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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 33, No. 2 4 March 1970

The Anti-War Movement

The Anti-War Movement

The movement is regrouping its forces after its greatest successes ever the November 15th demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco in which one million marched demanding an immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Vietnam, and the October 15th actions in which several times that number participated in demonstrations all over the country.

The Vietnam Moratorium Committee, mainly responsible for the October 15th actions, is planning to throw its support behind 'peace' candidates in the coming state elections, which means they no longer intend mass actions like the one they just built. The leadership of the New Mobilisation Committee. Largely responsible for November 15th, have turned New Mobe into a 'multi-issue radical' organisation, so that it will only mobilise a fraction of the support it formerly had as a single issue coalition. A key component of New Mobe, the Student Mobilisation Committee, is the only on-going nationwide antiwar group pressing for continuance of mass actions calling for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam The SMC is the only one of the three anti-War coalitions which calls national conferences to ensure democratic decision-making by the anti-War activities. The only New Mobe national conference led to November 15th, and the majority of the leadership does not want a repetition of that.

The leaders of the antiwar movement are more often than not interested only in pushing then own political line, and not in building the independent mass antiwar movement. They may want small 'confrontationist' actions (for example, SDS has not participated in a mass antiwar action since the first one they built in 1965). Or they may want to do something moral' — for example the pacifists who want to mobilise people to engage in civil disobedience to bum draft cards, or to refuse to pay extra taxes for the war, or their phone bills. Some want to turn the movement into a multi-issue one, especially after a big success which they think can be used to build a new parry — like the Progressive Parties of the twenties and forties. Or they want to channel the movement into support of the Democratic Party or a phony 'peace' candidate from the Democrats, such as McCarthy —who consciously tried to bring the masses away from independent action in the streets, and succeeded. The pro-Moscow Communist Party, one of the most powerful forces in the anti-War movement, is always pressuring for support for the Democrats, as opposed to mass action. As is obvious, the thrust of all these movements is away from drawing masses into the anti-War movement One million demonstrators still represent only a tiny proportion of the population of the United Stares and there is a base for antiwar sentiment (about 50% of the population) which the movement should aim to mobilise.