Doctors of Rhythm. Jake Brown

would arrive to show their support.

      As the days became weeks, the crowd of demonstrators grew larger. Before long we found ourselves watching in amazement at the seemingly endless sea of people that would flood the barricades, waving banners and even trying to break through and join us. And, all too often, we would watch in horror as their efforts were met with gunfire. It was nothing short of murder.

      On the 25th and final day of the occupation, after the regime conceded the demand to reopen the university, we marched at the head of a mass demonstration to celebrate our victory. We had issued a call for everyone to come with us to reopen the university. Shops and workplaces closed as around half a million people converged on the campus. A platform was erected in the university square and reporters from all political trends that had supported the occupation were invited to speak. Those of us that had been involved in the occupation were distinguished by armbands.

      Because I could speak English I was the spokesperson for the world’s press. One reporter from an American television network asked, ‘What happens next?’, and I remember telling him, ‘When Khomeini arrives from Paris the masses will take over. The people will run the country in a democratic and just manner.’ Unfortunately, like so many others, I misjudged Khomeini’s intent, taking at face value his statement that he wanted no more to do with politics, but only to return to the holy city of Qum to take up his religious duties.

      The journalist pressed me further: ‘How will the people exercise this power?’

      ‘Possibly through the shoras,’ I said. I don’t believe that, at the time, any of us had any more than a vague idea of the possibilities we were presented with… or of the dangers that we were walking towards.

      With the reopening of the university and the fall of the Shah, we experienced a real sense of optimism as the snows in Tehran thawed and the winter passed. It was a period that was widely known as ‘the spring of freedom’. The university came alive with a sort of joyous chaos. Its corridors teemed with all manner of people, eager to learn and teach. Everyone seemed to carry a book in their hand, if not a pile cradled in their arms and held in place by their chins. These books – untitled, plain, white – were budget editions of previously banned titles by authors including Marx, Engels and Lenin. They sold in huge numbers now they were freely available.

      Every inch of available space at the university was used. You could find a corridor blocked by a crowd of oil refinery workers clustered round a young Fedaii, explaining the workings of the AK47 rifle he held in his hands. In another corner of the building, a group of Islamic students would be praying. Outside on the grass forecourt, there would be a lecture and discussion of what agricultural policy we should now adopt. It was an extraordinary and exciting time.

      Revolutionary poet and dramatist Said Sultanpour led an ad hoc poetry circle which was highly political. He had just been released from prison and organised an agitprop street theatre group on the lawn. Dotted all around were speakers from different parties, each with a crowd of people around them, listening, murmuring their approval or heckling.

      The arts faculty became a gallery of liberated arts. Artists commandeered corridors, lecture rooms, even broom cupboards. Walls were covered with paintings that had been previously banned. It was as if the university had been turned into an art gallery. All Iranian cultural life was here. And people flocked to it. Workers and peasants who had been denied access to this kind of creative expression in the past came to look, feel and understand art.

      Every shade of opinion that had overthrown the Shah, from Islamists to communists, was represented in the university and on the shoras that ran it. This paralleled developments within Iran, as workers seized the factories and peasants the land, running the country democratically through their respective shoras.

      Parts of the university were occupied by main political parties. The engineering faculty became the Fedayeen headquarters. The place thrummed with energy, young people came and went, armed with Kalashnikovs or carrying bundles of newspapers. It was to the Iranian revolution what the Smolny Institute in Saint Petersburg had been to the Soviets. These headquarters were still used as lecture theatres, however. Passing through one day, I happened upon a lecture by Houma Nategh, a professor at the department of Persian literature and a noted activist herself. More than 500 people sat in rapt attention while she spoke about the contribution of women to the armed struggle.

      In fact, the engineering faculty became something of a revolutionary tourist attraction, with workers and peasants coming to gawp at ‘the kids with machine guns who have taken over the country’.

      Our brand of open, libertarian education spread throughout the country. Once a week I would make the 100km drive to Ghazvin to lecture at the university. These lectures were open to anyone. They dealt with problems from the industrial shoras to the nature of the land reform. Hundreds of young people would turn up, most associated with the Fedayeen.

      Khomeini himself returned in early 1979, two weeks after the Shah left for exile. On 1 April that year, the country voted to become an Islamic Republic. By the end of 1979, Khomeini had been declared supreme ruler. But it was soon felt that the revolution wasn’t making progress and I began to focus my own criticism on the reluctance of the new Islamic regime to make any progressive concessions to the workers and peasants. Our revolution was being taken from us. The regime began to take action against the workers’ and peasants’ shoras. Khomeini declared a jihad – a holy war – against the Kurds and sided with the feudal and capitalist forces against the workers.

      This assault was not confined to Kurdistan and the workplaces of Iran. It showed its ugly face in the attacks by Hezbollah thugs against the universities and other places of learning. Calling itself the Islamic Cultural Revolution, it spilled the blood of the students and professors who had fought so courageously against the Shah. This counter-revolution brought with it sexual apartheid and shackled all freedom of expression.