Extend the Steel Strike!

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natcher-can be brought down by General Strike action GENERAL STRIKE! TORIES OUT! lost not in courtrooms but on the picket lines at the lost week's decision by yee ast week' House of cords to overturn die beanie, gagement on the steel strike will have a marked impact on the cornse of the class struggle.

On the one hand, the ruling that the ISTC is acting within the law in calling out its members in private steel firms alongside, the BSC strikers will redouble the morale and militancy of the steel workers.

A clear reflection of this was the way in which the ISTC Executive Committee unanimously voted down General Secretary Bill Sirs.

"Stay of execution"

Sirs had proposed that the private steel firms be given a 10-day "stay of execution" Instead the Executive called their 15,000 private sector members out on strike at once.

And the near total response to their renewed strike call is also a gauge of the level of support for the steelworkers' struggle against the Tory government.

But, on the other hand, the Lords' ruling has forced outraged employers into an all-out bid to press-gang their political servants in the Tory cabinet into the rapid legislation of sweepPrior ing new anti-strike and antipicketing laws.

Under these conditions the lores are even now hastily preparing amendments to Prior's anti-union "Employment Bill"amendments which will further attack hard-won trade union rights.

The pressure on the Tories creates them considerable problems. • Príor himself admitted that the best conditions to ram home anti-union laws is a period of "relative peace" in which the new restrictions are not immediately put to the test.

Yet the scale of the resistance from hitherto largely "moderate" steelworkers indicates that the Tories can have no hopes of any such peaceful period.

Union leaders

Indeed the fact that the action is not already far more wide-reaching is due not so much to any reluctance of the steel workers and other sections to fight the Tories, but to the reactionary role 'of the trade union leaders.

They have stretched every sinew since the beginning of the steel strike in their efforts to prevent it spilling over into a General Strike which would mobilise the enormous working class hostility to the Tory Their efforts have focussed in particular on Wales, where the Welsh TUC had initially called a General Strike of stéelworkers and related industries from January 21 aimed at staving off the BSC closure Massive pressure from Len Murray and British TUC leaders finally forced the Welsh bureaucracy to postpone their all-out action to March 10-by which time they hoped the steel pay struggle would be over.

Frantic bid

Now, with the strike more solid than ever, and with March 10 looming closer each day, Murray is to meet Welsh TUC General Secretary Wright again in a frantic bid to get this extension of the struggle called off.

Yet the steelworkers have gone into battle not only on the issue of wages, but also in resistance to BSC's plan to sack 50,000 workers.

In this they, like other sections of workers, are up against the full weight of the Tory government and its frantic moves to drive up the profits of British industry at the expense of the working class.

Not one job will be safe, nor can anyone's living standards be. defended, until this Tory government is brought down, and a government forced Into office that will make itself answerable to the working class and carry through a programme of socialist policies.

As the Tory cuts, sackings, closures and price rises hit home, countless thousands of workers, youth, housewives and unemployed are looking for a lead in the struggle to defend themselves and their families.

The Welsh Day of Action last week saw some 200,000 workers on strike in solidarity with the steelworkers' jobs struggle: such action must be built into an all-out General Strike!

This is why we call on workers throughout the trade union movement to fight for the extension of the steel strike into a General Strike that demands the removal of the Tory government.

We call for resolutions to ITDA AAR union leaderships and the TUC demanding a General Strike be called: and at the same time calling for the setting up in each area of councils of action to lead and extend generalised strike action independently of the TUC leaders.

When Len Murray last week warned the Tories that the TUC was "at breaking point" he meant that it is finding it hard to restrain the militancy of the membership.

The task in the coming struggles is precisely to break the hold of these conservative leaders, and to forge a revolutionary leadership capable of mobilising the full strength of the working class in defence of its interests.

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Anti-American demonstration in Tehran the students' made any secret of his opposspecific criticism because of ition. to the occupation, and it their attack on the regime's seems certain, to judge from the attendance at the Islamabad information which has been Islamic Conference, which they six ws diplomatic staff frome as a 'counter-revolutionary con- Tehran, that: leading figures spiracy' to aid the interests of from the Khomeini regime have "This is not an election but a new revolution"

Abol • Hassan Bani-Sadr is clearly not one to underestimate the significance of his landslide victory in the polls for Iran's first president under Khomeini's 'Islamic Republic' With three-quarters of the votes cast in his favour, BaniSad defeated his closest rival, Admiral Madani, by 5-1, with no other candidate winning even so much as 5% of the total.

Ayatollah Khomęini gave his blessing to this result from his hospital bed, and called for all Iranians to rally behind the new president. / For his part, Bani-Sadr is now actively campaigning for the first elections to the new legislative assembly early in March. He aims to secure a majority in this parliament through building a political 'front based on the supposed 1800 groupings and organisations throughout the country which supported him for the presidency:

Central authority Undoubtedly a main theme of this campaign will be the need to build a unified central authority and end the situation of dual' and "parallel' government which Bani-Sadr has, like Bakhtiar, Bazargan Khomeini before him, attacked This course will bring BaniSadr into direct conflict with a varied range of forces that have not welcomed his election. boasts, "despite the scandalohs DOSTS. bias of the radio and television, the insidious campaigns of the leading papers, the unspoken hostility from the head clergy, the fight against me led by the Islamic Republican Party (in reality by a band of fascist clerics in its midst who wrongfully make use of the Imam Khomeini's name), even despite a political campaign of filthy slanders."

Now fighting has flared up again in Kurdistan between natiónalist militants on the one hand, and both the Islamic militia of the Pasderan and units of the state army.

But before seeking to resolve the national question, Bani-Sadr hopes to sweep another obstacle out of his road to power by ending the occupation of the US embassy.

Two years after the He hamalready seniled out -not incorrectly-characterised US imperialism.

Outlived usefulness But the occupation has outlived its usefulness to the Khomeini regime in providing/a temporary diversion from the mounting popular opposition to the exploitation and oppression which survived the destruction of the Shah's dictatorship in both the old and many new forms.

Now, in the wake of, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the presidential elections, the regime must act to destroy this alternative pole of attraction and centre of authority. legal party in Tunisia] and the Bani-Sadr himself has never been involved in constant discussions with the US imperial-! ists through the medium of the Canadian embassy on how to extricate themselves from this embarrassment.

Now the conditions exist for a concerted move to release the hostages in exchange for • a patently farcical "enquiry" by the US administration into the history of its crimes against the people of Iran.

Bani-Sadr's opponents have been quick to make advantage of this looming threat, and the Islamic Republican Party has called loudly for the İslamic ALARIARAN students' to publish every document in their possession so as to.

in it: MOD HRU ITH THE IMPER El be lost unmask all collaborators with US imperialism, and defeat the , conspiracy against themselves and the 'revolution'.

But the president had already stolen their thunder by announcing that he intended to relieve the Ayatollah Khameini [sic] of the SAVAK records, and. then criticising the summary trials and executions of the Shah's agents before they could give information on their accomplices.

"Can it be," he suggested, "that there are people who have infiltrated the revolutionary movement and now fear the publication of the SAVAK documents?"

Leader

Khameini is a member of the *Revolutionary Council' and a leader of the Islamic Republican But the IRP's present tactics expose its desperate crisis. After its candidate had been forced to withdraw from the elections, the ayatollahs who lead the IRP gave their support to Hassan Habibi, who trailed a miserable 3rd, with less than 5% of the vote.

In an interview with Le Monde, Bani-Sadr assessed this result as a defeat for a large section of the high-ranking clergy and argued that the IRP was 'dead from the day of the His own plan is clearly to exclude the Islamic clergy from government as an organised force, and this is an essential part of his moves to restructure the state apparatus mto an efficient tool.

"The new president will not tolerate the continued existence of decision-making centres other than the State" , he proclaimed.

Disbanded

Once the parliamentary elections had been held, the Revolutionary Council' would be disbanded. The local 'Islamic committees would be dissolved. soon as regional government and the police had been reorganised and purified of their imperial past.

The Pasderan themselves would be abolished once the military had been reforged and transformed into truly popular army.

As for SAVAK, Bani-Sadr declared he would , establish an intelligence service which will have as its sole task the gathering and analysis of information, not the hunting down and oppression of citizens".

This ambitious , programme wil encounter serious oppos ition from both the right and the left.

The process of constructing a reliable state apparatus will of course involve Bani-Sadr in more than simply an attack on the power of the Islamic clergy: he will also be forced to tackle the organisations of the working class, above all the strike and factory committees which still remain in existence and positions of authority.

Where the new government does not move directly to disband these committees, its aim will be to pervert them into class collaborationist joint management committees' with employers and the state. popular support: We are from Bani-Sadr puts himself forward as the champion of the oppressed layers of Iranian society, but his radical petty bourgeois nationalism cannot tolerate .. the revolutionary challenge posed by the independent class interests of the proletariat.

It is not just the Pasderan that he will seek to disarm but also of course the militants of the Fedayeen and the Mujaheddin.

The Mujaheddin have already experienced a foretaste of the attacks to come from Khomeini's 'spiritual son' when their leader Masoud Rajavi was barred from standing • in the presidential elections.

This move-designed to head off the danger of Rajavi drawing massive support from Kurdistan and other areas-possibly even challenging Bani-Sadr himselfled last week to a massive 100,000 strong protest in Tehran.

The Iranian Stalinists of the Tudeh Party have shown what leadership they are prepared to offer Iranian workers in the new struggles to come.

There are already signs of a new, unholy allance against Bani-Sadr developing between the chief Islamic bigots and the • After the Mujaheddin, Fedayeen and Tudeh party had condemned the Iranian participation in the Islamic Conference, they were joined by the theologians of Qom who warned of the 'Americanisation of Islam'.

This slogan was promptly taken up and brandished with great delight by the Stalinists of the Tudeh Party, who later announced their critical support for Bani-Sadr-but only as long as he followed the uncompro mising • line of the Imam Khomeini"!

Hampered

• But in their latest manoeuvres around the reactionary bigots of the Islamic clergy, the Iranian Stalinists will certainly find themselves hampered by their position of support for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Neither the IRP nor BaniSadr shares this enthusiasmthough the Iranian resolution to the Islamic conference attempted with a certain ingenuity to maintain a position independent from both 'superpowers' by blaming the US imperialists for creating the conditions in the Middle East which led to the invasion (which itself was strongly condemned). been discovered by the army in