Political turn leads to Iranian pogrom

Scan page 13

"That man has all the class consciousness of a potato!" exclaimed one angry car worker after seeing Stan Crooke's original article in SO 131 following news of the brutal torture and impending massacre of leaders of Iran's Tudeh (Communist) Party.

In a 600 word article Stan managed a mere half sentence defending the Tudeh against the purge, failed to oppose the torture of Tudeh General Secretary Kianouri, and simply utilised the occasion for a well deserved but disproportionate attack on the Tudeh's politics.

In an effort to rectify this lopsided balance, and elaborate rather more on the context of Khomeini's latest round of blood letting, I wrote an article in SO 132; it did not quarrel with Stan's political points.

Yet in reply, Stan has effectively denounced me (SO 134) as a... Stalinist! What is all this nonsense about Harry imbibing yet again (!!??) from the poisoned pages of Soviet Weekly?"

Does anyone read Soviet Weekly? Can't Stan Crooke conduct a debate without slanders and absurd caricatures?

He goes on to 'question my analysis, effectively arguing that there was never a mass movement pushing Khomeini's leadership towards the Soviet Union. Where has Stan Crooke been for the last 30 years? Was there not after 1979 a massive anti-US, anti-imperialist movement on the streets of Tehran which we all saw on television?

Has it not repeatedly been the case since World War 2 that petty bourgeois for even bourgeois) nationalist leaderships confronted by such movements have turned for assistance in El Salvador Solidarity Campaign: affiliation £5 for individuals and £10 for organisations, from 29 Islington Park St., London N (01-359 2270 containing them to the world's most adept counter-revolutionaries, the Stalinist gang in the Kremlin? - Even if we thought such an alliance unlikely in Iran, it was obvious that the US imperialists have until recently regarded Khomeini's regime as leading towards Moscow. They have not viewed the Islamic Republic as an "ally" in their project to stabilise the Middle East, but as a potentially explosive, "revolutionary', disruptive element. To deny this is ridiculous. To accept it as fact gives no automatic credibility to Khomeini's regime.

Argue

Stan goes on to argue that the expulsion of Soviet diplomats and the pogrom against the Tudeh Party do not signify anything new. There is no sudden turn to Western imperialism, he argues, since American businessmen have been in Tehran "for eight months or more"

Stan sensibly does not argue they have been selling anything! As recently as November the Khomeini regime boasted that Iran now imports nothing from the USA - while imports from Eastern Europe and the Third World had risen to 33% of Iran's total.

More recently the Times (June 3) confirms this, and points out that two British trade missions had been to Iran this year, 'the first since Ayatollah Khomeini came to power."

The message was that: "with the United States, Russia and France out in the cold, the prospects for Britain look even better."

The fact is that Khomeini's (unbroken) clandestine links with imperialism are being publicly strengthened and acknowledged. A political turn is taking place. the regime engaging in the ritual slaughter of the - yes, wretched, reactionary and legitimately despised Tudeh Party leadership.

The fact that à Communist Party is committed to reactionary politics and composed of craven Stalinists does not however free socialists from the obligation to defend it against an impending massacre by rabidly anti-communist regimes - any more than we could stand by and applaud the torture and execution of CP leaders in Chile after 1973 or even Frank Chapple and his merrie men by an authoritarian regime in Britain.

Finally Stan appears to go completely off the rails. Agreeing with me that the necessary mass struggle against Khomeini's regime must include defence of the rights of all sections of the oppressed -women, national minorities and gays - he upbraids me for not spelling out a programme for educating the Iranian masses against anti-gay bigotry.

If I could give a • detailed is article in SO 132 was not the place for it: but even if I couldn't Stan Crooke leaves us none the wiser.

What does he propose? Should we just shut up about the slaughter of homosexuals in Iran until we can step in and solve the problem?

'What," Stan concludes, "of all the other oppressed groups in Iranian society infinitely more in need of a solidarity campaign than the Stalinist gangsters of the Tudeh?" What does he expect me to say?

Of course we should support them all; we should certainly carry more articles on Iran. Perhaps Stan could write some of them. But let us ensure that we defend all the organisations - however deformed or degenerated - of the workers' movement, including the Tudeh Party, while we argue politically for a line of working class struggle for the overthrow of Khomeini and the establishment of a workers' and peasants' government in Iran.

HARRY SLOAN

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News Bulletin No20 May-June 1983 RETAGA #NAM for Solidarity Campaian