Last March, Nixon's "Vietnamisation' policy looked in shreds. The offensive launched by the national liberation forces merely added the final humiliating blow to the battering Thieu's puppet troops had received, the previous year, in the rout in Laos and Cambodia. The importance of the March offensive was, however, its precise timing in the critical pre-election period. With Thieu's puppet army crumbling on all fronts, Nixon's problem was precisely how to stem this offensive at the same time as not appearing to escalate the war and thus, by stimulating anti-war feeling at home, jeopardise his election chances.
RELATIVELY UNSCATHED S ix months later, he would seem to have emerged relatively unscathed from his dilemma. Not only has he been able to escalate the bombing to new, genocidal heights; he has, at the same time, even managed to undermine the "peace candidate McGovern whose role was precisely to channel the mass discontent into a more 'flexible' policy on Vietnam urged by one section of the US ruling class. The catalyst which brought Nixon's unexpected rise of fortunes was, of course, the combined intervention of Moscow and Peking. The state visits to China and Russia earlier this year involved much more than clinking champagne glasses. Secret negotiations behind the cocktail parties (denounced by Hanoi) solved Nixon's immediate dilemma in two ways. In the first place, the willingness of the workers' states to turn a 'blind eye to the saturation bombing and mining of the harbours (in exchange for "diplomatic" and "trade concessions) enabled Nixon to pursue unhampered the strategy of successive US administrations: to win a military victory in Indo China. In the second place, such a deal allowed Nixon to heal the breach - at least temporarily in US ruling circles between the hawks and the doves who were pushing McGovern because of their concern that any escalation of the war might involve a confrontation with China or Russia. It was this deal which pulled the rug from under McGovern's campaign. With the connivance of Moscow and Peking, Nixon has been able to present himself as a "peace' candidate. At the precise moment when he is escalating the war to unprecedented proportions, he Indochina solidarity demonstration in Paris earlier this year is busy creating the illusion of winding it down by playing up the withdrawal of US ground forces and carefully leaking information about the possibilities of an imminent "settlement"
TASK FOR ANTI-IMPERIALISTS There can be little doubt that this propaganda machine has influenced people's thinking, exactly as the announcement in 1968 of the Paris peace talks undermined the anti-war movement then. Even those who are still opposed to the Nixon strategy in S E Asia are largely off the streets campaigning for McGovern's "peace ticket which channels the wide-spread discontent behind "democratic politicians who would, if elected, be prey to exactly the same influences as Nixon has been. Today more than ever before, the defence of the Vietnamese people, sacrificed on the altar of "peaceful co-existence', becomes a central task of all genuine anti-imperialists since it is only they who can come to the aid of the Vietnamese. It is the task of these forces to drive a wedge between Nixon's claim to be winding down the war and the reality of the mass saturation bombing; between the carefully leaked suggestions of an imminent settlement and the reality of US imperialism's long-term strategy in Indo -China. It would be disastrous if US Government propaganda was to be taken seriously and allowed to defuse the urgent task of building a movement in solidarity with the Vietnamese struggle.
realise that they cannot defeat the Republican Movement by military repression". As I predicted (The Red Mole, 18 September) the next move in this black propaganda drive has come from the Sunday Times. The basic motivation for the campaign remains the same - to split and isolate the IRA.
The latest nuance is in the use of the distorted interview, or the interview which never took place, or the off-the-record telephone conversation which suddenly becomes an interview. The idea is to seize out of context or deliberately to invent this or that remark in order to try and set one section of the Republican movement against another.
PREVIOUS FAILURE The Sunday Times distorted interview with Rory Brady was only resorted to after the failure of a previous attempt by James McManus of the Guardian. McManus, in his article "Swapping the Gun for the Vote" (Guardian, 13 September), tried to give the impression that Rory Brady was in favour of calling off the struggle in the North in return for the legalisation of Sinn Fein in the Six Counties.
The McManus attempt failed miserably Indeed, IRA intelligence was aware of a policy briefing conference presided over by the Guardian's Deputy Editor, Ulster Unionist John Cole, on the previous Saturday. British imperialism is not unique in having an intelligence service.
McManus" background is of some interest. After the Aldershot explosion, he did a hatchet job on Clann na hEireann in the Daily Express. Shortly afterwards, he moved from the Express to the Guardian. Claiming a conversion on the road to Thompson House, in late July he approached the London leaders of the Provos, Officials and the Irish Solidarity Campaign for interviews. The ISC refused, but the interviews with the other groups, when the piece did appear, were "fair and friendly". This was the sprat to catch a mackerel.
In the Guardian McManus' name started appearing in by-lines alongside the Guardian's government's brutal escalation of the war. The NPAC is, itself, struggling to turn the still massive discontent with the war out of the channels of electoral manoeuvring into mass demonstrations on 18 October and 18 November. In Britain, after a lapse of almost four years, a united-front preparatory committee has been set up (under the initiative of the magazine Indo-China) to prepare a Conference early in December as a springboard for re-activating a Vietnam solidarity movement in Britain.
The call by Indo-China (even though only a few weeks old) has already encouraged the following groups to sponsor such a Conference: Agitprop, Association for Radical East Asian Scholars, Group *68, Indo-China Editorial Board, International Fund to Aid the Indo-Chinese Resistance, International Marxist Group, National Union of Students, Socialist Woman, Support, Union of American Exiles and the Vietnam Solidarity Committee. At the same time, many individuals have agreed to sponsor the SPRINGBOARD At the meeting of the preparatory committee on 10 October, a discussion was opened up on the nature of the Conference and the preparatory work that would have to be done It was agreed that the Conference should be a springboard for mobilising a broad solidarity movement and that it would take place on 2 and 3 December. It is vital that any united-front movement in solidarity with the Vietnamese struggle must involve the widest possible forces. The IMG would therefore add its voice to that of the preparatory committee in calling upon all those organisations and individuals who support the struggle of the Vietnamese people to sponsor the Conference and send a representative along to the preparatory committee. (Those who do not support the solidarity position, but who oppose American aggression will also be able to attend). Those who pride themselves on their internationalism will not be remembered for their fine analyses of the Vietnamese struggle. They will be remembered for translating that analysis into action, which today means building the December Conference.
"Journalist of the Year", Simon Winchester. With this cover, McManus was sent to do an interview with Brady, and Winchester was sent to America in case his well known delicate "ethical sensibilities" should trouble him.
ALIVE AGAIN Meanwhile, back at the Observer (or the Foreign Office), Colin Smith has suddenly come alive again, reporting on the Ugandan Asians. Snrith has been writing to the Dublin Review, Hibernia, complaining that its coverage of the Maria Maguire case gives the impression that he is a British agent. Mr. Smith thinks this would endanger his life. Nowhere in his lengthy reply does Mr. Smith mention his peculiar background. This "ordinary journalist" joined the British Army at 15 years of age for a nine year stint, and after a distinguished career, during the time the British army was engaged in counterinsurgency activity, he was recommended to the Birmingham Post, where he learnt the ABC of journalism. This was followed by a rapid move to the Daily Sketchand after only 2 months, an even more rapid transfer to the Observer, as a colleague of its Defence Correspondent, Andrew Wilson, formerly Major Andrew Wilson of British intelligence, who undoubtedly showed him the ropes. Certainly after the "Maguire revelations', Major Wilson made a secret trip around Ireland to check on their effects.
BRITISH LEFT O ne would imagine that there would be no need to list these details: one would have hoped that the British left at least would have got the message. Not so. In Workers Press, the organ of the Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League, ace reporter lan Yeats set up shop on 2 October as a retailer of Foreign Office slander, picking up and cribbing from the black stories in the Observer and the Sunday Times.
But then what do you expect from a pig but a grunt? And what would you expect from a newspaper which claimed on 21 September last year that, "The closure of the "Maidstone" was hastily decided when the army high command and the Tories became aware of the inhuman tortures which were being carried out".