March 17 in what was the largest action against Washington's war in Vietnam yet seen in England. The giant protest was organized by the Vietnam Ad Hoc Committee, a united front of organizations opposed to the war.
Two thousand police "quelled Sunday's embassy assault with mounted police and club-swinging charges across the tulip beds of Grosvenor Square," a London UPI dispatch said. Thirty demonstrators were taken to the hospital for treatment, as were some twenty-five police. New York Times London correspondent Alvin Shuster said over 200 protesters were arrested.
Those arrested were charged with assaulting or obstructing the police, possessing offensive weapons and disorderly conduct, Shuster reports.
"As the mounted policemen charged, some demonstrators shouted 'Cossacks!' Some threw their anti-American banners at the policemen," Shuster said. It took the police an hour to drive the protesters from the area.
U.S. Ambassador David K.E. Bruce called the police attack "magnificent."
The demonstration began in Trafalgar Square, which was "“jammed,not leaving an inch for the pigeons and tourists who usually flock there," Shuster said. "Students from universities all over Britain participated."
Speakers at the rally in Trafalgar Square included actress Vanessa Redgrave, who read a letter she had written to Anmbassador Bruce. She said the only path to peace was for the United States to with-
draw immediately from Vietnam. Later Miss
Redgrave led the marchers to the embassy
building, wearing a white crepe headband,
the Vietnamese sign of mourning.
Another speaker was Christian Sem-
ler, twenty-nine years old, of the Social-
ist Students Federation [SDS] in West Ber-
lin.
After the rally, as they marched to
the embassy, the demonstrators stopped to
protest at the London offices of the Dow
Chemical Company, which produces napalm.
The UPI dispatch says they "thundered
through the usually sedate Mayfair sector
that London calls ‘Little America' with
cries of ‘Yanks go home,' "Ho Ho Ho Chi
Minh,' 'Burn baby burn,' and 'Hey, hey,
LBJ, how many babies did you kill today?'"
"In the end it took a mounted police
charge and club swinging to rout the dem-
onstrators. It shattered luxurious Gros-
venor Square, smashed 13 windows on the
glass, steel and stone embassy, left the
nearby U.S. Navy headquarters building's
eagle smeared with paint.
"The police had come in buses, de-
serting their usual weekend posts at the
nation's giant soccer matches. The buses
rumbled off with defiant, sometimes
bloodied demonstrators."
The “offensive weapons" police
charge the demonstrators with using were
“rocks, poles, dirt clods" thrown at the
embassy and used in defense against the
police attack. Shuster also said that
flour, paint and smoke bombs were thrown
at the embassy.
One member of Parliament criticized
police for the club-swinging and use of
mounted police.