Whatever Happened to Radicalism? Voices from the George Vickers Papers

Among the most distinctive individual items contained in the George Vickers papers is a photo album almost certainly obtained at the World Assembly for Peace and Independence of the Peoples of Indochina, held in Versailles, France in February 1972 and attended by a sizable delegation of US antiwar activists including Vickers. His attendance was publicized in the context of his role on the leadership team of the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice and served as the starting point for a series of actions across the US calling for an end to involvement in the Vietnam War.

The album is attributed to the Royal Government of the National Union of Kampuchea (GRUNK), and was likely prepared by GRUNK staff expicitly for display or distribution at the World Assembly for Peace, where efforts to engage US delegates also included a cocktail reception hosted by GRUNK. The album shows the effects of US bombing in rural Cambodia in connection with the Vietnam War and favorably presents the communist People’s National Liberation Armed Forces. GRUNK was formed by Prince Norodom Sihanouk in exile in 1970 after his ouster as Chief of State by members of his own administration, whose US-backed declaration of a Khmer Republic ended both Cambodia’s monarchy and Sihanouk’s policy of nonalignment in the Vietnam War. Now allied with his former detractors, Sihanouk became a figurehead in the guerilla campaign against the Khmer Republic (1970-1975) that ultimately brought the Communist Party of Kampuchea to power.