To: The Prime Minister, 10 Downing Street, London SW1 9 March 1975

Dear Mr Wilson,

Today we are demonstratingfootnote in order to express our opposition to your government’s policies in the state of Oman. Your government has continued the policy of its Conservative predecessor, and is providing considerable assistance to the Sultan of Oman in his brutal attempt to crush all dissent in his country. By providing military personnel and equipment to the Sultan, the Labour government is perpetuating an autocratic system of government and is enabling that system to impose itself on those who are trying to build a different and free Oman.

The Labour Party is committed to opposing colonialism in southern Africa, and, as numerous members of your own Party have now pointed out, this pledge is inconsistent with a continued British commitment to Oman. Last December, eighty-seven Members of Parliament, most of them from the Labour Party, supported a motion calling on the government to reconsider its policy in the Sultanate, and pointed out that the Defence Review provides a suitable context for such a reconsideration. We hope that you will take note of this suggestion, and we urge you and your colleagues to end British participation in the Sultan’s campaigns. Only when all foreign troops have left Oman, and when those imprisoned for political dissent have been released, will the Omani people be able to decide freely their own future.

Yours sincerely,

The Gulf Committee

To: The Gulf Committee, 6 Endsleigh Street, London WC1