The real face of lahour's of Labour's immigration

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nti-Shah soldiers fraternising with demonstrators omei On the contrary, Khomei is now paralysed with fear t the scale and the potential the forces. which have bet unleashed in the course of h campaign against the Shah dictatorship and its precarior inheritors.

No major . statements 4 policy have been issued fro the Ayatollah's new base Tehran, not one point of pri gramme has been advanced 1 meet the needs of the ma opposition.

Even the important stat ment promised for Sunday wi cancelled at the last momet without explanation.

But if Khomein! remair silent to the masses who sti focus their opposition aroun his leadership, there is no dout that he has found plenty to sa to Bakhtiar through their inte meetares All this time, the religiouș zealot and the imperialist puppet are being driven closer together by their common need to end the continuing and developing mobilisation of the oppressed layers within Iran.

Whatever form their negotiations take, one thing is clearthat the content is entirely counter-revolutionary.

But the longer Khomeini holds his hand, the greater the risk becomes that he will be tossed aside by the movement he has so far ridden with such shrewdness.

Already demonstrators are insisting on the need for the opposition to be armed against the repression of the army.

But the development is almost the last thing Khomeini wants to see, since the working class would then possess the basis of a complete independence from his control:

The mullahs are steadily refusing to meet the demands from workers, peasants. and students for arms. Yet at the same time Khomeini has called on sections of the officer caste. to support his proposed 'Islamic Republic' Such a position cannot remain unchallenged. In answer to Khomeini's proposal for collaboration with a part of the very machinery of imperialist repression in Iran, workers must take up the immediate fight to form militias in defence against the army and in support of their own political needs.

Building such militias can proceed only on the basis of increased cooperation with rank and file soldiers from the army as part of a determined offensive to break them from the authority of their officers and their role as agents of state oppression.

The sordid reality of the system of racist immigration controls operated by the right wing Labour government was exposed last week as it was proved that immigration officers had been singling out immigrant women for virginity tests.

But if the Indian woman who was "persuaded" to sign a consent form on January 24 had not insisted on keeping it and pressing a complaint, the whole affair would still remain unknown.

The form, headed HM Immigration Office, Terminal 3, London (Heathrow) Airport" states:

"This is to certify that | agree to a gynaecological examination which may be a vaginal if necessary. This statement has been read to me in my mother tongue and is fully understood by me."

Not to whites The tests, needless to say, applied. not to white immi. grants from Canada or Australia or fugitive racists from South Africa or Zimbabwe, but to women from the Indian subcontinent entering Britain as fiancees.

An immigration officer adBC.: mitted that whether or not such a woman was a virgin would be taken into account in deciding whether or not she would be admitted to Britain.

That the Heathrow immigration authorities carry out such obscene practices fits in completely with their occupation and their record of support for Enoch Powell as long ago as 1968.

But this combination .of extreme racial and sexual discrimination flows logically from the immigration laws as a whole, which provide a legal framework for racism.

Home Secretary. Rees has announced that the virginity tests will now be ended. But similar humiliation and maltreatment will continue to oper. ate against immigrants until the right wing Labour leaders are removed and the Immigration Acts repealed.

PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Rees