[A massive crowd topples the Shah's statue in…]

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A massive crowd topples the Shah's statue in Tehran Black all arms to the Shah! ingly risk being shot down and killed by the army or police, whose leaders are becoming increasingly desperate they see the masses" unanimous contempt their orders. for Murder toll The regime has tried to belittle these nightly battles by claiming that since 1 December, when the largest demonstrations took place since Black Friday in Sep tember, it had killed only 12 demonstrators.

All other sources, however, reveal that the murder toll was at least in the hundreds, some reports putting it as high as 3,000.

Even this slaughter has not curbed the courageous resolve of the masses.

The Shah and the army now cringe in terror before two more threats which could finally settle their fate -the possibility of an intensification of the wave of strikes which brought down the previous government, and a growth of mutiny within the army as conscript soldiers refuse to shoot down members of their own class.

Books opened Many of the str ikes which began in Septem iber are still going on and are gravely undermining the economic strength of the regime.

And last week one of them-that of workers in the Central Bank-dealt a major body blow to the credibility and authority of the crumbling tyranny.

The bank workers-who followed the example set by Portuguese bank workers in 1975-opened up the books to reveal exactly how since August of this year 177 named members of Iran's ruling elite, including the royal family and army generals, had transferred assets worth over £1.000 million to Swiss, French and American bank accounts.

This important move to open the books of the ruling class had a shattering effect on the morale of the dictatorship in Tehran.

In all these ways the largely spontaneous actions of the mass movement is bringing about the destruction of one of the richest, best armed reactionary regimes in the world which has for years received the backing both of imperialism and both Soviet and Chinese Dangers But even this enormously powerful mass movement nonetheless faces enormous dangers which can only be resolved through the building of a revolutionary leadership on a programme which represents the independent interests of the oppressed classes in Iran.

One urgent part of such a programme is the formation of armed militias of workers and peasants • to defend them against the murderous brutality of the dictatorship.

The task of building the militias should be linked to the dissolution of the present army, police and secret police (SAVAK).

Such militias should include those soldiers who are ready to mutiny against their officers, as groups of them have already been doing.

• In the factories and óilfields, too, it is necessary to establish strike and occupation committees which should join with peasants' and anti-Shah soldiers' committees to form organisations like the Soviets in Russia in 191° The establishment of these independent organs of power by the workers and the other oppressed classes is an essential part of the fight for an authentic workers' and peasants government and the struggle for socialism in Iran.

This is the only way to prevent the anti-working class tyranny of the Shah being replaced by another anti-working class regime led by the opportunists who are claiming to be the leaders of the present mass morement, which in reality they are trying to use for their own ends.

At present the religious leaders like Ayatollah Khomeini or their uneasy allies in the bourgeois National Front "lead" this extraordinary mass uprising very much from the rear, calling for no more than bourgeois democratic and Islamic demands.

Students flee from gunfire But in the absence of an alternative revolutionary leadership, they stand ready to reap the harvest which has been sown by the masses.

However "democratic" are the words of such leaders today, the whole history of imperialism shows that democracy and the rights of the oppressed classes can only be won as part of a struggle against capitalism under revolutionary working class leadership.

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The proposed rehabilitation 1978 with the support of Soviet