["b) An unconditional struggle must be carried out…]

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"b) An unconditional struggle must be carried out against the reactionary and medieval influence of the clergy, the Christian missions and similar elements.

c) A struggle is necessary against Panislamism, the Panasiatic movement, and similar currents which try to tie the liberation struggle against European and American imperialism to the strengthening of the power of the Turkish and Japanese imperialism, the nobility, the big landlords, the clergy, etc.

e) A determined fight is necessary against the attempt to put a communist cloak around revolutionary liberation movements that are not really communist in the backward countries. The Communist International has the duty to support the revolutionary movement in the colonies only for the purpose of gathering the components of the future proletarian parties-communist in fact and not just in name-in all the backward countries and training them to be conscious of their special tasks, the special tasks, that is to say, of fighting against bourgeois democratic tendencies within their own nation." (Second Congress of the Comintern. Theses on the National and Colonial Question).

With the method outlined above, the Communist International led by Lenin and Trotsky fought to establish the political independence of the working class even while engaging in struggles alongside movements such as the antiShah mass movement in Iran.

But a very different method can be seen at work today in the daily press of the Workers Revolutionary Party's daily paper Newsline.

Far from seeking an independent road forward and warning of the dangers of Khomeini's Islamic reaction, Newsline actually mounts attacks on those forces most threatened by the new Iranian regime and explicitly defends Khomeini.

What, then, is the situation now in Iran?

Control movement Since the overthrow of the Shah and Bakhtiar the Khomeini-Bazargan regime has been engaged in desperate efforts to control a movement which has developed far beyond their wishes.

Such attempts to hold vack mass struggles always occur in New dictator Bazargan "To Interior deputy Healy' revolutions, once the masses recognise their own power and begin to develop independent organisations.

Reformist elements within the workers' movement and conscious defenders of the old bourgeois order then step in and attempt to weaken and dismantle these independent class organisations, and restore "stable" capitalist forms of rule.

Khomeini of course received mass support-but principally because of his opposition to the Shah.

Recognising that it is impossible to run an industrial country from mosque, Khomeini installed a capitalist politician as Prime Minister.

He wants Bazargan as the front man for his reactionary religious views. But to establish his authority with Bazargan, Khomeini at first deliberately ignored pleas not to carry out executions through his "revolutionary council' Saved from justice Of course in reality most of those executed by Khomeini's "revolutionary court" had previously been saved from the rough justice of the revolutionary masses-along with many other generals and SAVAK agents.

The execution of a token number was gesture to establish Khomeini's credentials as a "reactionary" even while the reactionary face of the Islamic crackdown was beginning to show itself.

Similar events occured in the February 1917 revolution in Russia in which the bourgeois democratic forces arrested many reactionaries.

the Ministry of the they delegated the Karaulov, insignificant Richardson but rather less cowardly than the others and he issued on March 1 an order for the arrest secrall police official ublic, secret ferocious revolutionary gesture was purely platonic in character, for the police were already being arrested and the jails were their only refuge from massacre."

(Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, Vol. I, page 181.)

These same bourgeois democrats by July 1917 were mobilised to arrest revolutionaries, driving Lenin and leading Bolsheviks into hiding:

Used against Marxists Who can doubt that in iran Khomeini's Islamic "revolutionary courts" will be used against Marxists? Already they are being used to enforce his religious ideas, as the many reports of the barbaric murder of gays and alleged 'rapists' and the flogging of 'adulterers' show.

Khomeini's religious bigotry is a weapon of oppression, incompatible with Communism.

Bazargan's only qualms about Khomeini's reactionary "courts" is that they might encourage the workers and peasants to establish their own genuine revolutionary courts.

Hence his emphasis on establishing 'normal' bourgeois courts-now endorsed by Khomeini himself.

Revolutionary courts As Communists we do not follow the capitalist press or middle class radicals such as Ralph Schoenman in arguing for "fair trials' according to the practice under the bourgeois state.

We argue for genuine revolutionary courts, answerable not to the mullahs but to the oppressed masses. And we call for the establishment of soviet-type bodies from the workers' councils and committees that already exist.

Now is the drucial time for such demands.

The power of the capitalists in the form of the police force and the standing army is almost. non existent. Only a handful of soldiers have obeyed Khomeini's. call to return to the barracksand they are unwilling to fight the masses.

In other words all the forces are assembled for one of the greatest steps forward for the human race.

The masses are persisting with • their demands; the oppressed minorities-the Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, Turkomenis and . Azerbaijanisare demanding self-determination and already effectively control their own territory; workers' committees are formed -many of them armed; and many of the millions of women who participated in the revolution are demanding democratic rights.

The one missing factor is the most crucial: the revolutionary party in Iran.

Bolstering Khomeini But seen through the eyes of the WRP the situation is not like this at all.

Far from taking the Comintern's line of exploiting the contradiction between .. the masses and their Islamic and bourgeois leaders in order to "gather the components of the future proletarian party" . the WRP leaders actually bolster up Khomeini and defend his reactionary path.

Rather than point out the true nature of Khomeini's "Islamic Revolutionary Courts" the WRP simply defends them against attack from the capitalist press and those like the Tribune Group who defend Bazargan.

Rather than suport the legitimate struggle for self-determination by the Kurdish people (who, unlike most Iranians, are not Shiite Moslems) the WRP amazingly claim, despite clear evidence to the contrary, that:

"They are fully behind Iran's national leader Ayatollah Khomeini."

(Newsline, 14.3.79)

But while these positions pander unashamediy to the chauvinism and clerical reaction of the Khomeini-Bazargan regime, they pale in comparison to the vicious WRP attacks on the struggle by Iranian women against intensified oppression:

"The thoroughly reactionary anti-revolutionary activities of the so-called women's liberation groups in Tehran must be condemned as provocations."

• Pro-American Of course it is necessary to attack the reactionary pro-American position argued by feminist Kate Millett. But the WRP simply launch a wholesale attack on Iranian women fighting for their rights..

That regime has been uncritically supported by the WRP's other chosen "revolutionary" allies in the Middle East, notably PLO leader Yassir Arafat and Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi-friend and supporter of Ugandan despot Idi Amin...

Sooner than break ranks with these forces, the WRP prefers to set its face against the interests of half the population in Iran-the millions of oppressed women-in their struggle for emancipation.

Newsline remains silent on the brutal murder of gays-and seems almost to defend the Islamic fanatics who attacked the women's demonstrations.

IC statement

What now of the hypocritic. al "Statement by the International Committee" published in Newsline only one month ago, which attacked Khomeini's political position as a combination of:

"progress and reaction, Sharia law and the Constituent Assembly [?], oppression of women and personal liberty."

The same statement Arafat with K'homeini correctly slammed the Stalinist Tudeh Party pointing out:

"They completely capitulate to the National Front and Khomeini, endorsing the latter's reactionary Islamic Republic."

The same criticism must now apply equally to Newsline and the WRP leadership!

Self-determination

Its final demands included formally correct call for:

"Self determination for the Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, Azerbaijanis and Turkomenis. Build a secular socialist republic!"

Yet this has been cast aside in practice in subsequent pages of the Newsline, proving once again the complete inability of the Healy-Banda leadership to maintain a consistent or principled line on any major struggle in the working class.

Khomeini has outlived his progressive role in opposing the Shah. The mass movement must be directed towards the socialist revolution against KhomeiniBazargan.

The WRP has shown in recent weeks that it will stand not at the head of such struggle but in opposition to it.