YOUTH PROTEST VIETNAM WAR DESPITE CP
Paris ;
The radicalization of a part of the French youth, particularly in the struggle. against the American aggression in Vietnam, has completely overwhelmed the French Communist party in youth and university circles. During December some good illustrations were provided as to the means the CP leadership intends to utilize in hope of stopping this movement. .
On December 6 the first meeting of the Communist students, expelled for their pro-Chinese positions, was to be held.* A half hour before the meeting was to open, some 400 members of the Communist party entered the hall. When the speakers representing the students came to the microphone, there was a rush for the rostrum. After several minutes of fisticuffs the students were driven from the hall with blows.
The next day, the Communist party daily l'Humanité proudly gave a two-column headline to the exploit: "The Pro-Chinese Were Not Able to Speak in the Latin Quarter."
A week later the operation was repeated in the same hall but with less violence. Half of those attending consisted of CP stewards. The meeting could not be held. For an hour and a half, slogans were shouted back and forth, everybody by common accord chanting, "Down with the 'Trotskards.'"
It should be observed that while these incidents were taking place, the Latin Quarter was the scene of violent fascist attacks, the ultraright groups coming out in particular against the Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire [JCR], (Pierre Rousset, a member of the JCR, suffered a skull injury that put him in the hospital for two weeks. ) Throughout the struggles with the fascists, the Communists were nowhere to be seen; they were occupied with other business.
This pattern was not isolated to Paris, but appears to have been the same in all the cities where the pro-Chinese members tried to get organized, for instance most recently in Grenoble and Tours. The use of such methods threatens to spread to all the vanguard organizations in France where a similar radicalization occurs.
On December 10, the Communist party in Paris organized a pacifist rally at the Place de la Bastille for "Peace in Vietnam." There were around six or seven thousand persons. At the end of the meeting, the militants of the JCR, together with the pro- Chinese youth succeeded in organizing a march of 1,000 youth behind a flag of the National Liberation Front and a banner, "Long Live the Vietnamese Revolution."
The enthusiastic youth sang the Internationale and shouted, "The NLF Will Win." The demonstration lasted for more than a half hour, coming to an end after a speech by a leader of the JCR. But the marchers had to confront the stewards of the Communist party, who made four efforts to block them from moving ahead. The youth had to break through four times in violent scuffles during which some of the members of the Communist party showed their repugnance at the use of such methods.
Finally, on the evening of December 15, following the bombing of Hanoi, the
* Last April the Union des Etudiants Communistes expelled its left-wing opposition which then organized the Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire. Since then, the remaining members of the UEC became pro~Chinese and were expelled in their turn. They launched the "Jeunesse Communiste Marxiste Léniniste" with a membership of around 200 nationally in France.
Union National des Etudiants Frangais and the National Vietnam Committee* decided to organize a street demonstration for the following day. The Communist party had confined itself to a headline in their newspaper about the bombing: "They Start It Again."
The appeal for a street demonstration was broadcast on radio at 10 p.m. One hour later the CP telephoned the UNEF to let them know they were organizing a different demonstration at the same time at a different place.
Finally the student union and the National Vietnam Committee succeeded in getting the CP leadership to agree to a joint demonstration with the correct slogans.
The pon then decided to ban the rally which had been set for the Place de 1'Opéra at 6:40 p.m.
At fifteen minutes before the time jointly agreed upon with the students, the CP launched the march.
At 6:30 the students arrived at the assembly point. Some 4,000 persons had already set out with the CP without too much trouble from the police.
The students were caught in a genuine police trap. Despite the arrests and the clubbings, about 1,000 succeeded in holding their position.
As for the CP-led march, which was already a long ways ahead, it also had scuffles, but not with the police. The CP stewards ganged up on those carrying a banner of one of the participating organizations ~- the National Vietnam Committee. The banner was torn down and trampled on.
According to the latest information, the PSU, the UNEF and the Vietnam Committee; that is, three out of the four sponsoring organizations have made a joint agreement not to let these scandals go by without protesting.
* Sponsored by figures like Jean-Paul Sartre, the Comité National Vietnam is in process of bringing together all the rank-and-file committees that refuse to struggle against the war in Vietnam under the slogans of the Communist party. Among the students, the committee is being advanced particularly by the JCR and youth of the Parti Socialiste Unifié (United Socialist party). This was the body that succeeded in bringing out 7,000 persons at a rally November 28 against the U.S. aggression in Vietnam. The CP holds that in practice the National Vietnam Committee is "waging war" against its position.