As Archivist for the Middle East Collections (among other roles) at the University of Exeter, I am responsible for looking after over sixty archival collections that relate to the ‘Middle East/SWANA’ region. Among these is the archive of Helen Lackner, which comprises nine boxes of material. Five of these contain papers primarily documenting her work with the Gulf Committee in support of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG) and other revolutionary movements. The remaining four boxes are devoted to her work in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) – although, naturally, there is some overlap between the PDRY papers and the activities of the PFLOAG. In addition to this archival material, Exeter also holds some 300 issues of PFLOAG newspapers and publications such as Sawt al-Thawra and 9 June that were donated by Lackner at the same time.
Based in London, the Gulf Committee was one of several Solidarity Committees working mostly across Europe and the US to support the PFLOAG and other revolutionary groups in the region. Over the last few years, I have spent a lot of time working on this archive, reading through hand-written letters and notebooks, scanning strips of 35mm negatives, digitising scores of photographs, and exploring the numerous documents in English, Arabic and other European languages. In this article, I have selected a few items from the archive to show what they reveal about the internal workings of the Solidarity Committees, their relationship with the PFLOAG, and the ways in which different groups collaborated in areas such as print production, the sourcing of medicines and audio-visual equipment, and press communication. While the internet and social media may seem to have transformed the ability of contemporary solidarity movements to form global networks, historic archives such as this demonstrate not only how a close-knit transnational network was built between students, academics and activists, but also the mechanisms and processes by which this was achieved.
The Gulf Committee was founded in April 1971 with the aim of supporting revolutionary struggles among oppressed communities in Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, following a visit to the Gulf made by student activists Fred Halliday and Fawwaz Traboulsi. Over the next seven years until its dissolution in April 1978, the Committee was closely linked with the cause of the PFLOAG, a revolutionary organisation based in Dhofar, the southern province of present-day Oman. As Abdel Razzaq Takriti’s book Monsoon Revolution shows, the PFLOAG (which also took up other names at various points) was involved in a long-term uprising against the British-backed Sultan of Oman from 1965 to 1976. The Gulf Committee, as Marral Shamshiri’s History Workshop article also shows, became one of many such committees that supported the Dhofar revolution through a variety of activities.
The Committee itself was never large, consisting of a small group of left-wing academics and activists, British, French, Iranian, Arab and Kurdish, many connected to SOAS, most of whom had full-time or part-time jobs elsewhere. They had no financial backers and relied entirely upon donations, their own funds and time given voluntarily. Helen Lackner was the only female member of the Committee, and really the only one who remained fully active during the entire span of the group’s existence. The development of Fred Halliday’s academic career meant he had less time for Committee work, and the others were a diverse group: Ken Whittingham, who had studied Arabic at SOAS, worked as a writer and translator for various publications with a special interest in drama. Nigel Disney, who worked for MERIP in America, died following surgery in June 1978. Hazhir Teimourian, a member of the Committee for a short while, focused on Kurdish affairs. Iranian lawyer Manouchehr Kalantari, who ran a sub-committee dedicated to Iran, was killed in prison in Tehran in 1982. The archive at Exeter contains correspondence between Helen Lackner and some of these other members.
The Gulf Committee worked out of an office on the top floor of a building at 6 Endsleigh Street in London, made available to them for free by Peggy Duff, then Secretary General of the International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace (ICDP) and former Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). There was at one point an offer of using space inside the London office of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).
From the outset, therefore, the Committee was linked to networks of anti-imperialist struggles in the Arab World, Asia and elsewhere in the Global South, such as Palestine and Kurdistan, as well as progressive movements within the UK. These included the CND and the Russell Foundation that were dedicated to peace and social justice, the Confederation of Iranian Students (CISNU), the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) and the Union of Yemeni Workers.
It should be noted that the Gulf Committee was not the only such group based in London, as the Russell Foundation had its own Supporting Committee of Revolution in Palestine and the Arabian Gulf. In Paris there was the Comité de Soutien à la Révolution en Oman (CSRO), which published 5000 copies of the magazine Oman en Lutte three times a year. In Brussels Luc-Daniel Dupire and Beirut-based poet and journalist Yvonne Sterk (1920-2012) had together founded the Comité National Palestine which – despite its name – published numerous booklets in support of the PFLOAG. In Scandinavia there was the Swedish Kommittén för Revolutionen i Oman och Arabiska Viken (KROAV), later the Sydvästasien-kommitten – based in Stockholm – and the Danish Komiteen for Revolutionen i Oman og Den Arabiske Golf (KROAG) with its office in Copenhagen.
Various American cities such as Detroit, Utah, Berkley, CA and Youngstown (Ohio) had a ‘Gulf Solidarity’ office and published a magazine of the same name, taking over from the US-based Support Committee for the Liberation Movement in the Gulf. Over the border in Canada there was the Liberation Support Movement in Vancouver and another group in Quebec. In Somalia there was a Committee for Solidarity with the Revolution in Palestine and Arabian Gulf, Algiers had a Comité d’Action des Etudiants pour le soutien de la cause Arabe and support was found in Damascus from the Arabian Peninsula League. There was also a Supporting Committee of Revolution in Oman and the Arabian Gulf in Moscow. Other groups were based in Baku (then in the Azerbaijan SSR), Poland, Germany (Berlin, Frankfurt and Heidelberg), Italy and beyond. The archive reveals not only the vast geographical spread indicated here, but also the extent of close personal connections across these networks. These include correspondence discussing individuals in Cuba, photographs of PFLOAG delegates visiting Vietnam, and foundational documents shared from Moscow.
Delegations from many of these groups – including the Gulf Committee – attended the Congress of Solidarity Committees, held on three separate occasions between 1973 and 1977. The first of these took place in Aden, from 16 to 19 April 1973, and is documented in detail in Helen Lackner’s archive through personal notebooks, photographs, administrative correspondence and documents, as well as coverage in PFLOAG publications. A small collection of papers containing correspondence between Luc-Daniel Dupire and Yvonne Sterk also provides intriguing glimpses into the internal politics in and around this first Congress.
After the Congress, Helen Lackner and Fred Halliday crossed the border from Aden into Dhofar to spend a week in the liberated areas where the PFLOAG had established a school and medical facilities. There are numerous photographs in the archive, both in colour and black-and-white, documenting this visit.
Eighteen months later a second 1974 Congress was held for the Solidarity Committees, this time in Paris, which is documented in a file of papers and subsequent correspondence with PFLOAG representative Hussein Moussa. Other UK organisations attending included the Palestine-Gulf-Yemen Solidarity Campaign (with bases in Leeds and Sheffield) and the Arab Solidarity Committee with the Revolution in Palestine, Gulf and Yemen, in addition to newer groups from Cologne, Kuwait and Beirut. Emphasis was placed on links with the struggle in Palestine: in keeping with the Marxist concept of ‘dialectical interconnectivity’ cited in one letter, posters and slogans underscored the belief that, even as revolutionary movements evolved and pushed in differing directions, they remained fundamentally connected to one another.
The third Congress was held in Algiers from 4 to 7 February 1977. A range of topics were discussed, including the supply of medical items to Dhofar and support for the establishment of health and educational facilities. Discussions also covered technical assistance to the PFLO for translation and printing operations in Aden, transfers of money and fundraising, as well as the mutual exchange of committee publications, strategies for public protests and increasing campaign pressure, and the need for press communication and publicity. Even though the PFLO seemed to have been defeated militarily by this time, the revolutionary struggle and by extension, support for it, continued in other ways. Alice Wilson’s recent book Afterlives of Revolution traces various strands of this continuation, while the archive documents show how the solidarity committees continued to mobilise their global network in support of the Dhofari people and the revolutionary cause.
One point that might surprise those engaged in contemporary activism or solidarity campaigns is the strong reciprocal relationship between the Solidarity Committees and the PFLOAG. There was a clear expectation of partnership and collaboration, rather than a mere commitment to raising funds or public awareness in Europe and the US. Funds were transferred between the Solidarity Committees via the PDRY Embassy in London to support printing and translation work, as well as the purchase of medical supplies (chiefly organised by the Danish group KROAG) and other equipment, and the screening and purchase of copies of films such as Heinry Srour’s The Hour of Liberation Has Come.
Another important point concerns the way the Dhofar revolution has been represented in English-language writing. Much of this literature has consisted of military memoirs that frequently present an inaccurate, hostile and condescending view of the PFLOAG. The Solidarity Committee archives, however, reveal a different story. The PFLOAG maintained a highly organised network of offices in places such as Beirut and Cairo, along with delegations that established ties with other revolutionary groups in Palestine, Iraq, Somalia, Vietnam and Cuba. They built close relationships with the Support Committees across Europe and the US, which themselves made extensive use of their local networks. In Britain, these included contacts with the Labour Party, New Left groups, media and academic circles to support the Dhofari struggle. The substantial volume of their activities during the 1970s, as evidenced in the archive of former activist Helen Lackner, remains an area that has yet to receive the scholarly attention it truly deserves.
Catalogue entries for Helen Lackner’s archive can be found here. Hundreds of PFLOAG documents and publications can be found on the University of Exeter’s Digital Archive of the Middle East (DAME) website here.