C'apitaliom is in crisis, The leaders of the Labour Party and the trade unions offer solutions that are in The interests not of the workers but of the capitalist class.
Socialist Challenge believes that the two rital lasts confronting retounonary soctansts are.
• To build broad-baser class struggle tendencies in opposition do class-collaborationism in the labour morement. These should non-exclusive grouping together militants holding a wide range of political views.
• To begin to fight for the creation unified democrane revotutionary socialsi organisation which can.
application united front tactics, peein lo be seen as an alternative thousands workers engaged in struggles.
Such an organisation should be hased on the understanding that:
The struggle for workers against the with that of other oppressed layers of society — women, black people, gays struggling for liberation. This socialism can only beachiered by creating new organs of poner and defeating with necessary means the power of the capitalist state.
,1)er socialism will infinitely dentered than what exists in Britain today. right. polifical parties and currents that do not rake no arms agals lut socialis state. The stalinist models of "vocialisn' In ine look and Fastern Kurope have discredited socialism in the eyes of millions of Halakes We are opposed to them and will offer fuli support to all fighting for scialist democrac!.
The interests of worker, and on a worrid seale, Capitalism not only created market. has created politics. Thus we fight for working class unit! on an scale, his units will in the long run he decisise in defeating both the inneriola revime, in the West and the brutal dictatorships they sustain in Lalin America, and Asia In Britain if implies demanding the immediate withdraw ai British troops from Ireland and letting ihe Irish people determine The Communist parties in Europe are in crisis. Neither Farocommunist the pros Moscow wings have ans meaninglul strategy lor «serthron al the rapitalist state. Ten resolutionars socialist parties Thall trolose. Conditions toxians than over th preceding three decades. But such Run!! be build reiertine sedlarianim and sering internal democrace nod dra lasury but asi vital necessits. the righe do arpanise lactions and rackencies.
I you agree with these principles and hu be inselved elisities to Serialist d ballenge supporters on sous area, Mol in 1h30 turn belon and send in to do.
interested • I sould like anditional liferature ¡Prete it nod applicables Name...
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and through of socialism bosses their be message of the.
for surrender.
gunships, the summary and Tehran those and future are at stake.
sentenced to death arranged by the local Imam sentenced two slanderous Trotskyists Africa пОг The the globe.
are forget this fact.
This nears in embassy by Reg = 6 September 1979 Page 2 Socialist Challenge; 328/9 Upper Street. London N1 Rebel Kurds face the firing squad. 'NO QUARTER given or received.' That was the Kurdish people last demands by the Khomeini-Bazargan government The indiscriminate continuous strafing of Kurdish towns and cities (Saddeq, Paveh, Zanlan) by government helicopter executions of Kurdish prisoners, and the violence of the denunciations and slanders aimed at the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Kurdish people from the pulpits of Qom have only increased Kurdish determination to resist. Nothing less than their liyes The stakes are equally high in Ahwaz in the province of Khuzestan. There twelve Trotskyists members of the Socialist Workers Party (HKS), Iranian section of the Fourth International — were In a secici trial conducted without the slightest pretence of legality. The trials, Committee, also further HKS members. to life imprisonment. The charges contained not a single reference to any illegal or criminal act, merely attacks against the of and their political support for the struggle of the oppressed masses of Iran. Although a re-trial now seems to have been scheduled, the lives of these comrades may still be in the balance Has the Iranian revolution come to an end? After only six months of seeing the light of day, are: the Iranian people now being led back into the dark night of repression for another quarter century? Has Khomeini replaced Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as the new Shah of Iran? We think not.
For 25 long years, the Shah ruled Iran with an iron fist. The suppression of all democratic rights and the crushing of all opposition was carried out with a brutality and cruelty unmatched throughout Those who rail against the repression launched by Khomeini should not for one second Both under the Shah's regime and under the rule of Khomeini, power is wielded without the scantest regard for the interests or wishes of the Iranian masses. But it is the manner of coming to power which is crucial. The Shah took hold of the reins after a CIA-backed coup in which the workers movement and the oppressed suffered a crushing defeat. Khomeini, on the other hand, rode to power on the crest of a mass movement unequalled in this A letter protesting against the death sentence is handed in at the Iranian 2XQ.
Kurdestan, Khuzestan, and the workers in the oil fields was not Khomeini. 'The masses', the Russian Revolution, of the cultural the Insurrections, by the desire to speak freely, exploitation landowners and capitalists.
Revolution programme of 1963, exiled for vision he invoked by compromise with were gone.
Ernie Roberts MP and others.
Editorial: 01-359 8180/9. Distribution/ Advertising: 01-3598371. century. Every section of society, including the massed ranks of the urban poor, the nationalities in Turkomenestan and Azerbaijan, women, and the organised power of and all the other industries mobilised to bring down the Pahlavi dynasty. It isto this mass movement that Khomeini owes his present position. He was, to be sure, in the leadership of this movement; but the movement wrote Trotsky in his History of 'go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime.' The repression meted out by the SAVAK agents of the Shah, the denial of all democratic rights, a land reform which made millions of peasants landless and destitute and drove them to live jobless in ghettos around the cities, racist denial rights non-Persian nationalities, and an economic collapse which was steadily deepening and nourishing the discontent of ever widering layers of society...these conditions were without doubt too much to endure.
are merely spontaneous explosions of anger or discontent. Although they may not have had 'a prepared plan of social reconstruction, the masses in Iran . were moved by a thirst for control over their own lives, by the need for democratic rights and for the ending of their at the hands the Shah, the The failure of both the National Front and the Tudeh Party to oppose the land reforms in 1963 and the absence of any political leadership created a vacuum into which Khomeini could move. He had been alone in voicing any opposition to the white and had been this very reason His reputation was clear, and in the sketches of an Islamic Republic which he offered from Paris the masses saw the possibilities of a regime free from exploitation, one in which they could see realised their rightful demands. Khomeini seemed to add weight to the This steadfast refusal the Pahlavi regime and his unrelenting exhortations to the masses to continue the struggle until the Shah and all his hangers-on Demonstration called and Iranian embassies.
Friday Central Hall, SWP, Workers Action. cannot fulfil the needs taking office Bazargan introduce single ever. be destroyed.
This latter Nurdisn people democracy, climate freedom have itself.
which themselves been forced rely movements of the Islamic Guards -ghettos, untrained and undisciplined the military hardware at its disposal.
oldest, are prepared to resist to the end.
gradually beginning to crumble. homini. The Arabs of Khuzestan indicated a regions.
cracks. For instance, campaign of Kurdish people. can spread over struggles of the nationalities.
is offering LU and political rights of the Kurdish people such manoeuverings. to throughout the world.
Hands Kurdestan!
prisoners! Stop the executions! members! Defend the Iranian Revolution! Westminster.
By claiming to rise above classes, Khomeini exploited the unity of the anti-Shah movement. But this 'national unity' could not obscure for long the fundamental class issues at stake in Iran today. Because of the dependent character of the Iranian economy in relation to imperialism, the bourgeois government of Bazargan installed by Khomeini and wishes of the people which are the tasks of the Iranian revolution. Since been unable reform. Unemployment continues to rise, inflation is rampant, industry is at a standstill, and food production is as unreliable as But the expectations of the masses remain, and these expectations run counter to the type of society which Khomeiai-Bazargan want to rebuild - a capitalist society. The dynamic of the movement which led to the fall of the Shah cannot be appeased. It will either sweep forward to bring the land into the hands of the peasants, the means of production into the hands of the workers, and the formation of a proletarian government — or it will the task which the Khomeini-Bazargan government has set itself. The violent attempt to suppress the demands of the attempt in which the class consciousness of the masses can only grow. The persecution of the left and the abolition of press exactly the same aim. If this is achieved, the government will move to clamp down on the other nationalities, and on the working class But Khomeini-Bazargan are on shaky ground The forces of repression at their disposal are at best unreliable: Many sections of the armed forces, were part of the mass radicalisation earlier in the year, are unwilling to go into action against the Kurds. The government has on the uncoordinated - often hastily recruited from among the unemployed in the urban - and on an economic infrastructure which is unable to service Kurdish people, armed from the youngest to the Moreover, the credibility of the government is The widespread boycott of the elections to the Council of Experts reservoir opposition continue to pose a threat to the stability of the oil-producing International action can prise open these the announcement by the Foreign Minister of Iran last Sunday that the HKS militants are not at present under sentence of death was a self-confessed response to the internationa Fi pickets, demonstrations, telegrams. for the drop eg of all charged therenese merely • We shall continue our campaign, not merely greates! contribution we can make in this country to the building of a revolutionary leadership in Iran.
Today the class struggle which died down after the February insurrection is coming to life again in the form of civil war. The resistance of the Kurds, now at the forefront of the revolution's defence, into the Arab nationality Khuzestan, into the Turkomeni and Azerbaijani regions; the struggles of women and of the working can draw strength from the Imperialism can support only one side in such a war. Already the State Department in Washington the of Khomeini-Bazargan. The stability of a capitalist regime in Iran is more important to the human rights demagogues on Capitol Hill than the lives Socialists internationally have a duty to counter A defeat for the : Iranian revolution will bea defeat for the oppressed masse No to the arms sales! the Kurdish Release the HKS by Association of Kurdish -Supported by Ad Hoc • Iran'..
Speakers: Hojabr
Work March Tuesday 4 September THERE ARE over people, mainly young, on this year's Right to Work march to the TUC. So tar the march has been Liverpool, Kirkby, we'll get to tonight.
Yesterday we walked 25 miles in 0Ilt day, after night rainstorm brought down our marquee and soaked our sleeping bags at 5am. As a result there are lots of blisters five hundred But we've through Leyland and Blackpool population is unemployed.
been so welcoming.
spray painting. when half anti-fascist and aches and pains. Sometimes it seems a bit like an endurance test.
been calling in at factories, trade union headquarters and labour clubs on the way, and we've been really welcomed. It's not surprising, really — in Kirkby half the The attitude of the police has not • On the very first day one Asian youth was arrested for Then when marchers — members of the National Union of School Students and about them Revolution supporters — went to a school to talk demonstrators London's Red Lion Square in 1974.' This certainly came as a surprise to ck o to students, they were all arrested They had gone to talk about the campaign and the need to organise to fight for jobs and for their rights in school.
They were all done for breach of the peace and came vo in court the next day. All of them were bound over to keep the peace for a year, with a £100 fine if they don't.
-This is what you get for asserting your democratic right to organise. All those who were under 17 were kent overnight in the cells and one of them was badly beaten up by the police.
It's not a joke getting picked up by the police in Anderton's territory. know what happened to those who had to stay at the police station. But despite the efforts of the police we are all still determined to fight back mosl of Ine people option. unemploced cant fight alone hey have so little power. marching on the TUC - to demand a big campaign in the trade unions for a 35-hour week, a minimum wage, and against all redundancies. the TUC Chief Constable We still don't Bakers' Union here have you spend That's why we're You will be surprised to learn that this is precisely what the TUC leaders are afraid to do.
Why should they worry about the unemployed? As Val Dunn of the pointed out in he address to us at Preston: 'Socialism is supposed to be caring about people. If people you don't Imperial Hotel in Black on at £5,000 dinners the The only way we'll make these leaders shift is if we organise to make them. The Right to Work march is the beginning, we have to go on
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Students Abroad (AKSA) to protest the attacks on the Kurdish people. Saturday 8 September assemble Speakers Corner 1pm for march to Iraqi Committee to Defend Democratic Rights in Iran. Public meeting: 'Stop the repression in 7 September, 7.30pm, in Assembly Hall,
Khosravi (HKS, Iran), Shirko Abid (AKSA), Fred Halliday, labour movement speakers. Sponsored by AKSA, Kurdestan Solidarity Committee, IMG,