SUPPORT THE VIETNAMESE REVOLUTION!
(The following statement was issued February 5 by the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International. This is the World Party of Socialist Revolution founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938.]
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The International Executive Committee of the Fourth International salutes the indomitable courage of the National Liberation Front fighters, both those engaged in guerrilla war and those in the urban centers, who have launched a general offensive against the occupation forces of American imperialism and its Thieu-Ky regime lackies.
The extent of the offensive, the heroism of the fighters, the mass upris~ ing of the workers and the poor in many cities, have once again confirmed the fact that the NLF enjoys the support of the vast majority of the working people of South Vietnam -- without this support it could not have stood up to the assault of the concentrated military power of the United States.
In spite of the deluge of fire and steel that the criminal imperialist bombings have rained on the cities and villages of Vietnam; in spite of napalm, suffocating gas, the destruction of villages, torture and massacre of prisoners, the Vietnamese people have more than held their own. Their heroism is an unprecedented example of what can be achieved by a people conscious that they are fighting for their national and social liberation.
Now more than ever in these days of bloody struggles in Vietnam, the most urgent duty of the international workers movement is to come to the immediate aid of the Vietnamese revolution.
Now more than ever this aid must go beyond the stage of passive demonstrations and collecting money and medical supplies, however useful and necessary that may be.
To rise to the height of the demands posed by the struggle of the Vietmamese people, international solidarity must take the form of ceaseless harass-
ment of the American war machine. Follow-
ing the example of the Australian long-
shoremen and the Japanese unions, it must
take the form of refusal to load and un-
load or transport American troops or muni-
tions. Through ever more militant demon-
strations and strikes it must force the
governments of all capitalist countries
to deny all direct or indirect aid to the
Yankee war machine and block any shipping
of arms to the counterrevolutionary im-
perialist armies engaged in the Vietnam
war.
The example of the small People's
Republic of Korea, moreover, has clearly
shown how right it was to call fora
vigorous "counterescalation" of anticapi-
talist forces throughout the world. It
has shown that American imperialism is
disconcerted by counterblows elsewhere
than Vietnam and that Che Guevara's ap-
peal for the creation of a "second, a
third Vietnam" -- far from being irre-
sponsible or romantic ~- corresponds to
the opportunities and needs of the mo-
ment.
The Executive Committee of the
Fourth International calls on the work-
ing masses of the USSR, the People's Re-
public of China and all the workers
states to bring maximum pressure to bear
on their governments to increase their
aid to the Vietnamese revolution and to
combine this with active assistance to
revolutionary movements and abandonment
of their disastrous so-called "peaceful
coexistence" strategy. The Fourth Inter-
national once more calls on the Soviet
government to reaffirm its public guar-~
antee of support to the People's Repub-
lic of China against any imperialist ag-
gression and on this basis to consti-
tute a real anti-imperialist united
front of all the countries that have
abolished capitalism.
Glory_to the heroic fighters of
the NLF and the Democratic Republic of
Vietnam!
Long live active international
solidarity with the Vietnamese revolu-
tion!
Long live the world socialist
revolution!
WILSON'S "SPECIAL RELATIONSHI
Harold Wilson's trip across the Atlantic paid off handsomely for the British prime minister. He was granted an extra long conversation with Johnson February 8
"The President had originally set aside only an hour and a half for Mr. Wilson," Joseph C. Harsch reported in the February 12 Christian Science Monitor. "It was stretched to four hours. At the risk of sounding overly cynical, it can be said that verbal disapproval of the North Koreans bought Mr. Wilson the extra two and one-half hours of visible presidential camaraderie. This in turn should, or was supposed to, help Mr. Wilson's ‘image' back in Britain."
It appears that