Carter changes horses in

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EMEIRIS mole/ US imperialists and the Moscow Stalinists seem to have decided simultaneously that the best hope for counter-revolution in Iran is the "Islamic republic" of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Carter's envoy. (former Attorney-General Ramsay Clark) emergea from an audience with Khomeini "deeply impressed by the depth and nature and purpose of the movement in Iran" and with "the highest hopes that it will achieve social justice"

At the same time Radio Moscow came out in full support of the Ayatollah who was "returning home to lead the people's struggle for a new and independent Iran"

the Tudeh Party (backed last week by the British Stalinist Morning Star). also abjectly declared its support for the Islamic republic, stating that Khomeini is "playing a totally progressive part in the development of Iran".

Massacred

But the horse they are all backing is still in the starting gate, trying to negotiate his return with Bakhtiar and apparently unconcerned by how many of his followers are massacred while he attempts a Bakhtiar WORKINS EAGUE deal to get himself into power.

Khomeini has evidently promised Bakhtiar a good job if he accepts the "Islamic republic" ', just as Bakhtiar has offered to compromise with Khomeini by resigning as Prime Minister The Shah with Carter in the US under the right conditions. Meanwhile the Iranian army continues to fight a losing battle against the mobilised masses who are reported to be carrying an increasing number of arms. The military have given the vast mass movement and in some of the demonstrations soldiers have deserted with their arms.

The events of the .week provided alarming new evidence that the central problem of this movement which has demonstrated its vast revolutionary potential is that of leadership.

A state of emergency 'has been declared in the Army, and the airforce appears rife with mutiny. Airmen at Esfahan who refused , to load. bombs into planes have been executed; and at an airbase in South | East Tehran lorry-loads of airmen have been placed under arrest for refusing the same order.

i In some of the demonstrations in Tehran the most fundamentalist Isłamic groups turned physically against "Marxists"

bourgeois newspaper office was ransacked for allegediy using Marxist terminology and on some occasions "Marxist": demonstrators were verbally and physically attacked.

Such attacks have been made much easier by the years of treacherous opportunist support for the Shah by the Moscow and Peking bureaucracies.

"Marxism' and "Communism" have been converted by these Stalinist betrayals into synonyms for opportunism and repression.

That, of course, makes the tasks of an authentic revolutionary (Trotskyist) leadership so much more difficult but at the same time so much more urgent.

But there is no doubt that the conditions for such a leadership to" build a strong party exist today in iran.

That can be done by putting forward a programme of democratic demands such as the release of political prisoners, freedom to organise, the election of a Constituent Assembly, whose importance is seen immediately by the vast majority of the masses.

These must be combined with demands which meet the material needs of the masses which have come to the fore in recent struggles:

*the sliding scale of wages based on indexes calculated by workers' committees;

*food distribution by workers' committees;

*opening of the books and nationalisation of the banks and the capitalist firms;

*vast programmes of useful public works to provide jobs for the unemployed;

*the building of strong strike committees, workers militias and of joint workers, peasants and soldiers committees.

All these programmatic demands point to the need for a workers and peasants government in Iran.

A Trotskyist leadership must fight for this programme making no concessions either to the anti-communism of the Islamic and petty bourgeois nationalist leadership, nor falling into a sectarianism which will isolate them from the masses. Nottingham -where 28 journalists have been sacked for striking-saw an all out attack by police on 120 NUJ members.

Six NUJ members were arrested-including NUJ. Vice President Jake Ecclestone-as van drivers were told by police to drive through the picket lines at high speed.

One policeman was injured after a van hit him, and one van driver was arrested.

As the pickets tried to stop Nottingham Evening Post vans leaving the numbers of police grew from 10 to 80.

The journalists lost their jobs for taking part in the strike and (as reported in Socialist Press 134) NUJ officials urged members nationally to return to work.

In the two weeks since the end of the strike the NUJ executive has revealed itself utterly bankrupt at producing à strategy to win back their jobs.

In Guildford negotiations won reinstatement for juniors victimised for taking part in the strike but employers are everywhere preparing to go on the offensive.

In Oxford, journalists have been told that the first member who repeats a refusal to cross a picket line will be sacked.

One member was sacked for refusing to cross NUPE picket lines on the first day back at work and was only reinstated after the chapel stopped work and went into mandatory session.

ICK OUT ALASHAN AND PRISONERS TROOPS COW! WAR WSE supporters on the march

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pickets The first mass picket at

CLEAGUET PHOTO: Laurence Sparham, IFL -THE STOP TORTURE