On October 20, 1966, US President Lyndon B Johnson began a three-day visit to Australia. He was met with rowdy anti-Vietnam War demonstrations everywhere he went. One of the Sydney protesters opposing LBJ's visit was JOHN PERCY. He spoke to Green Left Weekly's Peter Boyle just weeks before US President George Bush's planned visit to Canberra and Sydney.
The Holt Liberal-Country Party government was an ardent supporter of the US-led war in Vietnam and expected the US president to receive a friendly public reception. What actually happened?
Johnson was met by protests wherever he went — a dramatic rejection of Prime Minister Harold Holt's sycophantic "All the way with LBJ!" slogan.
State and federal governments, and the media, schools and conservative institutions might have mobilised to get thousands out to wave US flags, but it was the anti-war protesters who made the impact and got their message heard and read around the world.
In Melbourne, Johnson's limousine was splashed with red and green paint. In Sydney, 10,000 demonstrated at Hyde Park corner as his motorcade came into the city from the airport. We broke onto the road, some lay on the road to block the cars. This is when Liberal NSW Premier Robin Askin uttered his infamous words, "Ride over the bastards."
This is how the Daily Mirror reported our actions:
"They flung themselves to the road in front of the President's car at many points of the motorcade, forcing it to a halt...
"As the motorcade approached Hyde Park corner police held back demonstrators.
"But then the barriers seemed to explode. Students flung themselves onto the roadway in front of the President's car.
"Security men and police rushed forward. Police dragged the students bodily across the asphalt.
"The car drew to a halt, the President talking on his intercom.
"Horses following the car reared. Security men rushed forward and formed a solid wall beside the car.
"As soon as one student was dragged away, another flung himself down."
And the report goes on like this for about five pages, with dramatic pictures of the protest to illustrate.
Who were the demonstrators?
They were of all ages and came from all walks of life. There were university and high school students — although high school students became involved in the movement in really huge numbers later, in 1968.
There were trade unionists, as well as more middle-class people from Sydney's north shore.
A special role was played by elderly female pensioners organised by the Communist Party of Australia, who got to the demonstration site early enough to occupy the seats laid out officially at the same spot for groups welcoming the president.
The array of printed and home-made placards that confronted Johnson showed the diversity of the demonstrators.
We had a running battle to try to drown out the Mormon Tabernacle Choir who had been allocated the same corner for the official welcome. They were belting out "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and "Deep in the Heart of Texas" and we were screaming out "Johnson — Murderer" and "Hey, hey, LBJ: How many kids did you kill today?"
The choir had the advantage of a powerful amplification system rigged up in the park. But we managed to dig up a pair of pliers. We cut their power. They repaired it. We cut it in another spot. They repaired it again. We cut it again, and fortunately we were on top at the crucial time when Johnson came into view!
After the motorcade passed, most of us ran through the park to the Art Gallery, and got there before Johnson. The press reported two lots of demonstrators — really it was the same crowd — we moved fast!
The motorcade also moved fast after its confrontation with us, so fast that the kids who'd been dragooned out of school to line the streets didn't realise he'd gone past. The editorials the next day railed at the cold-hearted demonstrators who forced the president to speed through the city, spoiling the day for the school children.
The many flagpoles outside the gallery sported US flags, and cheers went up in turn as demonstrators succeeded in hauling down all but one of them.
What was the attitude of the ALP to the protests?
Arthur Calwell, the ALP leader at the time, had taken a principled stand on the war, calling for an end to conscription and the withdrawal of troops, even though on other issues he was a right-wing ALP leader. In January 1967, he participated at the head of a protest under the Harbour Bridge against visiting South Vietnamese dictator Marshall Ky.
But the "technocratic" new right-wing in the ALP, led by Gough Whitlam, was already moving against Calwell, to water down the ALP policy on Vietnam. Whitlam replaced Calwell as ALP leader a few months after Labor's defeat at the November 1966 federal election.
The ruling class campaigned against Calwell, partly because he'd been too outspoken on Vietnam. Whitlam pulled the ALP back from that outspoken stance, replacing the "withdraw the troops" line with "withdraw to holding areas". Sadly, this change in leadership, guaranteeing a retreat on Vietnam policy, was effectively supported by many in the ALP left and the CPA.
What similarities and differences do you see between the LBJ visit and Bush's planned visit?
There are many similarities — the US mired in an increasingly unpopular war, hundreds of thousands of troops tied down overseas, a fawning lap-dog Australian PM.
The biggest difference is that back then there were still hundreds of thousands out on the streets in Sydney and Melbourne to welcome Johnson.
After the reception Johnson received in Sydney and Melbourne, a US president didn't come back to Australia for 25 years. The US government expected hostile receptions in the Third World, but in its loyal ally Australia, it was a bit of a shock.
US presidents have now returned, but they don't let ordinary people get within a kilometre of them, they are protected by thousands of troops and cops, and flown in by helicopter. A frequent response this week selling Green Left Weekly with the cover announcing Bush's visit is that people want to know when, vowing that they'll be there with a carton of eggs!
The anti-Vietnam War movement went through several stages of growth and contraction. What stage was it at at the time of LBJ's visit?
The movement was growing at the time and the anti-Johnson demos were the biggest yet. When Whitlam replaced Calwell and the ALP moderated its stance, the movement was disoriented for a while. But the ALP right — and "left" — couldn't hold the movement back permanently. The campaign exploded in a big way, here and around the world, following the Vietnamese Tet offensive at the start of 1968. But 1968 was a special year all round, with the May-June revolutionary events in France, big student demonstrations in Mexico, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the protests against that.
The movement here was also affected by the rhythm of the movement in the US. We took our cue from big demonstrations and national days of action there, emphasising the international nature of the opposition to the war. But we also suffered from the efforts by conservative forces in the US peace movement to tone down protests during election years, and redirect energy towards supporting the "peace" candidate among the capitalist politicians. (Johnson himself had been the recipient of such illusions!) The Vietnam Action Campaign (VAC) was formed in Sydney in 1965, and was soon running on organising frequent and growing demonstrations, taking a lot of the space previously claimed by the more conservative peace organisations such as the Association for International Cooperation and Disarmament, in which the CPA was the main force supported by the left-wing unions and some of the churches.
The CPA was the dominant force on the left but radicalising young people were not attracted to it. I became convinced of an anti-Stalinist perspective, but there was nothing to join. The small Trotskyist group in Sydney had split. Some of its former members, such as Bob Gould and Ian Macdougall, were organising VAC. Radicalising students joined the University Labor Clubs, and organisations modelled on the US Students for Democratic Society were formed in several cities.
In 1967, the young activists attracted to VAC and the Sydney University Labor Club established the socialist youth organisation Resistance. It took us a while and a number of political struggles to get a serious Marxist party going, but in January 1972, we founded the Socialist Workers League, the precursor to the Democratic Socialist Party.
Of the people who were anti-war activists then, are there many still involved in progressive politics?
Apart from myself, there are only a couple of comrades who were active in the sixties who are in the DSP today, for example Ted and Gail Lord in Sydney, but there are a lot more who are in the Socialist Alliance, and the big demonstrations against the Iraq war have been a great opportunity for meeting up with old activists from the Vietnam War days.
Noel Hazard was the photographer for the CPA's paper Tribune in those years, and his photographs are in the Mitchell Library. He's an activist in the Socialist Alliance.
One of the students whose photo was on front pages all around the world, lying on the road blocking Johnson's car, was Barbara Curthoys. Her parents were leading CPA members, and she was in VAC and involved in the early days of Resistance.
Most of those who lay on the road didn't get arrested — the cops were so frantic just to clear the road, they had not time to go through the process of arrest. When they realised what a public relations disaster they had on their hands, they desperately wanted revenge, and so were randomly arresting people at the demonstration at the Art Gallery later. One of these was Gordon Biok, still an activist on Asia-Pacific solidarity and anti-war issues today.
US President George Bush will coming to Australia next month. Will you be there?
Yes, I will be there to help give him a similar reception to the one we gave LBJ and we should urge every one of the million people who protested against the war on Iraq last February to come out again. Let's show Howard and Bush that this powerful movement against their illegal and unjust war has not been silenced.
[John Percy is now national secretary of the Democratic Socialist Party and a member of the Socialist Alliance. He is writing a book on the revolutionary left in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s. During the build up towards the Bush visit protests, Green Left Weekly is asking for those who participated in the LBJ visit protests to send their recollections to <glw@greenleft.org.au>]
From Green Left Weekly, October 1, 2003.
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