Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2018

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position, its treaty commitments and allies. As well as this, the Catholic Church in Australia were supporters of the Vietnam war. This is because in the years prior, Australian Catholics were encouraged to see the South of Vietnam as the last Catholic Democracy in South East Asia. Given this there was heavy support for the Vietnamese, even after Catholic leader, Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated. Even after the Pope called for negotiations to take place in Vietnam for a peaceful resolution, however many Australian Catholics did not see the Pope’s announcement as a reason to stop supporting the Australian troops into the war. On the opposite side of the spectrum Australian trade unions were against the move into the Vietnam war, with many holding the belief that the Australian government’s decision to support America and its foreign policy in Vietnam of ‘blood for dollars’ (Kuhn, 1997) . The trade unions believed that the Australian troops being sent in to the war were being sacrificed by the Australian government to ensure that America would boost Australia’s economy by spending more money in Australia. In response to this, unions like the Waterside Workers Federation wanted to strike and hold protests about the troops being sent into Vietnam. However, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), who were in support of Labour Party’s policy of not supporting war, but not denying the soldiers support, said they would take no action on the matter. Many of the more militant trade unions took action independently to protest the announcement of war, and took part in strikes, which was not supported by the ACTU. As well as this, within unions, there were differing views over the war, so the leaders of major unions wanted to avoid the politics of the war as much as possible, in an attempt to avoid the possibility of internal conflict. From this it can be seen that the reaction of the people of Australia was fairly different amongst the population, however, there was an underlying thought that Australia and Australian troops were forced into the war by its allies, not having a choice whether they wanted to enter the war. This effected Australia socially, as many Australians felt cornered into entering the war with their