Southeri Jew! Poland: Crunch Coming

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Seven days of lectures and discussions on basic questions of Marxism. and the fight to reconstruct the Trotskyist Fourth International, ending with the Fusion Conference of A series of more basic lectures and discussions will be held There will also be films, fringe meetings on various topics, an Irish evening and other more informal activities as well as £22 for the week. Further details can be obtained from the Workers Socalist League, BM Box 5277, London WCIN As the ominous July 14 opening of the Polish Communist Party Congress looms ever closer, speculation is growing as to the proportion of the existing Central Committee that will get reelected.

Some oppositionists are expecting no more than 20% to emerge unscathed from the mood of criticism and independence that is running through the working class membership of the 3-million strong party.

Party leader Kania and Prime Minister Jaruzelski have each been re-elected with near 100% support from their local parties. But Warsaw and Katowice have yet to vote-along with other important industrial centres.

The barrage of Kremlin propaganda threatening and hinting at a possible invasion if matters go contrary to the wishes of the Moscow bureaucrats seems directed to a large extent towards intimidating • militants into re-electing the old leadership.

But at the same time the tone of the Soviet pronouncements is growing ever more: reminiscent of that adopted by the Kremlin in the weeks prior to the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Then, too, the invasion took place in the final stages of the run-up to the Czech party congress.

Top Kremlin Leonid Zamyatin has said on television that:

"The time has come to be active in order to pull Poland out of a catastrophic situation."

Yet the success of this threatening tone is indicated by the fact that it is not simply emanating from the bureaucracy: it is now being echoed by some Solidarity leaders, in particular Lech Walesa.

"The government must rule and it must be strong.

Saturday.

Walesa has always tended to respond to the economic crisis of the Polish burcaucracy by trimming back some of the most militant demands raised by Solidarity members and most recently offering to set aside wage demands for a period altogether.

There is no doubt that the invasion threat is a very real danger to the Polish working class.

It is by no, means obligatory for militants to rush prematurely into such a confrontation.

But far from arguing for support to the Polish bureauracy, a revolutionary leaderopenly warning and preparing the working class 10 meet this threat while seeking ways and means to establish active solidarity in action with the working class in the rest of Fastern Europe and the USSK. Summer 1981 the British WSL and ICL.

simultaneously with the main lectures a grand social on Saturday evening.

'he Crisis

Imperialism and Stalinism"

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Iranian troops in front lines near Korramshahr Bani-Sadr ousted as Governor of the Mullahs rule will intensift oppression JOHN LISTER looks at the background to the impeachment of President Bani-Sadr of Iran last weekend.

"This is not an election but a new revolution" That was the proud boast of Abolhassan Bani-Sadr as he swept to office as President of the Islamic Republic of Iran in January 1980.

Bani-Sadr secured no less than 75% of the votes cast, defeating his nearest rival by 5-1, No other candidate got as much as 5% of the vote.

Bani-Sadr at first basked in this success.

Enjoying at first the full support of Ayatollah Khomeini, he was at once installed as President, as Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, and given power to assemble a government even before election to the legislative assembly.

He declared his intention to build a unified and authoritative central state apparatus to administer the crisis-ridden Iranian capitalist economy.

He went further-and pronounced the fundamentalist Islamic Republican Party to be "dead" . He stated that he intended to silence its members, exclude the clergy from the government and disband the Revolutionary Council, in a return to orthodox forms of capitalist rule.

No less. attractive to worried sections of the Iranian capitalist class was Bani-Sadr's pledge to crush the challenge to centralised state control posed by the strurgles of national minori. ties in Kurdistan and Azerbarjan, and to repress the most " militant left wing organisations and committees that had sprung up in the factories and working class neighbourhoods.

Yet now, 18 months later *it is the bigots of the Islamic Republican Party who have the upper hand, and have coordinated the campaign that has ousted Bani-Sadr from his position of control, and brought his impeachment before a clereydominated Iranian parliament.

What went for Bani-Sadr?

From the outset his popular support rested on extremely fragile foundations. Khomeini-himself apparently on the point of death when Bani-Sadr was elected-apparently saw his secular candidacy as a means of controlling the increasing militancy of Iranian workers and students.

And Bani Sadr was also the obvinus representative of the "liberal" Iranian bourg coisie. Pledged to re-establish secular control after the chaotic state apparatus and restore some semblance of rational operation to the crumbling econom., he seemed their best hone of restored profits:

Bani-Sadr had indeed emerged as the man most likely to rebuild the bridges to : Us and . world imperialism.

He had made no secret of his hostility to the prolonged occupation of the US embassy and his determination to bring the "hostage crisis" to an end. This too offered Iranian capitalists the hopes of refewed opportunities for expanded trade.

On the same basis he won some support among 11011 10 sections of the army-who looked both to the consolidation i of the centralised state military machine and reestablishment of links with imperialism as their best prospect for advancement.

But these hopes and plans were all to founder in the choppy and contradictory seas of the Iranian Mobilisations The hostage issue was not quickly resolved. On the contrary, as US threats and reprisals grew in scope, so did anti imperialist mobilisations by the Iranian workers and students on the streets of Tehran.

Carter's abortive with * it Bani-Sadr's troops gun to free the hostages by military means simply brought the whole situation to boiling point.

Though Bani-Sadr and Khomeini had both been united early in 1980 in toning down Iranian demands in exchange for the hostages, Khomeini was soon to sense the way the wind was blowing and make appropriate noises.

*Bani-Sadr-slower " to adjust-emerged from the affair with little credit in the eyes of the masses.

At the same time, his relationship with the armed forces• was not : entirely satisfactory: Appointed Sapreme Commander- by Khomeini in February 1980, he took over just in time to down carry the can for repressing agitation within the army for elected soldiers' councils.

Forefront

As Supreme Commander he also placed himself firmly at the forefront of brutal military moves to crush the national liberation movement of the Kurdish people.

In May 1980 he ordered the bombardment of the Kurdish city of Sanandajbringing the deaths of over 300 people.

Unable even then to repress the Kurds, he made blustering threats to mobilise all 36 million Iranian people in defence of the "unity" of Iran against the rebels. Such threats achieved nothing except further illustrating the gulf between Bani-Sadr's pledges and his ability to carry them out.

And of course as Supreme Commander BaniSadr was duty bound to commit himself to winning the war against the Iraqi invaders who launched their attack in September.

His failure to achieve anything uke the victories 1 1 141he had promised further discredited him in the eyes of an increasingly disaffected military establishment.

Nor did his political moves prove any more successful. Having prematurely pronounced the Islamic Republican Party "dead" in January, he was forced to watch it win substantial ground in the legislative assembly elections in the Spring, and in August elect a Prime MinisterMohammed Ali Rajaie-with whom Bani-Sadr declared he "could not work".

'Westerniser'

By that point the writing was already on the wall for Bani-Sadr. His associate Sadeq Gotsbdeh was under heavy criticism from an increasingly cocky and self confident clergy, and Bani Sadr himself was increasingly denounced as a Westerniser'.

The liberal bourgeoisie was losing out heavily to the undamentalist bigots, and a recovered Khomeini was more and more distancing himself from his one-time favourite protege.

Bani-Sadi floundered on however, seeking to mobilise sufficient reactionary mob support to smash the powerful left wing forces of the Fedayeen which had cemented an alliance with the Kurdish nationalist But despite his offer to lead lumpen gangs onto the university campuses to flush out the Fedayeen, BaniSadr's campaign proved indecisive. The Iranian left "increasinsly hranded him as "worse than the Shah MILIVOONONJ Opportunity it is against this background of antagonising the evolutionary left, the rabid right and the liberal centre of Iranian society that BaniSade ran into the most recent spate of challenges to his authority:

His attempt earlier this year to agree a truce with Iraq failed miserably and offered the clergy a further epportunity •to drive home their attack.

• Little by little his powers and influence were stripped from him. his close ally was Bani-Sadr Central Bank. His newspaper was closed down.

A meting adressed by Bani-Sadı at Tehran University broke up in violence between the President's revolutionary guards and hecklers. The clergy began making allegations that this incident proved Bani-Sadr to be "creating disunity" and "provoking clashes" with his opponents.

Impeachment

He began to be openly accused of siding with ex-members of SAVAK, with "anti-revolutionary bankrupt nationalist" elements. He in turn hit back, allegine that there was a plot to remove him from office and urging Iranians to "resist tyrannv"

Accused of formenting a coup d'etat he was stripped of his post as Supreme Commander. His staff began to be arrested, and moves for his impeachment came to a head.

As his "trial by Parliament". was fixed for Saturday June 20, it became known that Bani-Sadr hadperhaps wisely-disappeared from public view for the previous eight days, and airports, "docks and border posts were placed on alerts to prevent his escape.

In the downfall of BaniSadr the Iranian masses have not lost a friend. His defence of limited democratic rights against the Islamic bigots based not on the interests of the working class but on the requirements of Iranian capitalism: his most vociferous and fleetingly successful campaigns were aimed not at the defence but at the crushing of the rights of his left wing and Kurdish political opponents.

Attacks

But the period of Islamic reaction that will follow Bani-Sadr's demise offers only the prospect of further draconian attacks on. the rights and living standards of the Iranian wörking class.

Women and gays in Iran face further persecution and appression; socialists and communists and indepen dent organisations of the working elass face increased harassment.

Only the building of a revolutionary Marxist leadership to mobilise the class strength of the Iranian proletariat in the struggle for a workers' and peasants"

of this long tunnel.

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'hursday

----- pull-quotes -----

Let's give them a chance" he urged in a speech lasi

ship should be spelling out the danger of invasion, and

government can offer to the masses any light at the end