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Popular Politics, the New State and the Birth of the Iranian Working Class: The 1929 Abadan Oil Refinery Strike

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 46; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00263206.2010.504555

1743-7881

Stephanie Cronin,

Turkey's Politics and Society

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. See, for example, K. Bayat, ‘With or Without Workers in Reza Shah's Iran’, in T. Atabaki (ed.), The State and the Subaltern: Modernization, Society and State in Turkey and Iran (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007), pp.95–122; E. Abrahamian, ‘The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Labor Movement in Iran, 1941–1952’, in M.E. Bonine and N. Keddie (eds.), Continuity and Change in Modern Iran (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1981), pp.181–202; H. Ladjevardi, Labor Unions and Autocracy in Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985), pp.20–21; ‘A. al-Samad Kambaksh, Nazari bih Junbish-i Kargari va Kumunisti dar Iran (Stassfurt: Intisharat-i izb-i Tudah-i Iran, 1972–75). 2. Within social movement theory a debate has taken place between those who emphasized the ways in which cultural practices might be conducive to particular forms of mobilization, constituting a ‘toolkit’, or might shape protest movements, and those who stressed the significance of cultural change, the imparting to existing traditions of new meanings. See C. Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp.56–8. For social movement framing see R.D. Benford and D.A. Snow, ‘Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment’, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol.26 (2000), pp.611–39. 3. For ‘contentious repertoires’, ‘how, when, where, and why ordinary people make collective claims on public authorities, other holders of power, competitors, enemies, and objects of popular disapproval’ see C. Tilly, Social Movements, 1768–2004 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004). See also S. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); C. Tilly, D. McAdam and S. Tarrow, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 4. Yusuf Iftikhari has left his own account of his union activities in the oil industry and his role in the 1929 strike. K. Bayat and M. Tafrishi (eds.), Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah: Khatirat-i va Asnad-i Yusuf Iftikhari (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Firdaws, 1370). Iftikahri was in many respects a typical ‘organic intellectual’ of the period, his father was a small shopkeeper whose early death threw the family into financial hardship, forcing Iftikhari and his brothers to emigrate to Baku and eke out a living as teachers. E. Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p.36. In later years, Iftikhari denied ever having been a member of the Iranian Communist Party and expressed considerable hostility towards the pro-Soviet party. For the Gramscian notion of organic intellectuals (‘the thinking and organising element of a particular … social class … distinguished less by their profession … than by their function in directing the ideas and aspirations of the class to which they organically belong’), see A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), Introduction, p.3. See also M. Baud and R. Rutten, ‘Popular Intellectuals and Social Movements: Framing Protest in Asia, Africa and Latin America’, International Review of Social History, Vol.49, supplement 12 (2004). 5. See V. Martin, The Qajar Pact: Bargaining, Protest and the State in Nineteenth-Century Persia (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2005), pp.95–112. An early article indicating the presence of women in political demonstrations was M. Bayat-Phillip, ‘Women and Revolution in Iran, 1905–1911’, in L. Beck and N. Keddie (eds.), Women in the Muslim World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp.295–308. The history of female emancipatory movements in Iran and of state policy towards women has attracted a great deal of attention. For a survey see P. Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). For the Riza Shah period see M. Ettehadieh, ‘The Origins and Development of the Women's Movement in Iran, 1906–1941’, in L. Beck and G. Nashhat (eds.), Women in Iran from 1800 to the Islamic Republic (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004), pp.85–106; C. Amin, The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman: Gender, State Policy and Popular Culture, 1865–1946 (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2002); F. Kashani-Sabet, ‘Patriotic Womanhood: The Culture of Feminism in Modern Iran,1900–1941’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.32, No.1 (2005), pp.29–46; F. Kashani-Sabet, ‘The Politics of Reproduction: Maternalism and Women's Hygiene in Iran, 1896–1941’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.38, No.1 (2006), pp.1–29. A recent account of changing gender relations may be found in J. Afary, Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), while the gendering of Iranian history is argued in A. Najmabadi, The Story of the Daughters of Quchan: Gender and National Memory in Iranian History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998). 6. This conclusion bears out recent research into European crowd activity which has suggested women were more likely to take part in crowd disputes where these were related to the economic interests of the domestic household, even if these apparently bread-and-butter disputes had obvious political implications. For a discussion of this point, and of possible optical illusions produced by the sources see T. Harris (ed.), The Politics of the Excluded, c1500-1850 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp.17–20. Further to female involvement in rioting, see, inter alia, J. Bohstedt, ‘Gender, Household and Community Politics: Women in English Riots, 1790–1810’, Past and Present, Vol.120, No.1 (1988), pp.88–122. 7. For a discussion of the symbolic meaning of ritual weeping in Iranian Shi‘ism, see S.C. Poulson, Social Movements in Twentieth-Century Iran (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), p.54. See also H.G. Azodanloo, ‘Performative Elements of Shi‘ite Ritual and Mass Mobilization: The Case of Iran’, Critique, No.3 (1993), pp.35–54. 8. Perhaps the female equivalent of a lutibashi, the leader of a luti gang. For the role of lutis in popular protest see Martin, The Qajar Pact, pp.120–128. 9. Quoted in Bayat-Phillip, ‘Women and Revolution in Iran’, p.303. 10. Abrahamian, ‘The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Labor Movement’, p.195. 11. See S. Cronin, ‘Popular Protest, Disorder and Riot in Iran: The Tehran Crowd and the Rise of Riza Khan, 1921–1925’, The International Review of Social History, Vol.50, No.2 (Aug. 2005), pp.167–201. 12. IS No.43, 27 Oct. 1923, FO371/9020 E11923/69/34. 13. Intelligence Summary No.10, 8 March 1923, FO371/10132/E3944/255/34. 14. Intelligence Summary No.10, 15 May 1926, FO371/11484/E3487/95/34. 15. IS No.26, 24 Dec. 1927, FO371/13055/E584/38/34. 16. Riza Shah's town planning was partly intended to destroy the physical basis of urban opposition, see S. Cronin, ‘Modernity, Change and Dictatorship in Iran: The New Order and its Opponents, 1927–29’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.39, No.2 (April 2003), p.12. 17. For the birth of trade unionism in Iran see W.M. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions in Iran, 1900–1941 (Durham: University of Durham, 1985); C. Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left: Social-Democracy in Modern Iran (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2001), pp.90–95; Ladjevardi, Labor Unions and Autocracy, pp.1–3. 18. The view that the artisanal economy, with its guild corporations, experienced little labour conflict has been convincingly challenged by Sherry Vatter in her exploration of the struggles waged by journeymen weavers of nineteenth century Damascus against their masters. S. Vatter, ‘Militant Journeymen in Nineteenth-Century Damascus: Implications for the Middle Eastern Labor History Agenda’, in Z. Lockman (ed.), Workers and Working Classes in the Middle East: Struggle, Histories, Historiographies (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), pp.1–19. Whether Iranian guilds experienced internal class and economic conflicts of the type which have been noted among, for example, weavers in Damascus remains unexplored. 19. Similar waves of strikes swept across the Ottoman Empire in the immediate aftermath of the restoration of the constitution by the 1908 revolution. E. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1993), p.98. 20. Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, p.90; J. Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p.156. 21. See Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, pp.90–95; Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, pp.5–11. 22. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, p.11. 23. Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, p.156. 24. Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, pp.90–91. The historical and political precedents of the anjumans have not yet been properly explored. Cosroe Chaqueri has commented on the strong ‘historical tendency towards communal, collective self-management’ which found expression in the vast anjuman movement of 1905–6 while Janet Afary has mapped the dimensions of the phenomenon, tracing the emergence of anjumans during the constitutional revolution across the country and among a variety of social groups. The anjumans bear an obvious resemblance to the Soviets which emerged under similar conditions and played similar roles during the Russian revolution of 1905. Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, p.44; Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution. See also M. Bayat, ‘Anjuman: Political’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol.2, 1987, pp.77–80. 25. For Iranian guilds see W.M. Floor, ‘The Guilds in Iran – An Overview from the Earliest Beginnings till 1972’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Vol.125 (1975), pp.99–116. 26. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, p.7. 27. For an account of the negotiations leading to the signing of the concession see R.W. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum Company: Vol.1: The Developing Years, 1901–1932 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp.15–47; L.P. Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1955), pp.10–35. 28. Five northern provinces were excluded from the scope of the concession out of deference to Russian susceptibilities. 29. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, p.28. 30. Ibid., pp.27–32. 31. Muhammarah had been renamed Khurramshahr in the mid-1920s as part of a systematic effort by Riza Shah to Persify place names throughout Iran. 32. R. Ferrier, ‘The Development of the Iranian Oil Industry’, in H. Amirsadeghi (ed.), Twentieth-Century Iran (London: Heinemann, 1977), pp.93–128. 33. Ferrier, ‘The Development of the Iranian Oil Industry’, p.97. 34. By 1929 the company's profits had rocketed to £4,274,000, Iran receiving £1,437,000. 35. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum Company, pp.154, 401. 36. Abrahamian, ‘The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Labor Movement’, p.183. 37. Z.Z. Abdullaev, ‘Promyshlennost i zarozhdenie rabochego klasse Irana v kontse xix-nachale xx vv’ (Baku, 1963), extracts reproduced in C. Issawi (ed.), The Economic History of Iran, 1800–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp.48–52. 38. In the interwar period the diverse origins of the newly recruited workers does not appear to have given rise to ethnic tensions in the workplace. Although in 1946 Arab labourers were successfully mobilized by their own shaykhs, doubling as labour contractors, against a general strike by the mainly Persian workforce, yet with the accelerating detribalization of southern Iran, such tensions quickly faded. See Abrahamian, ‘The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Labor Movement’; S. Cronin, Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict and the New State, 1921–1941 (London: Routledge, 2006), pp.191–205. 39. N. Kemp, Abadan: A First-Hand Account of the Persian Oil Crisis (London: A. Wingate, 1953), p.43. 40. Elkington, Abadan, 17 June1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011. The development of the ‘company towns’ of Abadan and Masjid-i Sulayman and their role in moulding a raw and unskilled workforce into appropriate ‘human capital’ has been vividly described by K. Ehsani, ‘Social Engineering and the Contradiction of Modernization in Khuzestan's Company Towns: A Look at Abadan and Masjed-i Soleyman’, International Review of Social History, Vol.48, No.3 (2003), pp.361–90; see also M. Crinson, ‘Abadan: Architecture and Planning under the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’, Planning Perspectives, Vol.12, No.3 (1997), pp.341–60. 41. Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil, p.95. 42. From 20,095 in 1930 to 14,797 in 1932, a result of falling demand for oil in an international recession. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum Company, p.401. 43. Bayat and Tafrishi, Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p.117; Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil, p.90. 44. As late as 1946 a shanty-town for contracted labourers was described in the following terms: ‘Beyond both the Company area and the municipality, a poverty-stricken community existed under canvas and sack-cloth awnings, supported by walls of beaten petrol cans and mouldering wood … They were a scrawny, wild-eyed people, fighting desperately for survival on handfuls of beans and lentils.’ Kemp, Abadan, pp.46–47. 45. For a description of the hardships faced by the wives of the oil workers, see Bayat and Tafrishi, Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p.119. 46. On this phenomenon see H. Hakimian, ‘Wage Labour and Migration: Persian Workers in Southern Russia, 1880–1914’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.17, No.4 (1985), pp.443–62; Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, pp.77–96; T. Atabaki, ‘Disgruntled Guests: Iranian Subaltern on the Margins of the Tsarist Empire’, International Review of Social History, Vol.48, No.3 (2003), pp.401–26. 47. The position of Shaykh Khazal was a particularly sensitive issue. Shaykh Khazal had become ruler of the Arab tribes of the ethnically mixed province of Khuzistan in the late nineteenth century and his de facto position had then been recognized by the Iranian government which appointed him governor of Muhammarah (Khurramshahr). He had gradually increased his influence in the region and had also acquired great wealth due to his connections to the oil company and the British government. By the First World War he had made himself the virtually autonomous ruler of oil-rich Khuzistan. During the war he made himself extremely useful to Britain which toyed with the idea of separating Khuzistan from Iran and reinventing Khazal as the ruler of another British-protected Gulf shaykhdom. His removal in 1924 by the new regime in Tehran was greeted with unadulterated joy by all shades of nationalist opinion. On Shaykh Khazal see W.T. Strunk, ‘The Reign of Shaykh Khaz‘al ibn Jabir and the Suppression of the Principality of ‘Arabistan: A Study in British Imperialism in South-Western Iran, 1897–1925’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Indiana, 1977). The Bakhtiyari are a large tribal confederation inhabiting a mountainous region of southern Iran whose winter pastures are in north-east Khurasan. Their senior khans had, like Shaykh Khazal, accumulated great wealth and political power as a result of their British connections. 48. For the oil company's relations with the Bakhtiyari khans see Cronin, Tribal Politics in Iran, pp.133–59. 49. See ibid., pp.40–71. 50. This sense of vulnerability was exacerbated by Britain's decision at the end of 1925 to withdraw its infantry garrisons from Iran's Gulf ports, where they had been stationed since the nineteenth century. 51. The other remaining thorny concession, that of the Caspian fisheries, was also superseded in 1927 by a mixed company consisting of Iran and the Soviet Union. 52. For the Imperial Bank of Persia see G. Jones, Banking and Empire in Iran: The History of the British Bank of the Middle East, Vol.1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 53. See S. Cronin, ‘Riza Shah and the Paradoxes of Military Modernization in Iran, 1921–1942’, in S. Cronin (ed) The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah (London, Routledge, 2003), pp.37–64. 54. M. Elm, Oil, Power and Principle: Iran's Oil Nationalization and Its Aftermath (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992), p.28. 55. Annual Report, 1928, Clive to Henderson, 14 July 1929, FO371/13799/E3676/3676/34. 56. Bayat, ‘With or Without Workers’, p.116. 57. Elm, Oil, Power and Principle, p.29. 58. Bayat, ‘With or Without Workers’, p.117. 59. Ibid., p.117. 60. Ibid., p.117. 61. The impact of the character of the prevailing regime on the repertoire of protest is discussed by C. Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Less attention has been given, however, to the ways in which repertoires of protest might shape regimes, especially newly emerging regimes. 62. See Cronin, ‘Popular Protest, Disorder and Riot in Iran’. 63. S. Cronin, ‘Resisting the New State: Peasants and Pastoralists in Iran, 1921–1941’, Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol.32, No.1 (2005), pp.1–47. 64. See, for example, the actions of the Tehran crowd during the bread riots of 1925 and the growing radicalism and combativity of the peasant movement of 1924–28. Cronin, ‘Popular Protest, Disorder and Riot in Iran’, pp.193–6, 200; Cronin, ‘Resisting the New State’, pp.10–13. 65. Bayat, ‘With or Without Workers’, p.111. 66. See, for example, Abadan to Cadman, 25 Nov. 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011; Jacks to Elkington, 7 June 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 67. Ladjevardi, Labor Unions and Autocracy, pp.3–17; Abrahamian, ‘The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Labor Movement’, pp.182–3. 68. The Red International of Labour Unions, organized under the auspices of the new Soviet state. 69. E. Abrahamian, ‘May Day in the Islamic Republic’, Khomeinism (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1993), pp.60–87. 70. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, p.69, n.76. 71. For the police strikes see, for example, Intelligence Summary No.16, 22 April 1922, FO371/7827/E5897/285/34. 72. Intelligence Summary No.34, 24 Dec. 1921, FO371/7826/E3904/285/34; Intelligence Summary No.37, 16 Sept. 1922, FO371/7828/E12254/285/3. 73. Bayat and Tafrishi, Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p.110. 74. Ibid., p.113. 75. Ibid., p.111. 76. Intelligence Summary No.46, 17 Nov. 1923 FO371/9021/10131/257/34. 77. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, p.37. 78. Ibid., p.39. 79. Ibid., pp.39–42. 80. Ibid., p.32. 81. Bayat and Tafrishi, Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p.122. 82. The Communist University of Toilers of the East, generally known by its Russian acronym. 83. Bayat and Tafrishi, Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p.124; Bayat, ‘With or Without Workers’, p.115. 84. Bayat and Tafrishi, Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p.123. 85. C. Chaqueri (ed.), The Condition of the Working Class in Iran (Florence: European Committee for the Defence of Democratic Rights of Workers in Iran, 1978), p.218. 86. Bayat, ‘With or Without Workers’, p.115. 87. Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, p.44. 88. Bayat and Tafrishi, Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipir Shudah, p.141. 89. ‘Disturbances in Company's Area May 1929’, 13 May 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 90. Chaqueri, The Condition of the Working Class, p.216. 91. Farajullah Aqavli had transferred to the new army formed after the 1921 coup from the nationalist-inclined Government Gendarmerie where he had already achieved regimental command. He occupied a series of senior appointments during the Riza Shah period and was imprisoned by the British after the 1941 invasion for alleged pro-Nazi sympathies. He later resumed his career and became chief of staff and was twice minister of the interior. See S. Cronin, The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran 1910–1925 (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1997), p.247. 92. Elkington to Greenhouse, 4 May 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 93. Yusuf Iftikhari describes in his memoirs the importance the union organizers attached to the involvement of the wives of the workers, and the efforts they made to prepare the women to play a role when the time came. Bayat and Tafrishi, Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, pp.139–40. Despite the section in Iftikhari's memoirs devoted to the women's involvement, all the scholarly accounts to date have remained silent on this dimension of the strike. 94. Bayat and Tafrishi, Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p.140. 95. Correspondent, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 96. Ibid. 97. Ladjevardi, Labor Unions and Autocracy, p.21. 98. Correspondent, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 99. Ibid.. 100. ‘Disturbances in Company's Area May 1929’, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 101. Bayat and Tafrishi, Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p.140. 102. Ibid., p.140. 103. Ibid., p.140. 104. Elkington to Cadman, 9 May 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 105. Bayat and Tafrishi, Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, p.141. 106. Letter, 23 May 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. Strikes also broke out simultaneously in another foreign-owned company. On 26 May labourers employed by the American-owned Ulan Company on railway construction in the vicinity of Ahvaz held a demonstration. This was followed two days later by a construction gang of about 300 men refusing to proceed to work. The oil company provided Ulan with information which enabled the police to arrest the strike leaders. The suppression of this attempted strike was followed by a systematic campaign of sabotage. A train was deliberately derailed and the locomotive capsized, components were stolen from the compressors being used on the bridge, cars and lorries were either set on fire or otherwise vandalized. The oil company had no doubt that this was the work of ‘disgruntled labour’. Abadan to Chairman, 28 May 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010; Elkington to Dr Young, 15 Sept. 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 107. Bayat and Tafrishi, Khatirat-i Dawran-i Sipari Shudah, pp.141–2. 108. Letter, 8 May 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 109. ‘From the Eastern Performers of Sacrifices for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 110. Bayat, ‘With or Without Workers’, pp.120–21. Some indication of the confusion prevailing in nationalist circles over how to react to the strike was reflected in the pages of Habl ul-Matin. See extracts in British Petroleum Archive 59010. 111. Teymourtache [sic] to Greenhouse, 27 May 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 112. Letter, 4 Nov. 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011. 113. Tehran to Abadan, 17 Aug. 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59010. 114. Abadan to Cadman, 25 Nov. 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011. 115. Letter, 4 Nov. 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011. 116. Letter, 4 Nov. 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011; Greenhouse to Cadman, 23 Nov. 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011; Jacks, Abadan, to Cadman, 29 Nov. 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011. 117. Jacks to Cadman, 29 Nov. 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011. 118. London to Tehran and Abadan, Cadman to Greenhouse and Jacks, 1 Dec. 1929, British Petroleum Archive 59011. In fact, the depreciation in the qiran exchange rate meant that the company could grant this rise without it actually affecting their budget. For a discussion of wages and purchasing power in interwar Iran see Floor, Labour Unions, Law and Conditions, pp.102–11. 119. For the workers' councils of the revolutionary period see, inter alia, A. Bayat, Workers and Revolution in Iran (London: Zed, 1987); V.M. Moghadam, ‘Making History, but Not of Their Own Choosing: Workers and the Labor Movement in Iran’, in E.J. Goldberg, The Social History of Labor in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), pp.65–97. For a different view see S. Rahnema, ‘Work Councils in Iran: The Illusion of Worker Control’, Economic and Industrial Democracy, Vol.13 (1992), pp.69–94. 120. The work of Ervand Abrahamian is the obvious exception. See also Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, pp.77–96. 121. See, for example Ja‘far Pishavari, Yaddashtha-yi Zindan (Los Angeles, n.d.); Ardishir Uvanissian, Yaddashtha-yi Zindan, Salha-yi 1928–42 (Stockholm, 1979). 122. We have not, as yet, located sources such as the mine inspectors' accident reports which Donald Quataert has used to build up a vivid portrait of Ottoman miners. D. Quataert, Miners and the State in the Ottoman Empire: The Zonguldak Coalfield, 1822–1920 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2006). Again, although the Trans-Iranian railway was the biggest infrastructural project in the world in the interwar decades, we know nothing of the tens of thousands of labourers who built it. For one example of a study of a specific group of Iranian workers in the later Pahlavi period, see W. Floor, ‘The Brickworkers of Khatunabad: A Striking Record (1953–1979)’, International Review of Social History, Vol.48, No.3 (2003), pp.427–55. The 1979 revolution opened up new possibilities for research in this area, sometimes based on fieldwork. See, for example, V.M. Moghadam, ‘Industrial Development, Culture, and Working Class Politics: A Case Study of Tabriz Industrial Workers in the Iranian Revolution’, International Sociology, Vol.2, No.2 (1987), pp.151–75. 123. See, for example, Chaqueri, The Russo-Caucasian Origins of the Iranian Left, p.94. 124. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 125. For a discussion of ‘crowds and a common culture’ see J. Grehan, ‘Street Violence and Social Imagination in Late-Mamluk and Ottoman Damascus (c.1500–1800), in S. Cronin (ed.), Subalterns and Social Protest: History from Below in the Middle East and North Africa (London: Routledge, 2007), pp.25–49.