To commemorate the Iranian revolution that took place 30 years ago comrades of the Swedish Marxist paper Socialisten discussed this important subject in a meeting held in Stockholm. Lena Ericsson-Höijer, from the leadership of the Municipal Workers' Union local number 28 gave a leadoff.
Lena spoke about how she remembered those events of 30 years ago when
the workers and youth of Iran took to the streets to bring down the
Shah’s regime. But she also underlined the point about how when she
has spoken about revolution in Iran in her trade union, Iranian trade
unionists living in Sweden have reacted and said, “we experienced a
revolution and look at what we have now.”
It is an important lesson that the coming to power of the mullahs was not all a necessary development of the revolution. The reason for this was the lack of a revolutionary party that could have led the revolution to a socialist victory. Instead a party that could have played this role the Stalinist Tudeh party gave the mullahs and especially Ayatholla Khomeni leftwing credentials as an anti-imperialist. This provide the possibility for the mullahs to organise a counter-revolution, to step by step crush the left-wing organisations and take the leadership of the state.
An interesting discussion opened up about this subject where the participants expressed there commitment to work with the Iranian Workers’ Solidarity Network, to send a message to the workers and youth are fighting in Iran that they are not alone. We decided also to have other meetings about the Iranian revolution and invite Iranians and others interested in sharing our views and experience.