Khomeini has gained such great popularity in Iran. the In the eyes of the Iranian of masses, Shah KHOMEINI — wants to impose Islamic conditions' LEADERS of the Workers Party are open the question of whether their party will throw its weight behind the Trotskyists in Iran.
But, speaking at a rally on *Building the Party in Iran' in London on 1 February, they did seem to rule out a campaign to force the Labour governIran's Chieftain tanks.
Peter Gowan International Marxist Group's Political Committee, invited to mae an extendea controution to the discussion, welcomed the points made from the platform about the Iranian revolutionaries return to their homeland and help build workers party.
He said that exiled Iranian members International had returned to the country and linked up with on a Trotskyist current that had emerged in a number of cities Socialist keeping the process of formation.
Gowan
servicing of workers' party.
of the which the SWP the Fourth comrades need for to Britain and European left. revolutionary Fourth Those comrades had already brought out twenty mousane copies of a new weekly paper in Tehran and a Trotskyist party uniting all these forces was in Tehran. resent mous stakes in the Iranian weekly revolution and the responsibilities of the revolutionary left throughout the world to assist issue. the development of a Marxist Pointing out the valuable aid could give to International's sised the impact which such a But non-sectarian assistance from obviously the SWP could have both in throughout the He added that he did not Trotskyists. want to put the SWP leaders on the spot for an immediate reply LICE and urged a serious consideraNeither Tony Cliff nor Terry Labour Povey ruled out the possibility that the SWP might back the were unhappy about seemed to them a light-minded The declaration of the founding of a party by comrades from North only their arrival in Povey also felt that the new was wrong to have failed to provide coverage of the strike movement in its first platform speaker not from the SWP tell that it was wrong to produce a national weekly paper to link up socialists in various parts of Iran.
and that local papers would be better. tion these points are matters of style form and tacties which should not in themselves be a barrier to SWP support for the Iranian A more disturbing disagreearosen LESUULSI to Gowan's second suggestion of a mass campaign to force the government to immediately stop all servicing of Povey opposed such a demand.
considered it unrealistic and that such a campaign could breed illusions in the Labour government.
They stressed instead that it was necessary to get positive action by British workers in solidarity with Iranian trade unionists - a proposal which Gowan had welcomed COTE clearly one which will not solve the problem of withdrawing British military specialists from However, the SWP's regarded s as final. In the first place the organisation has tradition of demanding that the British government withdraw troops Ivorter Ireland, a parallel case to its military involvement in Iran.
Secondly, Tony Cliff in his summing-up speech pointedly avoided the entire issue, unu presumably reserving his position on it.
Socialist Challenge 8 February 1979 page 11
THE Chartist movement characterised by the exact opposite of the so-called 'virtues' of the British labour movement. Its focus was not economic but political. And right from the beginning it was not only ideologically but international in its character.
Looked at from 140 years later, the six demands put forward by Chartists universal male suffrage, equal electoral districts, parliaments, payment of MPs, secret ballot and no property qualification for MPs - appear reformist and inadequate (not to mention sexist). But at the time they were genuinely revolutionary.
CLASS WAR The conditions demanded did not exist in any country in Europe. Moreover there was conservative stratum working class, no stable reformist party, which could have confined the struggle to such a programme.
victory on me six poInts have unleashed open class war in England.
The bourgeoisie certainly this. The response to the last great demonstration In 1848 blockade London with troops, fortify buildings, to place the marines on alert and to recruit 170,000 special constables.
In addition there were wholesale arrests and deportations — 1842, 1,500 arrests followed struggle In the North-west England. Confronted by this massive repression, the Chartists develop new forms of struggle or turn In November 1839, John Frost led 4,000 Chartists, mainly miners, in an armed attack on Newport in South Wales.
More importantly, in 1842, Chartists developed uniquely working class struggle for the first time anywhere in the strike. The idea developed from plans for a "sacred month, implications of happened in the North-west went a great deal further than this.
The strike was spread by mass agitation Oldham, for example, was brought out by the arrival of several thousand striking cotton workers from Ashton-underLyne. The general strike was wholly political in character be no return to work until the Charter was granted in full.
POLITICAL PARTY It was amid this agitation that the key question of an working class political party finally taken up.
Thus, already in the early 1840s, the Labour, formed out of the Chartist agitation, was discussing the idea of forming a working class political party based on the trade unions. If such a party had been established at that time it would have been vastly different from the later Labour Party.
was organisationally the mass within the would integration of Government's RATESI was to LU earlier, in the Europe. of had to the "day to day' issues. the a new and Torm OT international questions. and 4Us saw political general attempts but the throughout Europe. actually revolutionaries participated in physical monarchy.
- there would Calon was Torned CondOn This became Communist well as German members.
independent WaS left-wing Chartist leaders, Protection of 'Democratic of the the British movement internationally. in the world.
Mass action with politics to the fore, the political general strike, the unionism, armed activity by the class, the need for a working class political party - these were the clear elements of working class activity in the mid Given another decade to develop the working class in Britain would have emerged with traditions twent years in advance of developments in RISE OF IMPERIALISM It was the massive rise of British the late 18405 onwards which succeeded in diverting the working class movement into the safer channels of trade unionism and peria, sis on also pre to The 1830s sustained create working class political organisations For example, German and French organised in the League of the Just, Blanqui's 1839 attempt to overthrow the French These international organisations rapidly spread to England. In 1840 the German Workers Educational Assoexist. an international organisation under the name of the Workers' Educational Society. It had Scandinavian, Dutch, Hungarian, Czech, and Russian as The British Chartists took part in these organisations. They had strong links with the struggle in Ireland. The Harney and Ernest Jones, helped set up Committee for the Regeneration of Poland' in solidarit with the Polish liberation struggle.
This organisation had the support Communist Workers Educational Society, the Union of exiles. French Democrats, and the left wing IN THE earlier articles in this series we have looked at the main characteristics — both historical and political — which distinguish the major trends in the British labour movement.
We have pointed to its political backwardness, its national But these trends are not due to some specific characteristic of this island. They are due to the historical strength of British The truth of this assertion can be most easily demonstrated by examining the workers movement in Britain prior to the rise of imperialism, when it was not backward but the most advanced In this article we examine the lessons of the greatest working class movement in Britain before imperialism - that of the Chartist movement of the late 1830s and 1840s.
of the Polish Democratic Society.
Political solidarity activity of this kind posed the need for international organisation — the modern prejudice that national organisations had to be built before international ones did not The first international organisation 1844, held to honour the German out of a London meeting in Communist leader Weitling. It was addressed by English, French German speakers, and was probably the first major international socialist public meeting in history.
The Society of Democratic Friends of All Nations was set up from this gathering and involved the Chartist Lovett plus Polish, German French revolutionaries.
The next initiative came directly from the left wing of the British Chartists rather than from European George Harney helped to establish the Society of Fraternal Democrats exclave prominent members of the Charter Association together with Schapper from Germany, and representatives for France, Switzerland, and Poland.
In 1848 Harney explained the ideals of the Society to a meeting of German Communists:
'lappeal to the oppressed classes in every country to common cause... the cause of labour, of labour enslaved and exploited. Do not the workers of all nations have the same reasons for complaint and the same causes of distress? Have thes not, therefore, the same just cause?
In pursuit of these Societv tried to create a wider anc more authoritative organisation. It was in contact with the Democratic Belgium which at that time was led by Marx.
These two organisations jointly decided to an congress for a 'union of all democrats of all nations in the great struggle for political and social equality.
The defeat of revolutions, including the Chartists, in 1848 was a severe blow to the Society of Fraternal Democrats. The force of the combined defeats led to its disintegration - but this was not the end of attempts to form an internationa organisation In April 1850, initiative in forming the Universal Society of Communist Revolutionand aries.
DEMORALISED Harney defeats of 1848 — his paper, The Red Republican, published and translation of Manifesto in November 1850.
But, like the majority of the old militants, Harney became demoralised and turned to open reformism in the period of prosperity of the 1850s. The first development of modern movement in this country.
into the 1850s.
movement, the socialist included COTHECC protest Lans.
Scandinavia, Hungary, only •TOT the ideals the as well."
Association in Nation, Socialists the European rejected Harney, Marx, 1859 and the French revolutionAdam took the himself survived the the Communist build British imperialism created unfavourable conditions for the development of a revolutionary workers movement But the most left-wing forces in the old Chartist movement tried to keep up the pre-imperialist traditions even Ernest Jones, one of the greatest figures of the English workers used all his energy an money in founding a new Chartis People's Paper, and trying to unite Chartist, trade union and co-operative organisations into one Parliament of Labour.
INTERNATIONALIST The internationalist tradition was maintained in the People's Paper -Marx was one of the contributors Out of this activity Jones set up the International Committee in 1855 together with French, German and Polish groups. Its first meeting was addressed by the Russian revolutionary, Alexander Herzen, the French Talandier, the Chartist leader Holyoake, and messages were read from Victor Hugo and Blanqui's supporter Barbes Its aims were outlined as: "to against alliances •to heln the oppressed nationalities win their freedom; to proclaim and promote the sovereign rights of Labour, that uncrowned but monarch of the 'For us, nation is nothing, man is all. For us the oppressed nationalities TOTH DUL OIC LIC UVCSd DOUr O every land, that struggle for against the nation of the rich.
*We begin tonight no mere crusade against an aristocracy. We are not here to pull one tyranny down only that another may live the stronger We are against the tyranny of capital The International Committee held weekly meetings, and in August 1856 it joined with the French Commune Revolutionnaire, the German Communist Workers' Educational AssociUnion of Polish form an enlarged International Association.
INSULARITY Its manifesto "To the Republicans Democrats and Socialists of Europe all alliances the bourgeoisie in the name of 'national liberation', and called on workers to refuse to participate in the predatory war between France and Austria in It was these overtly political and organisationally internationalist traditions of the Chartists which formed the progressive current in the British workers movement.
The retreat on these aspects within the dominant tradition of the British workers movement, towards national insularity and stress on the bread and butter' issues, came about as a result of the pressure of imperialism.
The choice facing those attempting revolutionary organisation in this country is well summed up by the choice between these two traditions: the tradition of the Chartists or the tradition imposed by British imperialism.
Socialist Challenge 8 February 1979 page 13
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insularity, its indifference to Marxist theory, and its overwhelming stress on day-to-day trade union struggles. These elements mark