People's Democracy

COMRADE P RAMAMURTHY BIRTH CENTENARY

Widen The Mass Base Of The CITU Across The Country

B Prasant

THE birth centenary of Comrade P Ramamurthy would be organised in Bengal by the Bengal unit of the CITU though conventions, rallies, marches, publication of booklets and pamphlets. Special issues of the Bengali organ of the CITU, Shramik Andolan would be brought out as well as part of the commemoration of the birth centenary of the founder secretary of the CITU, Comrade P Ramamurthy. All trade union units affiliated to the CITU shall organise programmes on the occasion. The Bengal CITU has resolved this in a recent meeting.

As part of the birth centenary of one of the foremost organisers of the working class and the working people, the Bengal CITU held a central meeting at the Shramik Bhavan in Kolkata recently. Addressing the meeting, veteran CITU leader Samar Mukherjee said that one had much to learn from the life and activities of Comrade Ramamurthy in this age of imperialist globalisation when attacks were made sharply on the TU rights of the working class. Samar Mukherjee also said that class struggle must be attached the highest importance as the workers marched ahead based on unity and struggle.

In his important address that roamed across a wide range of themes around the central pivot of Comrade Ramamurthy’s role as a TU leader, Shyamal Chakraborty who heads the Bengal CITU as its president said that during the time when the CITU had not been set up, Comrade Ramamurthy carried on a valiant political-ideological struggle remaining within the fold of the AITUC. He debated and overcame a series of these of Sripad Amrit Dange especially the views on being supportive of capitalist planning.

POLITICAL-IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE

Ramamurthy also stood politically, ideologically opposed to Dange’s so-called ‘two-pillar’ theory that called for a kind of support to the economic development of the capitalist kind under successive Congress regimes, while seeking to carry on a TU movement of sorts. Dange’s thesis on ‘complete industrial peace’ was countered by Ramamurthy successfully with his thesis on rationalisation of industrial relationships where the militant TU movement would not become anarchic in nature and behaviour. Comrade Ramamurthy was also a strong advocate of carrying forth both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggle for TU rights while leading the struggle for the advancement of the working class movement per se.

Back in May of 1971, recalled Shyamal Chakraborty, CITU was set up at a conference held in Kolkata, and a revolutionary TU organisation of all-India character came into being. In that conference, B T Ranadive was elected president and P Ramamurthy elected general secretary of the CITU. Chakraborty concluded by saying that every CITU member in Bengal would pay Re one for the all-India education centre that was being set up in Delhi in the name of comrade P Ramamurthy.

CITU leader and MP Santasri Chatterjee presided over the meeting. Niranjan Chatter raised the resolution on the birth centenary of the CITU leader.