As many as 50,000 militants were arbitrarily arrested under various security regulations before, during, and even after the strike, Over 20,000 railworkers were sacked for taking part in it. The Government used every concevable form of intimidation against the strikers - with police even preventing them from buying food, and raping some of the women workers. But despite all this, the strike could have been won — with a different leadership.
The body which launched - and later called off — the strike was the National Co-ordinating Committee for Railway Struggle (NCCRS), a coulitior of various unions representing 1,700,000 railworkers and putting forward six main demands.
Of these demands, the most unportant were that: (a) wages of rail workers be brought into line with those of employees in other government and public bodies; (b) a bonus payment of an additional month's wages be made, again in line with the practice in other public bodies such as Air India and the Life Insurance Corporation.
Railworkers have been particularly hit by the effects of soaring inflation in the last few years. They abo work in particularly appalling conditions for instance, they have to work a minimum of 116 hours a fortilight. So it was not surprising to find that their struggle was supported by the vast majority of people (over 70% in one survey carried out by Bombay University).
This wide support, together with the rallworkers own militancy, and the strategic role of the railways in the Indian economy, logether provided exceptionally favourable circumstanRailway workers give enthusiastic show of solidarity but they were eventually driven hack to work, thanks to their reformist leaders.
ces for a successful struggle. With decisive leadership and adequate preparation of the struggle there is no doubt that the railworkers could have forced the Government of Indira Gandhi to its knees.
But instead they were faced not only with a weak and vacillating Militant strikers take to the rails. desperate to prevent the working class as a whole from using its industrial strength to improve its living stand ards, Even a small concession to the railworkers could have sparked off a wider upsurge. So the Government determined to do everything in its power to smash the strike.
The first step was to order the arrest of the tail leaders even while halt. Other sections of workers spontancously walked off the job in solidarity with the railworkers. By the third day of the strike many militants were urging their leaders to call a peneral strike of all workers.
was typical. They continued to plead (from jaill) for a negotiated settlement. Elderly parliamentarians were her to make some compromise. Mr Niren Ghosh of the revolutionary' CPI (M) begged the Government not to adopt "an unrelenting posture', assuring them that the strike was "purely and simply economic Dange.
The response of the NCCRS leaders sent to Mrs Gandhi to try to persuade Of course both the CPI and the - was extremely em was thus ensured by the opportunist politics of the CPI and CPI (M).
With the CPI this is not hard to understand, Its alliance with the bourgeoisie was too close to allow continent it to mass its forces behind the ruitworkers, When the leader of the Socialist Party called on the CP to withdraw from its coalitions with the Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh and Kerala, chis was described as a "provocation" by CPI leader S.A.
The CPI (M), however, always likes to think that it is a revolutionary party, yet it, too, failed to musses. mobilise its forces behind the strike. Was it that the CPI (M) put the sectarian interests of its own trade union federation before those of the railworkers (where the dominant force was the "Socialist Party)? Or has its parliamentary cretinism simply rendered it incapable of preparing even its own forces for an extra-parliamentary struggle?
It must also be said that the course of the railworkers strugale tellingly exposed the bankruptey of various Maoist currents - notably the Naxalites — who peddie dogmatis schemas about the struggle developing "from the country to the town'. The result of this approach is that the Border Security troops patrol the silent tracks during the three-week strike COMMUNIST MAZDOOR DAI public meeting on "The political crisis in the Indian subMoviday 8 July, 7 pm Coniway Hall, Red Lion Square Holborn Tube) urbam workers and their organisstions have been left completely under reformist intluence - leading to defeats like that of the rauworkers which will alto strengthen the GouCrument't hard egainst the rural REPRESSION The ourcome of the strike has allowed the Govenment to launch a widespread campaign of repression, sacking and arsesting many trade union militants. These contrades must be defended without exclusion, despite the criticiins we have made of their class-collaborationist leaders many of whose actions facilitated this defeat.
Bur at the same time every effort muse be made, in the Indian community here as well as in the sub continent, to build the nucleus of a revolutionary party which can lead future struggles to victory and the working class to power His wife, who suceeeds him, is a