The Vietnam War Was the Longest Major Conflict in Which Australians Have Been Involved;

VIETNAM WAR

The Vietnam War was the longest major conflict in which Australians have been involved; from1962 to 1972.

Background

·  Vietnam was divided into the North and South when France’s occupation was challenged

·  Relations between the two Vietnams grew increasingly tense and in 1960 when issues with voting had arisen

·  Both Vietnams were ideologically opposed, the North being Communist and the South representing Capitalism

·  In 1960, the Viet Cong were established, a guerrilla group aimed at overthrowing the South

·  With the South losing the battle the United States began to significantly increase assistance to the South

·  By 1962 more than 11,000 United States military advisers had arrived in the country

·  The USA did not want their occupation to give the perception that they had taken over the French, so USA ally Australia entered

·  Australia entered the war in 1962, with a group of Army Advisors numbering 30

Conscription

·  Conscription was introduced in 1964

·  Twenty-year-old men were required to register and they were then subject to a ballot which, if their birth date was drawn, meant the possibility of two years of continuous full-time service in the regular army

·  Later ballots were even televised

·  Men who failed to comply, who misled the medical board and who made false and misleading statements were liable to prosecution and if convicted were sentenced to prison for a period equivalent to that which would have been spent on national service

·  Between 1964 and December 1972 when the Whitlam Government suspended the scheme, 804,286 twenty-year-olds registered for national service, 63,735 national servicemen served in the Army and 15,381 served in Vietnam

·  Only when the commitment increased to include national servicemen did widespread opposition to Australia’s participation in the war develop

·  After 1968 both the United States and Australia began to withdraw combat troops from Vietnam

·  Only then did the moratorium marches of the early 1970s – occurred at a time when Australia was disengaging from the war

Public Opinion

·  National service’s early opponents included the Parliamentary Opposition, religious groups, trade unionists, academics, and young men affected by the scheme

·  Youth Campaign Against Conscription (YCAC) formed in late 1964 and closely aligned to the Australian Labor Party (ALP), and Save Our Sons (SOS)

·  By 1969 those who opposed the war had increased in number and become sufficiently well organised to coordinate Australia-wide mass protests, known as the moratorium marches of 1970–71

·  Some were opposed more to conscription than to the war itself

·  But public opinion and public protest played a relatively small role in policy decisions about Vietnam.

·  Australia’s withdrawal from the war was already underway in the early 1970s when widespread protests took place in the country’s major cities