Time To Revisit `A People's History of Iran' Again: Part 7

(All the 2012 GOP and Democratic presidential candidates in the USA—except for Ron Paul—apparently support the U.S. government’s current policy of waging economic warfare and covert war against people in Iran and threatening people in Iran with an overt US/Israeli military attack in 2012. Yet most people in the United States know little about the history of people in Iran since foreign imperialist powers began undemocratically and illegally intervening in its internal political and economic affairs in the late 1800s. But here's part 7 of "A People's History of Iran," from a few years ago--bf).

Following its founding in October 1941, Iran’s Tudeh Party members chose Soleiman Mobsen Eskandari as the first chairman of the Tudeh (“Masses of the People”) Party. The Tudeh Party then formed anti-fascist committees in the Soviet-occupied areas of Iran which attempted to turn the Iranian nationalists, who were mostly pro-German, in a more anti-fascist political direction.

Under the Reza Shah Pahlavi regime, trade unions had been banned in Iran. But following Reza Shah Pahlavi’s forced abdication, Iranian trade unions once again formed and a Central Council of the Trade Unions of Iran was established. A Tudeh Party journal, Siyassat (“Politics”), also began publishing in November 1941 in Iran.

By the following June, around 6,000 Iranians were now members of the Tudeh Party; and about 80% of all Tudeh Party members had been recruited from the Iranian working class. At the Tudeh Party’s first conference in June 1942, 120 Tudeh Party delegates participated and they voted to make the following demands on the new Iranian regime of Reza Shah Pahlavi’s son, Mohammed Pahlavi (a/k/a the Shah of Iran), which had been set up by UK imperialism following Reza Shah Pahlavi’s September 1941 abdication:

1. formation of a democratic government in Iran;
2. restoration of political liberties and human rights in Iran;
3. abolition of the anti-democratic laws enacted during Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime that prohibited anti-monarchical parties and communist parties in Iran;
4. distribution among Iranian peasants of Iranian state lands and large Iranian landlord holdings; and
5. recognition of Iranian trade unions and collective bargaining rights by the new Shah of Iran’s government.

(end of part 7)