VIEWS OF THE WEEK
Warbey's Wanderings
ON January 4, Mr. William Warbey, Labour MP for Ashfield, and his wife arrived in Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam, where they were greeted at Gia-lam airport by Mr. Tran Xuan Bach, Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, and other members of that body. For the next ten days they stayed at the Thong Nhat Hotel as guests of the Front. In the course of a television programme (Dateline, February 9), Mr. Warbey himself confirmed that his hotel expenses had been paid by the Vietnam Father- land Front.
Now the Vietnam Fatherland Front is a Com- munist 'front' organisation formed and financed by, the Communist regime in North Vietnam, so that it is hard to understand how Mr. Warbey can reconcile his membership of the British Labour Party with his acceptance of the hos- pitality of such a body. His trip appears more puzzling still in view of the fact that North Vietnam is, at the present time, directing and (upplying armed aggression against a friendly state, South Vietnam, and is responsible for the killing of both South Vietnamese and Ameri- cans. Moreover, North Vietnam has repeatedly expressed its wholehearted support for Indo- nesian aggression against a Commonwealth country, Malaysia, in a war in which British soldiers are being killed.
During the course of the Warbeys' stay in Hanoi, the North Vietnamese Communist Party daily newspaper, Nhan Dan, published an article on Britain (Nhan Dan, January 12). The follow- ing is an excerpt from an English language sum- mary of the article broadcast by Hanoi Radio on January 12: 'The policy of the Wilson govern- ment proves that the British Labour Party and Conservative Party are jackals of the same line. The Wilson government has shown itself to be the tool in the service of the interests of monopoly capital.' No word of dissent from Mr. Warbey was published or broadcast in North Vietnam or, so far as we know, anywhere else.
On his return journey from Hanoi, Mr. Warbey stopped at Peking, where, on January 16, he held talks with Nguyen Minh Phuong, the acting head of the permanent delegation in China of the National Front for the Liberation of South Viet- nam, the body which is directing the Viet Cong war in South Vietnam. Hanoi Radio recorded in an English language broadcast on January 20: 'W. Warbey cordially talked with Nguyen Minh Phuong . . . Warbey underlined the un- just and atrocious character of the aggressive war waged by the US government and the blame- worthy collusion of the, British government in that war.'
Mr. Warbey brought back to this country in his baggage a Vietnamese Communist propa- ganda film, part of which has already been shown on BBC Television (Tonight, February 8). He himself has not been idle since his arrival in London, for he has published a long letter to The Times and two articles in the Guardian about Vietnam. In addition, he has appeared in three television programmes (Panorama, Febru- ary 8; Dateline, Febrbary 9; and Arena, February 11) and has spoken in sound broadcasts in the BBC General Overseas Service. He is among the Labour MPs who tabled a motion in the House of .Commons on February 10 to bring pressure
on their leaders to change present British policy on Vietnam.
All of this activity will come as no surprise to anyone who knows of the Hanoi Radio broad- cast describing Mr. Warbey's conversation with Nguyen Minh Phuong. The concluding passage of this broadcast said: The British people and other progressive people in Britain [sic], including Members of Parliament, had constantly struggled to urge that the British government take measures to make the US government stop its aggressive war in South Vietnam and withdraw all its troops from there. Mr. Warbey said, We have been work- ing actively for this goal and will continue to do so still more actively. 1 am confident in your inevitable success and that eventually the US imperialists have to withdraw from South Viet- nam, where they are being defeated both mili- tarily and politically.' (Hanoi Radio English language broadcast, January 20.)
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