[Militant, No 431, 10 November 1978, p 1 + 16]
Pushed to the brink of collapse by the unprecedented wave of strikes throughout Iran, the Shah has made a desperate attempt to cling to power through military rule.
Above all, it has been the powerful effects of the working class taking united action in demand of democratic rights which have rocked the dictatorship.
It was the need to forcibly suppress the mass movement of opposition and the forcing back to work of the strikers which made the Shah turn to the naked use of the gun.
The workers at lranair have been forced back to work under threats from the Air Force, yet the national airline is still grounded by their actions for the release of political prisoners, the return of political exiles and no victimisation. According to ‚The Times‘ [8 November],
„The wave of public sector strikes continued, and the ministry is reported to have threatened to force strikers back to work at gunpoint if necessary.“
Mass murder in the streets of political demonstrators; the arrest of five newspaper editors and the censoring of the press; the banning of meetings of more than two people; strike breaking at gunpoint – this is the method of military rule in Iran to which the United States government, the CIA and the British Tories give their fulsome support.
For big business, ‚democratic rights‘ means the right of the rich few to exploit the minority. Apparently they do not include the right to join a trade union, to strike, to write and speak freely, to form free political parties and to elect a government.
But the workers in the British labour movement will be galled to see their right-wing leaders breaking the most basic socialist principle of solidarity with workers on strike by adding their support.
Any concessions or promises the great ‚liberaliser‘ has made in recent weeks have been forced on him by the pressure of the workers to stave off his revolutionary overthrow. The continued protests of the workers give the lie to the claim that the Shah rules in their best interest. It is a disgrace that ministers of a Labour government should side with such a dictator against the working class!
The new military government has made a gesture of arresting former government ministers as scapegoats in an attempt to focus on them all the blame for what the Shah admitted were „past mistakes of unlawfulness, cruelty and corruption“ by his governments.
But where do those in Britain, who staunchly defended these governments from criticism, stand now that the Shah has publicly admitted what they denied for so long – that the chief of the SAVAK secret police used torture, illegal detention, murder and corruption and that the tops of the state were riddled with corruption and graft?
Anglo-American imperialism set up the Shah’s regime in the first place as a stable bastion of their influence. But now the tyranny necessary to suppress the aspirations of the Iranian workers and peasants threatens to blow up in their faces.
They fear that a revolutionary upheaval could bring to power a regime that would be forced, under pressure from the masses, to carry through a sweeping social transformation. And the collapse of capitalism in Iran would surely spread to the rest of the Middle East and Pakistan.
Solidarity with the Iranian workers!
For democratic rights!
End SAVAK operations in Britain!
Down with the Shah – for a socialist Iran!
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