Radical students at University of Qld were proclaiming public “Support the NLF” in a demonstration in October 1968. Some students marched holding up NLF flags. Here is one commentary of the politics behind these actions:
“The following year, Laver spoke at a conference titled “Left Action Conference” held over Easter in 1969 at Teachers Federation auditorium in Sussex Street, Sydney. It was organized by the Aarons faction of the Communist Party and drew an audience of 700 or so who were mostly student radicals and included a couple of hundred working-class militants.
Papers were delivered by Laurie Aarons (CPA secretary), Bob Gould, Jack Heffernan of the Sheet Metal Workers Union, Dan O’Neill, Peter Wertheim, Denis Freney (then Revolutionary Socialist Alliance secretary), Brian Laver, John Baker and Laurie Carmichael of the Victorian Amalgamated Engineering Union. People like Albert Langer, Ken McLeod and Darce Cassidy were there also.
The silver-tongued, charismatic Brian Laver made an impact with rousing speeches for “occupation of the factories”, “action committees as instruments of dual power”, and the like, which were greeted with thunderous applause.
Laver moved a resolution that all future antiwar activity should have as its central proposition: “Support the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam”.”
I remember thinking in the moratorium march I attended in 1971 how opportunistic was this support for the NLF. I may be wrong, however Laver/RSSA focus was in the student struggles in Europe and lacked real ties with the NLF. Compare that to the Socialist Party of Australia’s Jim Henderson who taught in Vietnam and retained ties with the NLF right through the war and after.
Countering this view was this comment:
“The students had direct communication. Exchanged messages of support (that I think are are printed in Semper). They sent NLF flags to Brisbane that the students copied and reproduced to use in their marches in Brisbane. The students even hosted a NLF delegation that toured Australia including coming to Brisbane. I even remember meeting them briefly.”
However these contacts may have been more ephemeral than real organisational links. I don’t know for sure, I was not a member of the RSSA (if they had a membership, that is) or other student groups.
However in 1978 I did attend a meeting of two trade union leaders from Vietnam at the wharfies club. George Georges was the chairperson. We were attacked by boat people bussed in from Wacol Migrant Centre by a Catholic organisation and some of us were arrested by Special Branch and Task force.
The boat people peppered the meeting room with stones smashing the windows and when we went outside they threw coke cans at us squashed in form of ninjas stars. They mobbed Georges car as he tried to rescue the Vietnamese Trade Union delegates from the front of the waterside workers hall.
One member of the RSSA wrote this account:
“There was a Labor Day march with Gough Whitlam the previous week to the Moratorium. I marched with RSSA at the time. Several times Laver or Dick Shearman tried to address the crowd from a bus stop seat or litter bin. They were pushed aside. We shrugged it off. That is until we got to the exhibition grounds where there was a huge crowd, all the families. Whitlam was going to address the crowd. We were surrounded by Tom Burns and his cohort of union heavies, some very thuggish. They threatened to beat the shit out of us if there was any disruption.”
Yet Trades and Labour Council secretaries, Alec McDonald and Hugh Hamilton, were always sympathetic to the students? I remember the warmth of the reception we always had in the late 1970s in the Building Workers Industrial Union (BWIU) rooms up on Petrie Terrace.
During the student agitation an ‘urgent telegram’ came from Hanoi that was passed on and printed in full in Semper on 31 March 1969:
‘Wholeheartedly welcome your initiative on enlisting volunteer regiment supporting SVNNFL regarding it as Australian studants’ [sic] political fine attitude towards Vietnamese people just struggle against US aggression stop send you willingly NFL flag as present to regiment stop wishing you big success in study and activities stop.’
Displayed prominently on the (Semper) page, the urgent message was surrounded by a long charter outlining the role and aims of the UQ National Liberation Front regiment. The article called for volunteers ‘to help rebuild Vietnam when, not if, the NLF defeat US imperialism’ and to assist in the peaceful reunification of Vietnam. I thought this was rather admirable. But the university was distressed, conservatives horrified, and Premier Bjelke-Petersen outraged at this treasonous initiative. An NLF regiment on UQ campus? Where? It was an affront that threatened the smooth flow of learning to all right-minded students. The telegram from Hanoi caused questions in parliament about the dangerous agitators on campus.”
Perhaps the final say should go to the person who restrained Laver at the moratorium, a waterside worker, Phil O’Brien. Phil O’Brien apologised to Laver for his actions on that day and offered as a token his book (written with Bernie Dowling) called ‘Towards Peace – a workers journey’. Laver accepted Phil O’Brien’s apology and put the gift in Emma’s Bookshop with a price tag of $35.
Ian Curr
October 2020