The Danish debate on support to the African liberation movements

By Steen Christensen

 

 

In a recent book, the then leader of the opposition and present Prime Minister Anders Fog Rasmussen calls for a Danish ”Truth Commission” to look into the activities of and form the background for a ”showdown with those forces who during the Cold War aided the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact“.[1] The background for this proposal announced August 2002 by the Liberal Party was the bitter political debate that raged in the 1980s, when the opposition parties to the Conservative-Liberal government used its parliamentary majority to pursue a foreign policy critical of nuclear weapons, a period that came to be known as the ”footnote period”. The parliamentary abnormality was that the Conservative-Liberal government accepted to be constantly defeated in foreign policy and did not make the issue a cabinet issue.

But the issue non the less created a bitter division in Parliament, and in 1999 – years after the issue was effectively closed by the inclusion of the small centre party, the Radical Liberals, in government in 1988, the then leader of the opposition wanted to settle the score. However, interestingly enough, he used the South African Truth Commission as his terms of reference. But only one part of the South African context. He never mentioned the reconciliation part. However, in the South African example, reconciliation is as much an integral part of the concept as the seeking of truth. This is either a conscious misrepresentation of the facts in order to gain a perceived political advantage or mere ignorance.

In the above mentioned book, Bertel Haarder, in 2002 minister for Europe and for integration, writes:

”How could the dictatorship to that degree be planted in the innermost heart of intelligent Danish intellectuals, so that they forgot all about democracy and human rights?“[2]

The strong language is remarkable because a case can be made for the fact that the same Liberal and Conservative politicians who attacked their opposite numbers with such vehemence, themselves were rather careless with their concern for the respect of the human rights and democracy when it came to the struggle for freedom of Southern Africa.

 

The political environment in the 1960s and 1970s

The stronger ideological currents that began to sweep Western Europe in the second half of the 1960s and lasted during the 1970s, with a stronger polarisation between the left and right as a result, and with a greater fragmentation on the political left, which was atomized into many different ideological currents that challenged the extreme left preponderance of the Communists in many countries, also left its substantial mark on Denmark. In one particular respect Denmark was different from most other Western European countries. In Denmark the backbone of the communist party was broken already after the uprising in Hungary in 1956. The newly formed People’s Socialist Party was born on the ashes of the communist party and created its own political identity apart from the Communist Party, which thereafter only played a very minor role in Danish Parliamentary politics.

Twice during the two decades (the 1960s and 1970s) did the parliamentary Left (the Social Democrats and the People’s Socialist Party) have a majority, although a paper thin majority, namely from 1966 to 1967, and from 1971 to 1973. During those short periods, the so called ”workers majority“, ideological discussions naturally came more to the front. Was it possible to use the parliamentary majority for major advances towards socialism? And how was socialism to be defined? It was soon clear that there was no unanimity when it came to the definition of socialism on the left – the new situation brought out all the various interpretations of socialism on the Left that reigned since the heady days of the middle 1960s – and that there were definite limits to the practical application and use of the left wing majority. The first majority broke with a split of the People’s Socialist Party resulting in the birth of a new left wing Party, the Left Socialists, and the second majority resulted in the 1973 electoral debacle which saw the emergence of a populist right wing party and the reduction of support of all the existing political parties.

This political polarisation, which also included more ideological competition on both the left and right, also affected the Danish debate on foreign policy, which had until then been an area of relative consensus (with the exception of The People’s Socialist Party, which both opposed NATO and at a later stage the EEC). This consensus was still retained concerning the most essential pillars of Danish foreign policy: the membership of the UN, NATO, the application for membership and joining of the Common Market and membership of the Nordic Council. But in the area of policy towards the developing world cracks appeared in the until then existing consensus. This most dramatically came to the fore with the attempt of the Liberal government in 1974 to change the direction of the Danish support to the African liberation movements.

 

The political debate over support to the African liberation movements

Very early Danish governments condemned the apartheid regime in South Africa and called for majority rule in Portuguese Africa and Southern Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe). At the UN General Assembly in 1963, foreign minister Per Hækkerup applauded the weapons sanctions against South Africa, but stressed that this was not enough. He gave the undertaking that the Danish government would support an action oriented policy in order to:

”…create a real democratic, multiracial society of free people with equal rights for all individuals irrespective of race”.

He later followed this up by setting aside DKK 250.000 for the victims of apartheid with special emphasis on education of young South Africans particularly those in exile.

This was the beginning of a policy that in Parliament was initiated by the Social Democratic Party. It was not the invention of the Social Democratic Party, since broad forces in society already had called for political action against the South African apartheid regime. This orientation of Danish foreign policy was to be the subject of some of the most acrimonious debates concerning Danish foreign policy in the post World War II period, only rivalled by the divisive debates in the 1970s over accession to the EEC, and in the 1980s over security policy, especially nuclear weapons. It was to split the normal Danish consensus over foreign policy and create a battle front between on the one side the centre-left and on the other side the liberal-conservative parties.

 

Whereas the criticism of South Africa was straight forward and did not present complications, the question of Portugal presented other political problems. Portugal was an ally in NATO. From the American archives, we know that especially the United States subordinated the interests of the African liberation movements to the strategic interests of the United States, particularly the availability of the Azores Island base, and we also know that the Portuguese government eagerly exploited this interest. In opposing American covert support to the leader of the Angolan nationalist movement, FNLA, Holden Roberto, the Undersecretary of State George Ball wrote to the Secretary of State Dean Rusk: ”..I do not believe that the United States should undertake a joint venture with the communists to undermine a Western ally…”.[3] The Danish government over the years openly criticised the Portuguese government for its policies in the colonies, even though some forces on the right of the political spectrum did not concur in this, and thought that the Portuguese should be considered as a bulwark against communism in Africa. The Portuguese reacted quite annoyed at this criticism and even attempted to make an analogy between Portugal and Portugal Ultramar and Denmark and Greenland, ignoring the minor details that the population in Greenland had human and political rights like people in Denmark and could leave the union with Denmark at will.

However, Portugal could not have entertained its war efforts in the colonies without weapons from its allies, and even though the United States proclaimed that it did not provide weapons to the wars in the colonies, this was one of the policies that were full of loopholes. Even if it was denied by the American officials, it was an open secret that the Portuguese could not have pursued their wars in Africa without access to weapons from their allies. Therefore the Danish membership of NATO did become an element in the domestic political debate. The government was attacked by the Left for collusion with the Portuguese government because of the joint membership of NATO. When the leader of the MPLA, Agostinho Neto in July 1970 visited Denmark as the guest of the Social Democratic Party, he was asked precisely this question during a press conference. He answered that:

”..he was here because he had understood that the Social Democratic Party supported the freedom fight of the MPLA. As concerned NATO … It was not Denmark that should leave NATO, but Portugal”.[4]

The former Angolan foreign minister, Paulo Jorge, years later answered this question by saying:

”These governments had their relations, accords and agreements. It was not for us to tell them that they could not be part of this or that European organization. Our interest was that they found a way of helping us and that they did not interfere in the war”.[5]

 

The Danish support of the victims of apartheid – as the support to the individuals and the liberation movements came to be known – was at the beginning modest, and only focused on South Africa. But even during the centre-right government of Hilmar Baunsgaard, 1968-1971, the support was continued. In the light of the later uncompromising political debate, it is interesting to note that the Liberal Party foreign minister Poul Hartling even approved support for two African liberation movements, the MPLA of Angola and the Frelimo of Mozambique.

The support was given after advice from an advisory committee, commonly known as the anti-apartheid committee, consisting mainly of non-governmental organizations. Unlike the Swedish and Norwegian support to the liberation movements, the Danish support was given exclusively through other organizations, be it UN specialised agencies or private non governmental organizations. No aid was given directly to the liberation movements. 

 

At the Social Democratic Party congress in 1969, a resolution was carried that gave explicit support to the liberation movements. However, the Social Democratic parliamentary group was at first not very eager to follow this new policy up in Parliament. So, when the Left Socialists presented the Social Democratic Party congress resolution as an act of Parliament, the Parliamentary group abstained with the argument that in view of the government’s majority it could not pass. This resulted in a sharp protest from Frit Forum, the Social Democratic Students’ Federation which called for a corresponding Social Democratic initiative.[6]

When the party leader Jens Otto Krag in 1971 again formed a minority Social Democratic government (with the support of the Socialist People’s Party), the new foreign minister K.B. Andersen substantially increased the support to the liberation movements against the opposition of the right wing parties. In the financial year of 1971 (the last year of the centre-right government) the allocation amounted to DKK 700.000 and K. B. Andersen immediately raised this to DKK 6,5 million. This amount grew steadily and reached under the brief Social Democratic- Liberal government in 1979 DKK 25 million. All in all the allocation over the twenty-year span amounted to a total of 975 million Danish kroner.

 

This may sound impressive, but it was in reality but a minor proportion of the substantial allocations to development assistance from Denmark during the same period. But nonetheless, the policy of supporting the liberation movements was soon subjected to heavy attacks from the Liberal, Conservative and Progress Parties. The government was attacked for allegedly supporting communists and thereby indirectly being stooges of Moscow. A Conservative Member of Parliament wrote thus about the support to the liberation movements:

”Does the Social Democratic Party really believe that Denmark stands any chance of competing with the Soviet Union and the GDR in these new countries, if the communist movements get into power? It is high time that this odd piece of Danish foreign policy is taken away from the left wing of the Social Democratic Party”.[7]

A Conservative Party spokesman categorically announced that ”Danish assistance will inevitably support the Marxist guerrillas”. He also in the same breath branded the leader of the PAIGC of Guinea-Bissau, Amilcar Cabral, as a ”communist of a Moscow persuasion”.[8]

The so-called Progress Party (a populist party represented in Parliament from 1973) was even more categorical. An MP stated that:

”The first of May hysteria with hackneyed phrases of freedom is meant to make headway for support from the people to increased appropriations to the communists’ wars of aggression in Southern Africa”.[9]

Foreign minister K.B. Andersen, who was constantly at the receiving end of strong verbal criticism from the opposition, writes in his memoirs:

”My constantly repeated argument was that we did not do Western democracies any service by turning our back on the liberation movements. And how could we anyway dream of demanding democratic governments in societies that because of illiteracy, oppression, poverty and political lack of freedom did not stand a chance of undergoing a democratic development in our sense”.[10]

 

Danish businesses were interested in new markets, and after a successful visit by some Danish companies in Angola in 1976, the business daily, Børsen, concluded that it had been a good visit and the Council of Industry now supported the government’s intention of setting up a permanent representation in Angola.

 

No serious attempts were made by the Liberal-Conservative Parties to analyse the ideological and political statements of the leading characters of the liberation movements. (Peter la Cour’s small pamphlet does not constitute an analysis, but is rather a political statement). Had they done so, and had they not just understood the liberation movements in a cold war perspective, they might have understood that the liberation movements were not mere stooges of Moscow, Beijing or Havana, but basically nationalists who just wanted their inalienable right to decide their own future by themselves.

 

The critique of the Left

One should have thought that the left wing would be satisfied with the Danish assistance to the liberation movements, and that the harsh criticism that was directed at the Social Democratic Party from the Liberal-Conservative Parties would make the left rally to the support of the government. This was, however, not unambiguously so. The far left did not believe that the Social Democrats had pure motives for supporting the liberation movements. This was expressed by the leading left wing journal, Politisk Revy, under the tasteless heading:

”The Social Democratic Party and Sydafrika-Aktionen [i.e. a network of non-governmental organizations dealing with Southern Africa, SC] save the Negroes from communism”.

The article argued - contrary to the Liberal and Conservative Parties - that the government did not support socialist or communist organizations, but that the government in stead actively strived to see to it that the liberation movements did not become communist. The Social Democratic support to the ANC, for example, was called a ”containment strategy” vis-à-vis the more moderate parts of the leadership of the liberation movements in Southern Africa.

 

What had particularly raised the suspicion of the extreme left, was the Social Democratic Prime Minister, Anker Jørgensen’s remarks in March 1978 that:

”…a change will happen peacefully or violently. The government of South Africa has the choice between these two options. Our pressure against South Africa is our contribution to a peaceful dismantling before it is too late”.

This faith in a peaceful dismantling of apartheid apparently made the editorial writer at Politisk Revy suspect the motive of the Prime Minister:

”Anker Jørgensen’s ‘peaceful changes’ can only be interpreted as an ideological justification for the technology and capital support to the violent oppression of the South African majority, which is granted the apartheid system also from the Danish business community, and the support is the expression of the dread of a progressive line…”.

The sad thing about this line of thinking, which was not shared by the moderate left, was that it did not want to see an end to a conflict, which daily meant undreamt-of sufferings for the South African people, but would prolong it, only to score an ideological point in the domestic debate on the left of the right interpretation of the path to socialism.

 

The left’s unease with the Social Democrats was expressed on numerous occasions. During the second international Namibia Conference which took place in Paris September 11 to 13 1980, the Nordic representatives arranged a meeting with the President of the ANC, Oliver Tambo. Some of the representatives of the left took the opportunity to ask Oliver Tambo to join them in denouncing the Social Democratic governments for not doing enough. At that time I was the international secretary of the Social Democratic Party, and the Danish representatives seized the opportunity and attacked the Social Democratic Party and the government, which finally made Oliver Tambo intervene saying that he could not believe what they said about the government and especially the foreign minister, who was his good friend. And I quote from my report:

”There is unfortunately in several of these organizations a lack of understanding that Oliver Tambo does not need coaching in Nordic politics…”

 

The Liberal Party’s attempt to change the support to the liberation movements

After the chaotic parliamentary elections in 1973, which turned Danish politics upside down, a liberal government was formed (based solely on 22 MPs from the Liberal Party). The new foreign minister Ove Guldberg decided to confront the issue of support to the liberation movements. He acknowledged that there was no majority in favour of abolishing the support, so instead he chose to change the administrative praxis. He suggested to channel the support through the various UN agencies instead of, as had been the praxis, through the non-governmental organizations.

At the same time, he hinted that the reason for this new proposal was that the support had been used for purposes that were not included in the terms of reference for the appropriation, i.e. arms for the guerrillas. Consequently he did not wish to support the liberation movements at all, but exclusively individual victims of apartheid. The fate of the apartheid appropriation then hinged on the votes of the Christian People’s Party, which supported the appropriation, but had been vaguely sceptical about some of the procedural practices. However, when Guldberg was not able to present evidence to support his claim that the appropriation was abused and was used for arms purchases, the Christian People’s Party sided with the centre-left and the foreign minister’s proposal was defeated.

This outcome did not stop the barrage of criticism from the Liberals and Conservatives. This only stopped when the Liberal Party briefly joined the Social Democratic Party in a big coalition (1978-79). The Liberal chairman and foreign minister Henning Christophersen then claimed that the Liberal opposition against the support for the liberation movements had been solely of a financial nature. The reality was that the discussion had become domestic policy more than foreign policy. This can among other things be witnessed by the positions of the former Liberal leader and former Prime Minister Poul Hartling when he became UN High Commissioner for Refugees. During a visit to the liberation movements in Lusaka he stated that ”Denmark has a very good name down here”, and that the support to the liberation movements were not used for arms:

“Not only the political leaders and administrators in the frontline states that I have visited have expressed their gratitude over the attitude of Denmark and the other Nordic countries. Also in the liberation movements you meet the same attitude. They know well that we are against apartheid…”[11]

 

So, after this conflict in the 1970s, criticism subsided, the support continued and was increased, and the political debate turned to a discussion of sanctions against South Africa.

 

Sanctions against South Africa?

The question of economic boycott came to dominate the discussions about the relations towards southern Africa, when the debate about the support to the liberation movements ceased. For many years there was a consensus that sanctions against the apartheid regime were necessary. But it was considered most effective if the sanctions were all encompassing and were passed by the UN. This changed in the 1970s. The triggering factor was the import of South African coal. The centre-left political parties wanted to stop the coal import by the electricity company, ELSAM, whereas the Liberal-Conservative parties argued:

”…that I do not for one minute believe that conditions in South Africa will either improve or deteriorate if we use Russian or Polish coal in stead of South African coal”.[12]

Nonetheless, Parliament in May 1978 passed an ordinance asking ELSAM “if possible to buy coal in other countries than South Africa”.

 

Sanctions again came to the fore of the political agenda during the Liberal-Conservative government 1982-1993. In 1986 a majority in Parliament (excluding the government) passed unilateral trade sanctions against South Africa. This is probably the only initiative in the Nordic struggle against apartheid where Denmark went alone. Neither Sweden nor Norway followed suit. An attempt during the Nordic Workers’ Congress in Göteborg in 1986 (in a meeting between Anker Jørgensen and the Swedish party leader and Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson) to make Sweden join the unilateral sanctions, was kindly but firmly rejected.

A final round of polemics concerning sanctions were strangely enough initiated just when South Africa was in the precarious transition from apartheid to majority rule. Liberal-Conservative voices were raised in favour of lifting sanctions, even before the final transition had been negotiated and still hung in the balance. But the majority in Parliament stuck with the argument which Nelson Mandela put forward: ”To remove sanctions now is the same as disarming us in the middle of the decisive battle”.[13] So sanctions stayed in place until the transition had been finally approved by the first free parliamentary elections.

 

I think it is fair to say that the discussion concerning sanctions also took on a domestic political angle. In government the Social Democrats had been hesitant to introduce unilateral sanctions, but when a Liberal-conservative government did not have a foreign policy majority, this was made use of.

 

The left wing disappointment with the ideological orientation of the newly liberated Southern African states

To many on the Left, who had put great hopes in the foreseen revolutionary changes once the liberation movements with their professed socialist ideologies came into power, disappointment soon developed. Much of this frustration stemmed from the lack of understanding that the real content of the ideology, apart from all the socialist vocabulary, was nationalism, not an idealistic form of socialism, which many supporters chose to believe. And consequently, it created frustration after the formal independence. The left was disappointed that the post-independence development did not take on a socialist orientation. They had clearly underestimated, partly the true nature of nationalism, and partly the iron laws of capitalist development, which did not leave much room for socialism in a developing country.

The new African governments in Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, all had to confront the tough conditions of real life in underdevelopment. The countries were still run by capitalist economies, and change was a difficult challenge. The international environment was not assisting them in any way. The Western countries were suspicious of any attempt at change which would touch any privileges of the existing order. Take for example the difficulties in bringing about land reform in Zimbabwe. The Cold War came to Africa in full force with the independence of Angola and Mozambique. And the South African regime was fighting its rearguard actions in order to prevent any outside challenges to the power monopoly of its white elite.

But many on the left were nonetheless bitterly disappointed. In Denmark the dominant non governmental organization, MS (the Danish Association for International Cooperation) which specialised in sending volunteers to the developing countries, particularly to Africa, experienced in 1981 a hectic debate along these lines. The board which predominantly consisted of representatives from the Left with a sprinkling of Social Democrats in 1981 had a discussion on sending volunteers to Zimbabwe. The Social Democrats on the board wanted immediately to send volunteers to Zimbabwe to assist the new country, which was then on the frontline of the final showdown with South Africa, while the rest of the board hesitated. As it was expressed by one of joint chairmen of MS, Peter Neersø: ”We had expected that the country had chosen a more socialist course”.[14] However, after some discussion, volunteers were dispatched to Zimbabwe.

 

Cold War, solidarity, and domestic policy

Cold War

The Liberal-Conservative opposition to the Danish support of the liberation movements was in reality based on a Cold War outlook, and not concerned with the specific conditions in Southern Africa. A prominent liberal editor, in 1978 wrote this about the Social Democratic government’s foreign policy:

”The Anker Jørgensen government in the Caribbean, in Africa, in the Middle East acts as if Denmark was one of the allies of the Soviet Union … Many, however, will see the Danish assistance as a sort of political recognition that when a colony has been abandoned by England, Portugal, France or the United States, it can be freely occupied by the Soviet Union or Cuba.”[15]

Apart from the curious claim that the United States had abandoned colonies in the Caribbean or Africa, the thinking here presented constituted the world-view of the Liberal-Conservative parties. In third world affairs, they uncritically took the side of the US government, and copied its foreign policy as their own.

Blinded by their opposition to communism, the Liberal-conservatives readily accepted the American view that most conflicts in the third world were part of a grand design on the part of international communism to push their way, with force if necessary, into previous Western strongholds. This is where they went wrong. And this is why they ended up on the wrong side of the political debate on Southern Africa.

The analysis was simply wrong. As later historical research has so abundantly demonstrated, the Soviet Union was very careful not to destroy détente and was very wary of challenging the United States. In Angola, new research has demonstrated that Cuba and the Soviet Union responded to challenges that came from Western (the United States and South Africa) initiatives.[16] When the Angolan civil war kicked off after Portugal had virtually left the country to its own devices, the competition between the three opposing movements, the MPLA, the FNLA and UNITA, was initially an open affair. The MPLA early sought Cuban and Soviet assistance, but ”Contrary to the widespread belief that Cuba rushed to the aid of the MPLA, Havana had responded slowly”.[17]

In fact, President Ford already in July 1975 approved covert aid to the FNLA and UNITA, sending in late July the first weapons via Kinshasa. This increased the strength of the FNLA and UNITA and put the MPLA under pressure. Consequently, after the MPLA approached the Cubans and asked for support, Castro asked the Soviets to agree to support the MPLA in the form of Cuban Special Forces. But Leonid Brezhnev declined on account that the dispatch of Cuban troops would hurt détente.[18] It was only after the South African invasion – in collusion with the United States - that Castro was faced with a choice: either support the MPLA massively or see it go down the drain. Castro chose to challenge the Soviet Union which still put détente above ”its internationalist obligations”. It is also part of the story that the Soviet Union was never comfortable with the MPLA’s first president Agostinho Neto, and even later took the side of his opponents, whereas the Cubans always supported Neto.

 

It is now quite clearly established that the South African invasion was done at the behest of and with the tacit support of the United States. The South African Director of Operations, General Viljoen has admitted as much:

”There is no doubt ‘Lang Hendrik’ van den Bergh [The head of BOSS, the security apparatus, SC] had extensive contacts with the CIA…They manipulated him just as they liked”.[19]

The last Afrikaaner President describes the decision to invade Angola in this way:

”My first cabinet meeting was traumatic. The normal agenda was put aside. On the table was the question of our policy on the former Portuguese colony of Angola. When Angola had become independent in 1975, South Africa had been asked by the United States and several moderate African countries to come to the aid of UNITA and the FNLA, but had had to withdraw our forces when the United States Congress demanded an end to any US involvement in the war”.[20]

The cabinet meeting then progressed to approve an expanded military effort in Angola, in order to check the military advances of the combined MPLA-Cuban forces. Great, therefore, was the surprise among the South African generals and politicians, when the US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger in Congress during the discussions of the Tunney Amendment, that forbade covert assistance to Angolan rebels, told a Senate Committee, that:

”South Africa responded by sending military equipment…without consultation with the US”.[21]

It is this policy of Realpolitik, the moving of chess pieces across the chessboard of international politics that was so dear to the heart of Henry Kissinger that trapped the Danish Liberal-Conservatives, and made them the mouthpiece of American foreign policy, abandoning their own assessment of the nature of the conflict in Southern Africa.

 

Solidarity

There is no doubt that there existed a strong feeling of solidarity towards the oppressed peoples of Southern Africa across the board of the Danish political spectre. And there is likewise no doubt that this feeling found its primary organizational expressions on the left. That those who engaged in active solidarity work were primarily people of left wing persuasion. So, I am not questioning their genuine feeling of solidarity.

I am, however, interested in to what extent the ideological differences, the different approaches to change abroad and in Denmark, came to weigh in the practical application of the solidarity work. How important was the domestic differences on the left and the left’s aversion to the moderate centre-left, particularly the Social Democrats, in comparison with the interests of the peoples of Southern Africa.

There was a history of disagreement on the left during concurrent and former conflicts, when the left debated solidarity with Southern Africa. And these differences were also inherent during this period.

 

The Vietnam movement was the first movement in support of a struggling third world people to receive broad backing in Denmark. From all over the political spectre, the Vietnamese David was supported against the American Goliath. Again the initiative to organize the solidarity work came from the left. In this case it was the far left, Kommunistisk Arbejdskreds, which took the initiative to form the Vietnam Committees. Soon other competing organizations were formed and ideological tension grew between in particular two collection initiatives, Giro 1616 and Vietnam 69. Giro 1616, which gave unconditional support to the resistance movement in Vietnam, was seen as the more radical movement, as opposed to Vietnam 69, which also grouped members of Parliament from the Radical Liberals and the Social Democratic Party. The Social Democratic Party initially had internal difficulties, with the then foreign minister Per Hækkerup forcefully supporting the American government, and opposing the Danish opposition to the war. However, opposition soon developed inside the party, and when it left government in 1968, the tide quickly turned towards a clearer position in favour of the Vietnamese people.

The differences of opinion on the left unfortunately seriously divided the Vietnam movement. Relations between the collection initiatives turned to open hostility, and the Vietnam Committees, which were dominated by the far left and the communists, split in 1969 (and even split the active communists, some of whom were excluded from the Communist Party, for supporting a more radical policy. The Communist Party feared the strong organization of the Vietnam movement, and were continuously afraid that a new left wing party was in the offing to be formed on the background of the Vietnam movement), with the more radical elements forming DDV, The Danish Vietnam Committees. But also the DDV was split on the basis of an ideological discussion. In 1970 it was debated whether the organization should have a socialist basis or just call itself socialist! The old communists – those who were excluded in 1969 – warned against the socialist label, probably fearing that this would be the basis for a new left wing party – and the DDV split down the middle. Those who left, then formed the Indochina Committees.

This entire exercise was an expression of the power struggle on the left in Denmark, mainly between the communists and the far left about the primacy on the left of the People’s Socialist Party and the Social Democrats. And thus was also about Danish politics as much as about solidarity with the people of Vietnam.

 

A similar discussion occurred after the coup d’état in September 1973 in Chile, which killed the first third world attempt with an elected socialist president. The Chilean experiment had ignited a debate on the peaceful transition to socialism. Was it possible in third world countries?

The differences on the Left became focused on who was to blame for the defeat of the Allende experiment, the Unidad Popular government for its political shortcomings (like co-opting the military in the government, its refusal to arm the peasants etc.) or the far Left, for instance the MIR (Movimiento Izquierda Revolucionario) for challenging the existing order, by for instance occupying farms. The disagreement with the reformist line of the Allende government was also at the heart of the disagreement of the Danish left. The Communist Party roundly condemned the far left for making the coup possible. An editorial in the communist daily, Land og Folk, stated that:

”When the gorillas finally succeeded to win the majority in the armed forces, the reason is partly the activities of the left wing extremists, partly a wrong strategy vis-à-vis the middle class, which especially was dominant on the left wing of the Socialist Party”.[22]

To this the organ of the far left, Politisk Revy, answered:

”The left wing in Chile –‘the left extremists, the revolutionary romantics’– did not found their policies on romantic dreams, but on year long political fighting experiences and analyses. You can, like the communists, disagree with the political line, but to dismiss it with expressions like revolutionary romantic egoism, going hand in hand with the gorillas, shows how cornered the Communist Party is in the Chile question, because the party continuously has held the Chilean experiment up as the touchstone for its strategic perception of the peaceful transition to socialism”.[23]

Orgazationally, the solidarity work with Chile also experienced a split, like the Vietnam work. The Chile Committee was split already on December 17 1973. The communists had tried to push through a decision to send the money that had been collected to an office of Chile Democratico in Rome, a communist front organization, while the left wing protested. In stead the communists resigned from the Chilekomiteen and formed their own Salvador Allende Komite. This time the Social Democrats kept out of the organizations and quite successfully conducted its own collection mainly among the trade unions.

 

There was a noticeable difference among these three examples, the Vietnam movement, the Chile movements and the support movements of the African liberation movements. The latter never suffered the divisions that had occurred with the two other examples. The answer to this is, I think, that in both Vietnam and Chile, the communist parties were strong, whereas in Portuguese Africa, they were non-existent, and Moscow long hesitated to support any one movement, and in South Africa, where there was a strong Communist Party, it had decided to subordinate its own interests to the interests of the African National Congress. Add to this that relations between the ANC and Moscow were always cool. For instance, no ANC secretary general was received at the highest level during the struggle for majority rule. Vladimir Shubin, who worked in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union with the African liberation movements thus lamented:

”..as to the ‘Soviet intentions’, unfortunately the Soviet ruling bodies, especially government departments paid much more attention to the wishes and official requests of Presidents and Prime Ministers than to those of the leaders of the liberation movements”.[24]

 

Domestic policy

Since the Danish solidarity work was done within the framework of the Danish parliamentary system—it was important to influence the legislators, in the question of Southern Africa to among other things donate money, in the question of Vietnam to change the Danish positions—it was only natural that the questions of the relations also took on a domestic political nature. Let me only mention three examples.

 

The Liberal Party did not decide its attitude on the question of the Southern African liberation movements on their own merit. They never really tried to understand the particular situation, the liberation movements faced. They a priori accepted the logic of the American Cold War policy towards the liberation movements. They therefore forcefully tried to resist support to the African liberation movements from the Danish state. However, when circumstances changed, for instance when they briefly joined the Social Democrats in government in 1978, their resistance waned, and was now formulated as ”of a financial nature”, i.e. with no ideological overtones.

Similarly, the Social Democrats in government had resisted the call from the left and from some within its own quarters to impose unilateral sanctions on South Africa. However, when in opposition, and with a foreign policy majority against the Conservative-Liberal government, the party could not resist the temptation to vote unilateral sanctions into existence, against the will of the government.

And, finally, much of the squabbling on the left was not caused by the concerns of the liberation movements, but constituted a discussion of the preponderance of one or other left wing ideology or strategy. It was the struggle for a reformist or revolutionary line in Denmark which was also applied to the liberation movements.

 

Of course, you should not over-dramatize the domestic angle. It may not have been the overriding concern, but I do not think that you can fully understand the policies of the various Danish actors, if you do not take this into account.

This concern naturally made it more difficult for the representatives of the various liberation movements, because they had to tune into this domestic debate, and often had to tread carefully not to be cited in support of the various factions. It was their primary task to secure as broadly based support as possible, and thus avoid the pitfalls of a domestic policy that must have appeared difficult to understand.