PROTEST AND DISSENT

Taken From Bob Tuesner's great PAGE
Although reports from Vietnam, notably the self-immolation of Buddhist monks, the fall of Diem, and the succession of coup and counter-coup by military cliques that followed, created the uneasy impression on concerned Australians that the government that we were supporting was no better and perhaps worse that the communists that were opposing them, opposition of Australia's involvement in Vietnam only became widespread after the introduction of compulsory national service and the decision by the Australian Government to send a battalion to South Vietnam. The leader of the Australian Labor party then in opposition, Mr Arthur Calwell stated the Labor Party firmly opposed the decision, arguing that it was based on three false assumptions: "an erroneous view of the nature of the war in Vietnam, a failure to understand the nature of the Communist challenge, and a false notion as to the interest of America and her allies."
Although the Labor Party provided some of the most effective anti-war campaigners, many of whom were ex-servicemen, the party itself was divided on the issue. Whitlam, locked in a leadership struggle with Calwell, did not want to alienate an electorate supportive of conscription and the Vietnam commitment. After Labor lost heavily in the 1966 election, Whitlam replaced Calwell as leader and did not take up the issue until the growing opposition to the war indicated that it was politically expedient to do so.
Public opposition to Australia's involvement occurred during 1965 in some public debates and teach-ins, but grew more vociferous from 1966 onwards. Apart from those with a specific interest (potential conscripts opposed to the war on such grounds as disruption to their lives, fears for personal safety, dread of the unknown, matters of conscience, or purely material considerations), the protest movement attracted diverse groups in a loose and sometimes uncomfortable alliance, university students, nonconformist groups, the political left, including some with proven links to the Communist Party, as well as those moved by conscience. This unfortunately included a hooligan element who used the movement as a cover for their antisocial behaviour. In all fairness, it must be said that the opposing, pro-war movement had its hooligan element also. Mass demonstrations were a new and effective way of attracting public attention but they did not always have the desired effect. The woman who splattered the troops of 1RAR with red paint on their welcome march in Sydney on 6 June 1966 attracted more outrage than sympathy to her cause, whatever it was.
The 1968 Tet Offensive also gave impetus to the protest movement. Although they suffered the defeat of their military objectives, the Viet Cong gained a strategic advantage from the psychological impact on the outside world. The public had been assured that the "war was being won militarily" as Westmoreland had told Congress in November 1967, and that "the pacification program was progressing satisfactorily" in President Johnson's State of the Union Address on 17 January 1968.
The Tet Offensive gave lie to these claims when it brought the full horror of war into their lounge rooms through the medium of the television sets.
The movement not only presented the case of the NLF to the public, but also disseminated its most extreme propaganda ('The Committee of Concerned Asia Scholars" did this without any pretence of discernment or even-handedness, which was most unscholarly of them, but Australian tertiary education establishments, including the Adelaide University, accepted their publications as source material without any qualification). Members of the armed forces, through their families or their associations with the public or through militant conscripts within their barracks, were targeted by pamphleteering campaigns, active proselytising or verbal abuse. Under this pressure, coupled with postal and waterside workers' strikes, the troops serving in Vietnam felt a sense of betrayal and alienation from the public and their morale suffered.
Even so, opposition to Australia's involvement in the war was not so widespread as to overthrow the government in the 1969 elections, and the Coalition Party remained in power. It was only from about 1970, when the politics of withdrawal under Nixon's presidency suggested a shameful defeat, that support for the anti-war movement became general. When Australians went to the polls in November 1972, the Labor Party, with its policy to stop conscription and overseas military commitments (called "foreign adventures"), was successful after 23 years in opposition. Many of its leading figures had been prominent in the protest movement, but that was history. Australia had already withdrawn all but her last few units from Vietnam.
The anti-war movement's effect on Australian society made the soldiers' homecoming traumatic, increasing his sense of alienation and making his return to civilian life that much more difficult.

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