Chris Strafford calls for mobilisation, and reports Campaign Iran’s rebranding

On February 3 the Socialist Workers Party-backed Campaign Iran is hosting a meeting in London to discuss the recent mass upsurge in Iran and how sanctions and military threats undermine the movement for positive social change. The speakers include Ali Fathollah-Nejad, billed as a “political scientist and lecturer in globalisation and development”, Ali Ansari, a historian who has written on Iranian society, and Lindsey German of the SWP (now part of the opposition Left Platform faction), speaking for the Stop the War Coalition.

What is remarkable about this is that it represents an absolute retreat – indeed a U-turn – from the long-held position of both Campaign Iran and the SWP/STWC. Until last June the very mention of principled solidarity with Iranian workers’, student, women’s and democratic movements against the regime would have been slapped down as pro-imperialist meddling that only aids the west’s case for military action against Iran.

However, publicity for the meeting refers not only to “western leaders’ talk of increasing sanctions” and “hypocritical accusations of Iran’s nuclear programme”, but to the “exciting, powerful and determined resistance movement, which emerged during last summer’s election fall-out” and promises to discuss “how best we can lend support to its potential success, without the interference from foreign powers”.
Quite a contrast to 2007, when SWP members, backed up by STWC chair Andrew Murray from the Morning Star‘s Communist Party of Britain, denied Hands Off the People of Iran and Communist Students affiliation to Stop the War because they were calling for support for progressive Iranians fighting the regime in addition to opposing all sanctions and military moves by the imperialists.

At the STWC conference in October of that year Somaye Zadeh from Campaign Iran spoke from the platform, as the Iranian regime-run Press TV filmed her. In an extended apologia she condemned the so-called anti-Iranian “lies”. She seriously claimed that the regime was not anti-semitic, even though it hosts international conferences on holocaust denial, and argued that homosexuals do not have it that bad, as Iran has a very good record in allowing sex-change operations. And women are not that oppressed, she said, as Iran has a female racing driver. Also at the conference the then SWP leader, John Rees (he too is now in internal opposition), attacked Hopi for aiding the imperialists and argued that the ordinary person would be confused if we openly opposed the theocratic regime as well as imperialist threats.

So what has changed since then? Two important British trade unions, PCS and Aslef, have affiliated to Hopi and a whole raft of individual trade unionists, left activists, artists and writers have signed up as sponsors. But crucially millions have taken to the streets in Iran following the rigged presidential elections. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been branded a liar, a cheat and a dictator. The demonstrations continue to this day and now the popular demand is not for a rerun of elections. Instead there are calls for the end of the Islamic Republic and for democracy and secularism. The masses are moving to the left and the theocracy is bitterly divided. The confidence of the workers’, student and women’s organisations continues to grow by the day and there are even reports of soldiers and Revolutionary Guards refusing to obey orders to shoot protesters. Hopi has clearly benefited from this dramatic change and has considerably strengthened its links with comrades in Iran.

Now it is not easy for the apologists to dismiss those who criticise the regime without losing all credibility. So they side with that part of the mass movement that is still associated with the theocracy – namely the ‘reformists’ headed by Mir-Hossein Moussavi. He currently represents the regime’s softer wing, even though, as a former prime minister, he presided over the mass murder of communists, trade unionists and other oppositionists and was amongst the most vocal in calling for neoliberalism in Iran.

Nevertheless, support by Iranian exiles for the green movement now allows the SWP to come out against the Tehran regime, while still maintaining its popular front against imperialist sanctions and military threats on Iran. But the anti-war movement, if it wants to be relevant, must back not the discredited ‘reformists’, but the genuine anti-imperialists who want to sweep away the entire regime. These forces – the worker’s movement, the women’s movement, the radical student movement and other democratic and national liberation groups – are those who deserve our support.

If the new change of line by Campaign Iran and the SWP/STWC is to be more than an opportunist lash-up with a few liberals, and actually delivers solidarity to Iranian workers and activists, this would be a welcome development. It would logically mean that the STWC will not only allow Hopi to affiliate – we should never have been barred in the first place – but it will back our campaign against imperialist war and sanctions and for democracy and secularism in Iran.

It should throw its weight behind Hopi’s week of action (February 13-20) which will coincide with the 31st anniversary of the Iranian revolution. This will see events up and down the country (for details see www.hopoi.org/?p=1018).

Now that it is considered acceptable – even desirable – to campaign openly for the mass movement in Iran, we are confident that those of us who have been carrying out this basic internationalist duty for years will no longer be attacked for ‘trying to impose our views on Iranians’ or ‘playing into the hands of the imperialists’

Iran: what lies ahead?
Wednesday February 3, 7.30pm: Public meeting – ‘The movement, sanctions and the west’, Bloomsbury Central Baptist church, 235 Shaftesbury Avenue, London WC2.
Organised by Campaign Iran: www.campaigniran.wordpress.com