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Why striking bus drivers in Tehran are the real defenders of Muslim
rights
Nick! Cohen
Sunday February 12 2006
The Observer

For three weeks, there have been demonstrations across the planet about
a great injustice done to Muslims. After baton-wielding cops inflicted
dozens of injuries, the fear of death is in the air. George W Bush's
State Department has warned of 'systematic oppression', while
secularists and fundamentalists have revealed their mutually
incompatible values. Since you ask, I am not talking about the global
menace of Scandinavian cartoonists that has so terrified our fearless
free press, but mass arrests in Iran.

The media have barely mentioned the story, even though it cuts through
the nonsense about a clash of civilisations between the 'West' and the
'Muslims'. The Muslims of Tehran are proving themselves to be anything
but a monolithic bloc happy to follow the orders of the ayatollahs and
their demented President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There are huge class
divisions to begin ! with, and close to the bottom of the heap are the
city's bus driver s. The authorities refused to allow them an independent
trade union and ruled that an 'Islamic council' in the offices of the
Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company would represent their interests. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, the pious have not proved the doughtiest fighters for
better pay and conditions. The bus drivers claimed that managers were
stealing money from their pay packets. They formed their own union and
threatened to strike at the end of January.

Ahmadinejad won the rigged Iranian elections last year with a promise
to stand up for the little man against the Islamic Republic's corrupt
elite. Faced with a choice between sticking to his word and carrying on
with despotism, he showed his true colours by allowing the most
ferocious crackdown Tehran has seen since the religious authorities
crushed dissident journalists and students in 1999.

The company's managers and Islamic council called in the paramilitary
police who arrested ! the union's six officers and beat workers until they
agreed to renounce the strike. Bravely, the majority refused. The
state's thugs then targeted their wives and children.

Mahdiye Salimi, the 12-year-old daughter of one of the strike leaders,
told a reporter that they had poured into her home in the early hours of
the morning trying to find her father. When his wife said she didn't
know where he was, the assault began. 'They kicked my mum's heart with
their boots and my mum had an enormous ache in her heart. They even
wanted to spray something in my [two-year old] sister's mouth.'

No one knows how many people the authorities arrested. The highest
figure the British TUC has heard is 1,300. International trade union
federations and the British embassy in Tehran estimate that somewhere
between 400 and 600 people are still in prison.

Owen Tudor, the TUC's international officer, went to the Iranian
embassy to protest and was! knocked back by the hatred of unions he met.
Probably without real ising it, Iranian officials parroted the language
of Margaret Thatcher and told him unions were 'the enemy within'. From
their perspective, you can see why they would think so. Unions instil
democratic habits and encourage solidarity with others regardless of
colour and -more importantly in this case - creed. Neither of these
admirable traits is likely to appeal to your average fanatic who
believes he can read the mind of God.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the US State Department and
British Foreign Office have all protested. Trade unions, Iranian exiles
and gay groups have demonstrated. Yet the media have barely noticed. The
failure is due in part to my trade's perennial inability to walk and
chew gum at the same time: we consider stories one by one and today's
story is Muslim anger with cartoonists.

I'm not saying it isn't newsworthy, but you shouldn't forget that it
was manufactured by hard-line Danish imams w! ho hawked the cartoons round
the Muslim world for four months (and, somewhat blasphemously, added
obscene drawings of their own). The religious right and Syrian Baathists
welcomed them and proved yet again that they need to incite frenzies to
legitimise arbitrary power.

Iran has seen all the stunts before because it has endured Islamism
longer than any other country. Cheeringly, the old tricks no longer
appear to be working. The Associated Press's reporter said that about
400 people demonstrated outside the Danish embassy in Tehran last week,
most of them state employees obeying orders, according to the Iranian
opposition.

Even if you take the lowest estimate, there are as many striking bus
drivers in prison in Tehran as rioters prepared to play the worn-out
game of throwing Molotov cocktails at Western embassies. No one ever
made money by being optimistic about the Middle East, but after nearly
30 years of Islamist rule,! Iranians seem sick of it.

It cannot be said often enough that this is not a clash of
civilisations but a civil war within the Islamic world between
theocratic reaction and the beleaguered forces of liberty and modernity.
As I have tried to emphasise, the best service the rich world's liberal
left can render is to get on the right side for once.

How to succeed the cut and paste way

Each year, ever more illiterate and innumerate undergraduates go to
university and demand to be spoon-fed answers, revealed the Times Higher
Education Supplement last week.

The 250 admissions tutors, who confessed to their despair at standards
in secondary schools, weren't completely without hope. They thought
their remedial courses might knock them into shape. I'm not so sure.
According to the Plagiarism Advisory Service - and, yes, such an
outlandishly named body exists - one quarter of students admit to
cutting and pasting from the net. Universities have computer programmes
to detect lifted work, but! have to confront students who can't see
what's wrong with plagiarism. Many got through school exams on the
strength of course work parents and teachers 'helped' them complete. The
concept of cheating is a novel one for them.

On top of that are the pressures on the university authorities to cheat
themselves. Overseas students are a lucrative source of revenue and the
manner in which universities guaranteed cash flow by giving dim
foreigners degrees has been an open scandal for years. Lecturers are now
facing similar pressure to reward British students unjustly because of
New Labour's demand for 'inclusive' higher education.

I asked Susan Bassnett, pro-vice-chancellor of Warwick University, if
it was possible to go from nursery to university in this country without
learning anything. She replied: 'You can certainly get a 2:1 without
demonstrating the capacity for independent thought and without acquiring
basic skills.' Foreig! n students are now abandoning Britain for countries
with serious un iversities with worthwhile degrees. Perhaps, Bassnett
added, the loss of their money will force our authorities to face the
disaster they've created.

Oh, Huhne, you hypocrite

It is always disconcerting when someone you know becomes famous - or
even a candidate for the leadership of Liberal Democrats. And what is
disconcerting those of us who remember Chris Huhne when he was economics
correspondent of the Independent in the late Eighties is that he is
running on an anti-car ticket.

Can this be the same Chris Huhne who led an unseemly scramble for
company cars by Independent execs all those years ago? And picked a BMW
which was such a flash motor that Ian Jack, the most fastidious literary
journalist of the time, wrote 'This Car Is Very Vulgar' in the dust on
the bonnet? If Huhne wins, Lib Dems shouldn't be too surprised if he
orders a stretch limo and private jet.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited