[February 16th marks a new stage in the…]

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February 16th marks a new stage in the collaboration of the Labour government with the brutal and repressive tyranny of the Shah of Iran.

On that day 21 Iranian students go on trial at the Old Bailey charged after occupying the Iranian embassy last April 21st under the conspiracy laws.

The protest was against the torture to death of nine of Iran's 40,000 political prisoners. The nine were killed according to the Shah's regime, "trying to escape"

But most of them were close to the end of their sentences; and the regime refused to permit their bodies to be examined.

Similar murders are a daily event. Twenty-five are known to have taken place in the last two weeks and well over 300 in the last four years.

In Iran theré is one political party, the Resurrection Party: membership is compulsory for all adults. Trade unions are illegal.

Repression is ruthlessly administered by the SAVAK, the Shah's ubiquitous secret police. The Shah's stated aim is that Iran should by 1980 become the world's thirdranking military power.

Assisting him in this is the British Labour government which has encouraged arms deals as a major part of its economic strategy to assist British capitalism.

Iran is one of the two countries outside Britain and France to buy the supersonic white elephant, the Concorde. Iran plays a key role in the Chrysler rescue plan due to its long term contract to buy Avengers.

The Shah has lent money and 01l to the British government; some of the proceeds of North Sea Oil are mortgaged to repay these debts. And the Shah's forces ате important collaborators of British imperialism in the whole Arabian Gulf area.

In these ways the Labor government is deeply dependent a the Shah's tyranny.

The Shah has used this positio to put pressure on the British Hor Office to convict and deport t twenty one students back to Ira where they would, of course, fac imprisonment, torture and possibl death.

DEMAND

This trial should not take plac All organisations of the Labor Mares at shot the many bat e dropped immediately. The case al points to the need to abolish ti conspiracy laws and to break ! trade, monetary and political lin with the Iranian dictatorship.

Readers of Socialist Press a urged to support the demonstratir organised by the Committee for t defence of the 21 on February 14 at 1 p.m. meeting at Cavendi Square, as well as the picket outsi the Old Bailey on February 161 starting at 10.00 a.m.

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Browl faith wit OP2 906. .. in. "PRESS, Wednesday I1th February 1976 "otzovists' within one party.

The only basis for united party could be struggle against liquidationism, both left' and 'right. Any other unity: would dissolve the party on the liquidator's terms. Moreover unity in this form meant uniting with "those who [quite literally] spread bourgeois influence among the proletariat"

ISOLATED

Later, Trotsky in a discussion about the state of the Party said that, in 1910:

"In the whole country there were a few dozen people. Some were in Siberia but they were not organised. The people whom Lenin could reach by correspondence or by an agent numberéd 30 or 40 at most. However, the tradition and the ideas among the more advanced workers was a tremendous capital which was used later during the revolution, but practically, at this time we were absolutely isolated".