Al-Jazerra has loudly proclaimed that the protests in Iran are the "biggest unrest since the 1979 revolution". Protests began in Tehran on Saturday 13th, and as the results from the election started to come out, the protests started to turn increasingly violent. Demonstrations at three Tehran universities turned violent, and protesters attacked police and revolutionary guards. The police have sealed off important sites and in turn protesters have attacked shops, government offices, police stations, police vehicles, gas stations and banks. Rumours coming out of Tehran suggest that four or more people have already died in the protests. The state has also reacted by arresting prominent ‘anti-government figures', and more importantly disrupting the internet telecommunications network, which had been used via SMS messages and websites to organise protests. Western journalists have said that ‘Tehran almost looks like a war zone already'.

That people are dissatisfied with what society has to offer them, and that there is an increasing willingness to struggle is very clear, not only from these events, but also from the recent struggles in Greece, as well as last years struggles in places such as Egypt and France. Just turning to the pages of the newspapers shows that the working class is recovering its will to struggle despite the fears caused by the return of open crisis.

However, it is not enough for communists to merely cheer on struggles from afar. It is necessary to analyse and explain and to put forward a perspective. At the moment, this movement is of a very different character from that of 1979. In the struggles leading up to the ‘Islamic revolution', the working class played a huge role. For all the talk of people in the streets overthrowing the regime, what was clear in 1979 was that the strikes of the Iranian workers were the major, political element leading to the overthrow of the Shah's regime. Despite the mass mobilisations, when the ‘popular' movement - regrouping almost all the oppressed strata in Iran - began to exhaust itself, the entry into the struggle of the Iranian proletariat at the beginning of October 1978, most notably in the oil sector, not only refuelled the agitation, but posed a virtually insolvable problem for the national capital, in the absence of a replacement being found for the old governmental team. Repression was enough to cause the retreat of the small merchants, the students and those without work, but it proved a powerless weapon of the bourgeoisie when confronted with the economic paralysis provoked by the strikes of the workers.

This is not to say that the current movement can not develop and can not draw the working class as a class into struggle. The working class struggle in Iran has been especially militant in the past few years, especially with the 100,000 strong unofficial teachers strike which took place in March 2007, which thousands of factory workers joined in solidarity. 1,000 were arrested during this strike. This was the largest recorded workers' struggle in Iran since 1979. The strike was followed in the next months by struggles involving thousands of workers in sugar-cane, tyre, automotive and textile industries. As for now, of course there are workers on the streets today, but they are engaged, at the moment, in the struggle as individuals and not as a collective force. It is important to stress though that the movement can not progress without this, collective force of the working class. A one day national strike has been called for Tuesday. This may give an indication of the level of support within the working class.

Recently the bourgeois media has been full of talk of various so-called revolutions named after various colours or plants. There have been ‘orange' revolutions, ‘rose' revolutions, ‘tulip' revolutions and ‘cedar' revolutions, and all the while the media have bleated like sheep about the ‘struggle' for democracy.

This movement started as a protest about cheating in the elections and protesters were originally mobilised in support of Mousavi. However, the slogans quickly became more radicalised. There is a huge difference between Mousavi's feeble protests to the supreme leader about the ‘unfairness' of the elections, and the crowd's chants of "death to the dictator and the regime". Of course the Mousavi clique is now panicking and has cancelled a demonstration set for Monday. Whether people respect this decision remains to be seen. On the other hand, Mousavi's calls for calm so far have also been met with slogans against him.

In contrast to these sort of coloured ‘revolutions', communism poses the possibility of a completely different type of revolution, and a completely different type of system. What we advocate is not simply a change of management of society with new ‘democratic' bosses performing exactly the same role as the old ‘dictatorial' bosses, but a society of free and equal producers created by the working class itself and based on the needs of humanity and not on the needs of profit, where classes, exploitation and political oppression are done away with.

Sabri 15/6/9 

Even under a system of communism, workplace accidents, sickness and disease can never be completely eliminated but, at the very least, part of the communist programme must be for a reduction of the widespread toll on the working class. In its search for profits, for the maximisation of its profits, capitalism kills, maims and injures on a vast scale. Just by showing up for work alone, the worker ‘lucky' enough to have a job is immediately put at risk, his or her health and safety compromised, and this from a mode of production whose main concern is the relentless drive for profits whatever the human cost.

On 1 April, largely overshadowed by the hoo-hah over the G20, a Super Puma helicopter, flying in good weather, crashed into the North Sea killing the sixteen workers on board. It came just a week or so after another Super Puma had ditched in the North Sea, east of Aberdeen when all eighteen were rescued. Scores of workers have been killed in helicopter crashes in the North Sea since the mid-70s involving all types of helicopters and all types of weather conditions and scores of workers have also been rescued in many close shaves. After the 1 April tragedy, many workers held back from expressing their concerns about helicopter safety, the way these machines are run day in day out with a minimum of maintenance, for fear of being blacklisted. Just as it emerged that many building workers, another industry that's notoriously dangerous, were blacklisted as ‘troublemakers' on a list provided to all the major building firms. After the North Sea Piper Alpha oil rig explosion in 1988 in which 167 workers were killed and no management faced the least prosecution, workers were reluctant to express themselves and a report to the Glasgow authorities ten years later was unable to find evidence of any significant improvement in safety procedures.

But it's not just the ‘dangerous' industries, oil rigs, construction, etc, that are a permanent danger to workers. The Health and Safety Executive has been accused of a major underestimation of deaths and injuries of workers in Britain. The HSE gives a figure of 241 workers killed in the UK 2006/7. The Hazards Campaign estimates between 1600 and 1700 killed each year with up to 50,000 dying from work-related illnesses. In 2007 a report prepared by the HSE "on the burden of occupational cancer in Britain", looking at six types of cancer, attributed over 6000 deaths of men and over 1000 deaths of women in 2004 to workplace environments, i.e., 4.9% of all cancer deaths. Researchers at Stirling University condemned the figures, putting the real cost of work related cancer each year of up to 24 thousand and accused the HSE of "failing to acknowledge or deal effectively with an epidemic of work-related cancers". Respiratory and heart figures can be added to these, without mentioning stress, neurotoxicity, Parkinson's, auto-immune diseases, asthma and the list goes on that the HSE doesn't take full account of. These cancers particularly, occurred in many industries from construction to manufacture, retail, transport, teaching, restaurants, hospitals, offices and hotels. Like the HSE, the Labour Force Survey ignores many illnesses and diseases to arrive at its figure of 2.2 million workers made ill each year by work.

The Labour Party dropped all its promises to improve workers' health and safety in 1997 and its Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2008, has been criticised by safety campaigners as weak. Figures published for 1994 in Britain covering 32 thousand deaths and injuries showed 1507 convictions and an average penalty of £3061.00. Union safety reps on workplace committees, as genuine as some of these are, are simply given the run around by management (and their unions).

Worldwide, for all the millions killed at work, millions more are killed by work-related diseases showing that capitalism is a ruthless killing machine in its drive for profit.  

Baboon 3/6/9

Daily we are told that we have to tighten our belts, accepts jobs losses, pay cuts, lose of pensions, increased work rates for the good of the national economy, to help it cope with the deepening recession. At British Airways they have even pressured workers to work for nothing for a whole month, with the threat of unemployment hanging over them. The idea of struggling against these relentless attacks is faced with the terrible fear of unemployment and the endless media campaign which tells us there is nothing we can do about our worsening living and working conditions.

And yet in the first weeks of June the weight of passivity and fear has been confronted by clear evidence that this does not need to be case. In the second week of June London Underground workers struck in order to protect 1,000 threatened jobs. Then postal workers in London and Scotland staged struggles against lay-offs, broken agreements and cuts in services. At the same time 900 construction workers at the Lindsey oil refinery site walked out in solidarity with 51 of their comrades who were laid off. This struggle burst into a series of wildcat solidarity strikes at major energy sector construction sites across Britain, when Total sacked 640 strikers on the 19th June. These struggles show that we do not have to accept our 'fate'.

Nationalism against the workers, and workers against nationalism

At the beginning of the year the Lindsey refinery workers were at the centre of a similar wave of wildcat strikes [7] over laying off workers on the site. That struggle from its beginning was hampered by the weight of nationalism, epitomised by the slogan ‘British Jobs for British workers' and the appearance of Union Jacks on the picket line, as some of the strikers said that no foreign workers should be employed when British workers were being laid off. The ruling class used these nationalist ideas to great effect, exaggerating its impact and presenting the strike as being against the Portuguese and Italian workers who were employed on the site at the same time as the other workers were being laid off. However, this strike was brought to a very sudden and unforeseen end when banners began to appear calling on the Italian and Portuguese workers to join the struggle or proclaiming ‘workers of the world unite', and Polish construction workers joined the wildcats in Plymouth. Instead of a long-drawn out defeat of the workers, with increasing tension between workers from different countries, the Lindsey workers gained an extra 101 jobs, kept the Italian and Portuguese workers' jobs for them, gained a promise that no workers would be laid off as there were jobs on the site, and went back united.

This new wave of struggles has broken out on a much clearer basis: solidarity with sacked workers. 51 contract workers were laid off at the end of the 2nd week of June because their contracts ended. At the same time, another contractor was taking on workers. The laid-off workers were told by Post-it notes on their clocking on cards that they were no longer needed. This brought an immediate response from hundreds of workers on the site, who walked out in solidarity. It was felt that these workers were being victimised for the role they had played in the earlier strike. Then on June 19th Total, the owners of the site, took the unexpected step of sacking 640 strikers. There had already been solidarity strikes on other sites but with the news of these sackings workers walked out on sites all over the country. "About 1,200 angry workers gathered at the main gates yesterday waving placards castigating ‘greedy bosses'. Fellow workers at power stations, refineries, and plants in Cheshire, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, South Wales and Teesside walked out in a show of solidarity." (The Independent, 20/6/9). The Times reported that, "There were also signs that the strike action was spreading to the nuclear industry as EDF Energy said that contracted workers at its Hinkley Point reactor in Somerset had walked out." (20/6/9).

Faced with this movement it is harder for the media to play the nationalist card. It would be a surprise if there was not a weight on nationalism on some workers and the media know how to focus their attention on them. The BBC website has a picture of a picket line with workers holding up a banner saying "put British workers first not last", while The Guardian interviewed a striker who said "We've no grievance with foreign workers as such but we feel that they should supplement what we cannot provide" (20/6/9). On the other hand, right wing papers such as The Times and Daily Telegraph who would usually make full use of such sentiments do not mention them - rather they concentrate on Total's action and the danger of the struggles spreading.

The ruling class is extremely concerned about this struggle precisely because they cannot so easily distort it into a nationalist campaign. They fear it could spread into the construction sector generally and maybe beyond. Workers can see that if Total get away with sacking striking workers other bosses will follow suit. This poses the strike as a clear class issue, of real concern to all workers.

The obvious class nature of this struggle also encompasses a vision of solidarity with foreign worker. As a sacked worker makes clear: "Total will soon realise they have unleashed a monster. It is disgraceful that this has happened without any consultation. It is also unlawful and it makes me feel sick. If they get away with this, the rest of the industry will crumble and it will be like a turkey cull. Workers will be decimated and unskilled employees from abroad will be brought in on the cheap, treated like scum and sent back after the job is done. There is a serious possibility that the lights will go out because of this. We just cannot stand by and see workers discarded like an oily cloth." (The Independent 20/6/9).

This worker's indignation is that of the whole working class. Not only because of Total's actions, but all the other attacks they are suffering or seeing. Millions of workers are being cast away like so much rubbish by the ruling class now that they can no longer suck enough surplus value from them. Bosses expecting workers to accept wage cuts or even work for free and to be happy about it! Total's contempt is that of the whole capitalist class: how dare workers be so uppity, they must be crushed!

The need for a common struggle

No matter what happens in the coming days this struggle has demonstrated that workers do not have to accept attacks; that they can resist. More than that, they have seen that the only way we can defend ourselves is by defending each other. For the second time this year we have seen wildcat solidarity strikes. There are reports that the Lindsey strikes sent out flying pickets to Wales and Scotland. There are construction sites all over the country, particularly in the capital, where the Olympic sites group together large numbers of workers from many nationalities. Sending delegations to these sites calling for solidarity action would send out the clearest message yet that this is a question that affects the future for all workers, whatever their origin. The London postal and underground workers are also trying to defend themselves against similar attacks and have every interest in forming a common front.

The old slogan of the workers' movement - workers of the world unite - is often ridiculed by the bosses who can never go beyond their competing national interests. But the world wide crisis of their system is making it clearer and clearer that workers everywhere have the same interests: to unite in defence of our living standards and to raise the perspective of a different form of society, based on world-wide solidarity and cooperation.

Phil 21/6/9.