How Not to Assist the Iranian Working Class

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If the objective of the Conference on Iran called last Saturday by Liberation was. to stifle any serious moves towards concrete acts of solidarity with the fight against the Shah and his successors, then it was a staggering success.

Only two speakers from the floor (one a WSL member, the other an Iranian student) raised donate trade organised blacking of British arms supplies to the Iranian army.

They were answered by Ron Todd (National Organiser of the TGWU and a platform speaker) with a torrent of demagogy about how it was not the job of us in Britain to tell the Iranians what to do.

Todd threw in the bureau crat's most dishonest argument saying he didn't have the power to organise action and putting the blame for inaction squarely on the working class. arguing that the first thing was a campaign to get the branches interested.

He failed to take up the fact, pointed out to him, that branches had already demanded executive action on blacking arms.

Fearful: as always, of independent working class action Todd preferred the policy of friendly persuasion of the long TIme SUDDO LETS Shah in sales.

The TGWU leadership, he said, were opposed to any redundancies but tied this demand not of course to work sharing on full pay but to a Committee of Enquiry to study alternative forms of production.

The Stalinists and left reformist speakers universaily favoured bringing pressure to bear on the Labour goverhment.

Russell Kerr, Tribunite MP for Hounslow assured the Conference that Owen had been won over in the last few weeks and had changed his Iranian policy.

Not so naive . We don't believe even Russell Kerr could be so naive as to interpret Owen's frantic search for a new tactic to defend imperialist interests as a change of heart.

But Kerr and Stan Newens, with whom he shared the chair, are in the business of defending the present rotten pro-capitalist leadership of the Läbour Party in office.

Only the WSL speaker called for a move to oust the leadership as a necessary part of a serious solidarity campaign.

Stalinists seemed as horrified by the suggestion as the Tribunites.

Even greater' expression of horror (especially from longtime enemy of the Irish national liberation struggle, Newens)

greated a contribution (correct if presented in a somewhat A 13 diversionary way), by an RCG member stating that the British government's imperialist role in Iran was inseparable from its similar role elsewhere in the world, especially in Ireland.

But greatest horror of all was reserved for the WSL speaker who pointed out the role of the Soviet and Chinese governments in supporting the Shah's tyranny.

• That definitely broke the rules and prompted angry cries of "Rubbish!"

The platform speaker representing the Iranian CP (the Tudeh Party) actually claimed improbably that the Iranian masses now listened on the radio mainly to Radio Moscow because "they knew who they could trust"!

He failed to mention that a few months ago it was broadcasting birthday greetings to his Imperial Majesty the Shah.

The Tudeh issued a statement for the conference declaring uncritical support for the Ayatollah Khomeini and omitting any reference at all to the need for an independent workers' organisation.

On the, other hand the Tudeh does say that it controls the oilworkers, thus claiming for itself almost exclusive credit for the overthrow 'of the Shah.

The conference was run with an iron bureaucratic hand which kept disagreement with the line of a "broad based non-sectarian movement" to a minimum.

A resolution to set up a sub-committee of Liberation on Iran was introduced at the last minute with no discussion and no amendments allowed.

Other solidarity organisations on Iran (such as CARI which, whatever its faults, did campaign against the Shah's dictatorship when Liberation Toppled-the Shah was utterly inactive) were dismissed as 'tiny non-representa. tive groups" and were refused the right to speak from the floor in the debate.

The whole sorry show (apart from an informative platform speech by Fred Halliday) did nothing to advance the struggle for concrete solidarity with the struggle for socialism in Iran. Its purely verbal anti-imperialism merely raised a new obstacle to serious action by the labour movement.

Indeed Liberation's late arrival on the scene of iranian solidarity might make an interesting study.

While the Tribunite members (Stan Newens, Russell Kerr, etc) have in a limited way been raising the question of Iran, could the rest of the alliance which composes Liberation have been waiting to see which way the Kremlin was going to jump?

"It is beginning to be question of mass anger".

That was the assessment of the situation in regions of the steel industry made last week by one of the leading French trade union bureaucrats.

Edmond Maire, Secretary General of the CFDT, was taiking of Lorraine and Nord-Pas du Calais, the two main steel producing areas of France which are scheduled to bear the brunt of the 21,000. redundancies proposed by the government for the next two years.

Presented as a move to comply with the agreements of the EEC government on ways to resolve the steel crisis the redundancies are the major thrust of Barre's plans to "rationalise"

While.r national union officials negotiate terms with the government, workers in, the industry have been stepping up their protest actions.

A series of one day strikes in