THIS is the time of year when we all yawn discreetly over our neighbours’ holiday snaps. I came back from the US with some of my own but... this was 50 years ago from the Chicago streets when the police attacked anti-Vietnam war demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention.
I defy you to yawn.

First, a bit of background. My first visit to the US was in 1968. I was 21 and got a drive-away car in New York, found three co-drivers in Greenwich village and took four days driving the old beatnik route to the west coast thinking I was Jack Kerouac.

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In San Francisco I ran into Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) leaders Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden recruiting for the planned Democratic National Covention anti-war demonstrations. I had been at the tumultuous Grosvenor Square demo outside the US embassy earlier that year in London.

The US was in ferment. Plus ca change! The Vietnam war was raging, the civil rights and peace movements were in full flow.

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In April 1968 Martin Luther King Jnr was assassinated, leading to uprisings in black ghettos in major cities across the US.

[[{"fid":"6867","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Demonstrators cluster round the statue of Civil War union general John Logan in Chicago’s Grant Park","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"3":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Demonstrators cluster round the statue of Civil War union general John Logan in Chicago’s Grant Park","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"alt":"Demonstrators cluster round the statue of Civil War union general John Logan in Chicago’s Grant Park","class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"3"}}]]Weakened by the anti-war movement, Lyndon B Johnson decided not to stand for a second term as Democratic president. In June Bobby Kennedy was killed after winning the Californian primary. In August the Republicans adopted Richard “Tricky Dicky” Nixon as their presidential candidate.

All roads led to Chicago where the Democrats were choosing their candidate. So, leaving my friends high in Haight Ashbury, I hitch-hiked to Chicago.

Arriving in the darkest part of night it was some contrast. I teamed up with local photographer Chuck Reynolds and his wife who knew the scene. It was Chuck who took the dramatic pictures on this page.

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But there was a sense of foreboding. Chicago’s Mayor Richard J Daley had wound up his vicious police to protect the city.

I asked a water tanker driver why he was spraying the park from his truck. “So the tear gas will linger,” he offered.

The smell of cattle carcasses from the stockyards, when the wind caught it, was foul.

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My “holiday snaps” showed how things turned ugly, unbridled police violence met by inspirational defiance.

Decent US citizens demonstrating against their country’s warmongering, political corruption, deep racism and police violence mobilised to protect ruling class interests.

They showed their defiance then, leading to the pull-out from Vietnam. For their children and grand children there’s a bit more work to be done.