is why we will be marching on October 27. It is for that we will be marching.

We are also for equally free institutions in Britain, in the world over, and in Czechoslovakia too. That is what we mean by ‘socialism’, ‘anarchism, or whatever we like to call the free, classless society we want to see built. And that is why we refuse to take the easy way out, to keep our mouths shut on this demonstration in the ‘interests of unity’, a ‘unity’ which would make us appendages of stalinism and tools, stooges, accomplices, apologists for dictatorship and murder from Vietnam to Czechoslovakia and beyond.

If you agree with us, join the groups, organisations and individuals marching behind our head banner: the banner of the ‘United Libertarian Groups’ (*).

Join us in marching beneath the red flags of socialism & the red black flags of anarchism and with placards that mean what they say.

If you agree with us, your place is with us!

March with us in our contingent on October 27.

(*) The ‘United Libertarian Groups’ are a number of Anarchist, Syndicalist and Libertarian Socialist organisations and bodies working together on home and international affairs. There is a liaison committee on which the various groups are represented.

(Published by the ‘United Libertarian Groups.’ C/O Express Printers
84a Whitechapel High Street, London, E. 1.)