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   Vol. 68/No. 47           December 21, 2004  
 
 
25 and 50 years ago
 
December 23, 1979
The eyes of the world are on Iran. Watching television and reading the daily papers here in the Untied States you would have to conclude the Iranian people have gone crazy. They are portrayed as mobs of religious fanatics under the spell of what the New York Daily News calls the “Holy Madman.”

But the picture being presented to the American people is false. To understand what is happening in Iran, you have to imagine how the workers of Europe would have felt about any government that shielded Hitler after World War II.

Consider what the people of Iran went through to free themselves of the shah.

During the six month of August 1978 to February 1979, waves of mass protest engulfed Iran. Millions came out in demonstration after demonstration, strike after strike.

Unarmed demonstrators stood up to tanks, machine guns, and even helicopter gunships. Tens of thousands were mowed down. But in the end the power of the masses was stronger than the shah’s secret police and torture chambers, stronger than his massive army and its U.S.-supplied arsenal.

The old regime finally crumbled under the blows of a mass uprising, as decisive sections of the ranks of the armed forces joined the side of the people.

The top priority of all those in this country and around the world who support the aspirations of the Iranian people must be to expose Washington’s lies about Iran and to campaign against Carter’s ominous preparations for war.  
 
December 20, 1954
LONDON, Dec. 7—Under the banner of a witch hunt against Trotskyists, the right-wing leadership has begun a purge among the rank-and-file of the British Labor Party. Its aim is to remove the most advanced of left-wing forces—the supporters of Socialist Outlook, left-wing weekly banned by the leadership which suspended publication early in October.

At its last meeting, the National Executive Committee of the Labor Party expelled six Labor Party members, three of whom are members of the Management committee of the Labor Publishing Society, which published Socialist Outlook. These three are also labor councilors.

Further expulsions have evidently been planned. To carry out this purge, right-wing members of the N.E.C. have set up a new purge machinery—a committee of enquiry consisting of two right-wing leaders plus two paid officials of the party. The committee has operated behind the backs of the party and was denounced by Nov. 26 Tribune, the Bevanite weekly.

In his weekly column, the editor of the Tribune acidly commented on the activities of Miss Alice Bacon M.P., witch-hunter in chief, who was “chairman of the traveling tribunal searching out Trotskyites in the constituency Labor Parties.” Miss Bacon is notorious as a loyal supporter of Herbert Morrison, the right-wing machine politician. She heralded the witch hunt against Trotskyism in her speech at the last Labor Party Conference, when she defended the ban on Socialist Outlook on behalf of the Labor Party N.E.C.  
 
 
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