SHOUTS ANTI-JOHNSON SLOGAN
Brussels
If there was any doubt about the deep feelings of the Belgian working masses about the war in Vietnam it was settled by the turn out and spirit of a giant antiwar demonstration March 4. It was without question the largest and most militant march held to date in all of Europe. More than 10,000 people marched down the main boulevard cheered on by the sympathetic crowds lining the sidewalks. Although its central theme and main slogans were for the immediate cessation of the bombing of north Vietnam by American war planes and the total withdrawal of all American troops and self-determination of the Vietnamese people, there could be no mistake in the message it gave to the military high command of SHAPE who have just set up headquarters here. They had a recent fancy little ceremony welcoming themselves to Belgium. They got their response in the streets of Brussels.
A big proportion of the demonstration was made up of young people and their mood was exhilarating. They sang, laughed and chanted slogans. Students locked arms and did snake dances while chanting -- "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Even little toddlers formed their own contingent and repeated the slogan of their elders.
How deep the mass consciousness on the war goes was revealed in a recent questionnaire distributed to school children. Asked to name their most hated as well as most popular public figures, Hitler and Johnson turned out to be the most hated. This is all the more surprising since the mass media is almost completely pro-American and the TV particularly, unlike the TV elsewhere, carries only a very little on the war and this is carefully screened.
The dominant note in the march was internationalism. It was obvious that the great majority of the people considered themselves active partisans of the National Front for Liberation. The NFL flag and symbols were everywhere. For the older generation the parallel with Spain of the thirties was obvious and one heard many remarks about this., Between the shouting of. slogans and the singing, many discussions went on. There was very little sign of the divisions between Walloon, Flemish and Bruxelloise which, to believe the bourgeois and Social Democratic press, is supposed to dominate all Belgian life. The outpouring of Belgian spirit and enthusiasm and humor showed the country at its best -- contempt for the ruling classes, the police and the coterie of high military who have now moved into Belgium.
All the more opportunist and retrograde then were the antics of the tiny pro-Mao Communist group here. Their main orientation is back to Stalin, back to the popular front of the "nation" against the "Yankee Nazis." In this demonstration they received a windfall of publicity from the bourgeois press which tried to minimize the significance and importance of the demonstration by playing up the sectarian antics of this group which for the most part were hardly noticed by the demonstrators themselves. .
The pro-Maoists had denounced the ad hoc committee that organized the demonstration as a combination of "fascists and Trotskyists." Their own policy has been a consistent one of trying to mount their own demonstrations and just as consistently hardly getting a baker's dozen out. Now they have switched to joining in any other demonstration, and by colorful concentration of their people, banners, etc., seek to make up in effect what they lack in influence.
This caught the eye of the bourgeois press and to read their accounts that is all that happened. And of course the pro-Maoists locally and internationally have tried to parlay this publicity into a very misleading impression of Mao's influence in Belgiun.
The demonstration was organized and led by an ad hoc committee that took in the entire left spectrum of Belgian politics. It was a committee that was first advocated and then patiently assembled principally through the work of the CST [Socialist Workers Confederation) and their leader Pierre Le Gréve, member of parliament. The latter, a forceful and effective speaker and organizer, has fought hard and long to make possible actions such as the one on March 4.
The CST and the Young Guard Socialists were everywhere in the demonstration, distributing their material and particularly their programmatic statement on the war in Vietnam where they went beyond the official slogans to bring home the lessons of the war and the need for solidarity with the Vietnamese revolution.
At the very beginning, police squads swooped down and seized large quantities of the leaflets and tried to prevent their distribution. But upon the intervention of Le Gréve and in face of the general solidarity and hostility of the massive demonstration, the police retreated.
Some fascist grouplets tried provocations at the fringes of the demonstration, but did not get very far.
The hands of the Belgians are reaching out to the Vietnamese. Their demonstration makes this clear. And it is just as clear that the continuation of the American action in Vietnam is going to increase the hatred for Johnson and the Pentagon.
LONDON