How Iran became a despotism

The Shah left Iran on 16 January 1979. Crowds celebrated on the streets of Tehran. Khomeini had already appointed the Islamic Revolutionary Council in exile. He returned to Iran on 1 February 1979, greeted by millions at the airport. On 5 February he appointed Bazargan as his provisional prime minister.

An insurrection on 9-11 February 1979 brought the end of the remnants of the Shah’s regime. On 11 February the army’s supreme command ordered the troops back to barracks and backed Bazargan to form a government.

As the old state began to crumble, working class people took control of the basic societal functions — most importantly set up shuras (councils) in workplaces. These shuras took many forms — in Tehran alone there were as many as a thousand — and in the first months of 1979 they thrived.

The level of working class struggle remained high. The new provisional government estimated that 50,000 workers took part in new strikes in the first few months of 1979. Between February 1979 and February 1980 there were 350 separate industrial disputes.

Workers struck for higher wages, with average wages increasing by over 50% in 1979 and the minimum wage more than doubled.

Khomeini’s attitude towards the working class was clear from the outset. He made preparations to confront the strike committees before his return to Iran — and began attacking the burgeoning labour movement from the moment he returned.

On 20 January 1978 Khomeini established the Committee for Coordination and Investigation of Strikes (CCIS), which included Bazargan and future president Rafsanjani. Its main tasks were to “call off those strikes which jeopardise the work of the main industries involved in the production of people’s urgent needs, and those threatening the country’s survival”.

Immediately after the insurrection [9-11 February 1979] oil strike leaders were arrested by the new regime and charged as counter-revolutionaries.

Bazargan’s spokesman said: “Those who imagine the revolution continues are mistaken. The revolution is over. The period of reconstruction has begun”.

Three days after the insurrection Khomeini ordered all strikers to return to work “in the name of the revolution”. The provisional government opposed the shuras and set up a special force of appointed inspectors inside the plants to report on their activities. Instead the government advocated syndicates.

On 18 February the Islamic Republic Party. Militias and other storm troopers such as the Hezbollahi (Party of Allah) were organised to attack opponents in the streets and in workplaces.

Speaking in Qom on 1 March 1979, Khomeini said: “Democracy is another word for the usurpation of God’s authority to rule... What the nation wants is an Islamic republic; not just a republic, not a democratic republic, not a democratic Islamic republic. Do not use the term ‘democratic’. That is the Western style.”

In March 1979 Khomeini resorted to threats: “Any disobedience from, and sabotage of the implementation of the plans of the Provisional Government will be regarded as opposition against the genuine Islamic Revolution. The provocateurs and agents will be introduced to people as counter-revolutionary elements, so that the nation will decide about them, as they did about the counter-revolutionary regime of the Shah”.

Interest

On 31 March the Minister of Labour announced that the government “was in favour of Syndicates and believes that workers can defend their interests only through a healthy Syndicate; therefore the ministry will support such organisations and intends to dissolve any other forms of organisation which are wasteful.”

The government began interfering in the workplaces, appointing its own representatives as managers and trying to downgrade the role of the shuras. It encouraged groups of supporters to establish Islamic societies in workplaces to emphasise the priority of religion and Islamic attitudes to work and property.

Many workers did not accept this. But the provisional government pressed ahead with plans for an Islamic constitution. On 30-31 March they organised a referendum, with the question: Yes or No to an Islamic Republic. The voting slips were red for No and green for Yes. Members of local Komitehs handed voters their preferred voting slip and stamped their identity cards.

In May 1979 the government introduced the Law of Special Force to prevent shuras intervening “in the affairs of the managements and of the appointments” of government-nominated managers.

On 6 May Khomeini ordered the creation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, the Pasdaran, which were formally founded on 16 June.

The regime nationalised 483 factories, 14 private banks and all insurance companies in June 1979. It took control of 70% of the private sector, paying compensation to foreign and domestic capitalists. They did so in reality because workers in many plants had already effectively ousted their bosses and the regime wanted to regain control by imposing its own managers.

In addition, the Islamic Mustazafin Foundation took over the assets of the Shah’s family Pahlavi Foundation, which included 20% of the assets of all private companies. State managers were appointed to impose government policy.

The regime also used economic sabotage to undermine factories with shuras.

On 22 June a demonstration at Tehran University demanding a popularly elected assembly was broken by the Hezbollahi. The government decided that an Assembly of Experts would draft the new constitution. The new constitution, endorsed by referendum in December 1979, contained articles designed to restrict the shuras. For example Article 105 said that, “decisions taken by the shuras must not be against Islamic principles and the country’s laws”.

During Ramadan, on 25 July 1979 Khomeini announced a ban on music on radio and television, comparing it with opium.

On 7 August 1979 the government enforced a two-month old press law, with the Pasdaran occupying the offices of the liberal daily paper,Ayandegan. Later that month the government banned 41 opposition papers and took over two large publishing houses. This was a significant blow to the left, whose papers had a circulation of around a million.

In August Khomeini created the Reconstruction Crusade, to repair roads and government buildings. Workers from General Motors, Caterpillar and Iran National, were sent out on this, on the grounds that parts were not available in their factories. Strikes and sit-ins were declared illegal, as “communist conspiracies”.

Repression

The first widespread wave of outright suppression against the shuras was launched in August. Many independent shura activists were arrested and a number of them executed.

Khomeini’s forces also attacked the left. On 12 August a demonstration called by the National Front, Fadaiyan and Mujahedin was attacked by Hezbollahi and Pasdaran. The following day the offices of the Fadaiyan and Mujahedin were besieged by Khomeini’s forces.

Khomeini made his attitude clear in a speech on 19 August in Qom: “We made a mistake. If we had banned all these parties and fronts, broken all their pens, set up gallows in the main squares and cut down all these corrupt people and plotters, we would not be facing all these problems.”

The government also used Islamic Associations and “Islamic shuras” to undermine independent organisation in workplaces.

These Islamic Associations had the following functions: indoctrination of labour with the ruling ideology; policing the workplace; mobilising workers behind the regime. According to Bayat they were viewed by many workers as “new SAVAK agents who grow beards instead of wearing ties”.

When Iraq attacked Iran in late September 1980, the result was “an hysterical chauvinist wave which rapidly engulfed the country, including the working class and most of the left”. The other major effect was the militarisation of society, with the regular army revived, the Pasdaran trebled and new organisations such as the Basij corps set up up. Even the Islamic Associations were armed.

Even in 1981, militant workers were defying the dictates of the government. But by June 1981 the last traces of independence by the shuras were stamped out. In the Iran Cars factory, the armed Pasdaran had rushed into the factory and begun arresting shura members and other activists according to a blacklist prepared by the Islamic Association.

The number of industrial disputes fell from 180 in 1980-81 to 82 in 1981-82. Workers in the oil industry, who had won a 40-hour week through struggle, lost it as the Revolutionary Council decreed a 44-hour week.

As Assef Bayat described it: “As for workers, Islamisation of workplaces goes hand in hand with Islamisation (better to say regimentation) of leisure. The factory is assumed to be a barricade against koffar (infidels), where the agirs (labourers) have to listen to official religious sermons as well as perform ‘the divine duty of production’. Hence, massive dispatches of factory mullahs, a religious transformation pf the atmosphere in factories, the putting up of special pictures, posters, huge slogans on the walls and the loud broadcasting of official speeches during break and lunchtimes etc.”

The subordination of workers was summed up by the head of the judiciary in March 1983: in the factories “the management is the brain, the Islamic Associations are the eyes, the rest the hands”.