Violence Erupts at London Vietnam War Protest

Arrest at Grosvenor Square Anti-Vietnam Protest.  Photo: (c) Alamy
A peaceful rally protesting the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was held at Trafalgar Square, London on March 17th, 1968, drawing a crowd of 10,000.

After the rally a smaller group of protestors marched on the U.S. Embassy at Grosvenor's Square, where a police cordon and mounted officers faced off with the crowd.   Conflicting accounts of how violence began, include reports of the officers riding directly into the protestors to clear them away.  Subsequently the protest turned into a mob scene, in which more than 80 people were injured, and 246 people were arrested.


As Donald Macintyre recalled his participation:

It had all started peacefully enough at a rally in Trafalgar Square. The highlight was the appearance of the 31-year-old actress Vanessa Redgrave (not yet a Workers Revolutionary party member) 

The real trouble started as the march turned down North Audley Street to face a phalanx of police at the entrance to the square. The police would say later they were only trying to channel the marchers into a specific route – but to most marchers it seemed that they were trying to block their entrance to the square. 

I have little memory of breaking through the cordon, or of how our little group of students found ourselves in the protest’s frontline, arms linked and with only a hedge, railings and a long line of police and the road between us and the embassy. Nor do I really recall when the police horses were brought into the square to confront the demonstrators.

But I do remember being pulled by the hair out of the crowd by a policeman; he pulled as a burly colleague assisted him by pushing.  I was thrown over the fence and given a half-hearted kicking by a couple of other officers before being carted off to the waiting green bus.

Grosvenor Square, London, in March 1968. Photograph: Allen/ANL/REX/Shutterstock
Photo (c) David Hurn, Magnum


Sources:

My part in the anti-war demo that changed protest for ever, by Donald Macintyre, Guardian News (11 Mar 2018)



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