National Liberation Front flag

The visit of South Vietnam's Premier, Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, to New Zealand in January 1967 stimulated a burst of placard- and banner-making for protests staged wherever he went. The protest movement portrayed Ky as a callous dictator, undemocratically in power.

This National Liberation Front (or Viet Cong) flag was hand-sewn by Jeremy Lowe, who was secretary of the Wellington Committee on Vietnam from 1969 to 1970. He made three such flags for fellow demonstrators to wave during Ky's Wellington visit, partly because the committee lacked the funds to buy professionally made flags, but he later recalled that making the flags was his own idea, not the committee's.

Lowe, who had been taught to sew by his mother as a boy, bought the fabric after a contact described the flag over the telephone as 'post box red and Kellogg's cornflakes packet blue with a yellow star in the middle' (Lowe, 2007).

As a recent university graduate, Lowe had been drawn into the anti-war movement through the 'frequent working bees for mail-outs, making placards and banners, leafleting, fundraising and conferences. Working bees were very social occasions' (Lowe, 2007).