The British Tram Company had made enough profits but had not done anything to improve the amenities for the commuters. When the decision to raise the fare was taken, our party initiated a major movement both inside and outside the Legislative Assembly and formed a committee against the rise of fare alongwith other Opposition parties. The call that went out to the people was simple : ‘‘Do not pay the new fares but ride the trams anyway’’. Since the employees of the British Tram Company were also with us, this worked like magic. When the commuters refused to pay the new fares, the conductors simply did not give them the tickets. It was a perfect two-way traffic.

There were police postings in all tram cars and forces were deployed at every depot. We called for a boycott of trams and all commuters responded in a major way. Calcutta saw trams moving on the tracks without passengers. The Tram Company stopped the movement of trams altogether. The employees then struck work.

The agitation spread like wildfire. Meetings and rallies were held throughout Calcutta. The government imposed Section 144 and meetings were banned. But our agitation continued despite incidents of teargassing, lathicharge and arrests.

There were many who became martyrs, others were hurt and hundreds of people were arrested. I remember that after a meeting at Subodh Mallick Square, I was having a cup of tea at a shop inside the Kamalalaya Stores. The Forward Bloc (Marxist) leader Satyapriya Banerjee was also with me. We were arrested from the shop and sent to jail straightaway.

On July 22, 1953 ,a massive rally was held at the Maidan despite the prohibitory orders which were in force. The enraged policemen attacked even journalists who were covering the meeting. A photographer’s camera was snatched away by the policemen who were led by a deputy commissioner.

The attack on journalists isolated the government entirely from the people. The next day’s headlines screamed against the police action and one newspaper even had an editorial which said that if the government did not take corrective steps, then journalists would have to resort to counter steps.

The famous journalist Satyan Mazumder wrote an editorial in the "Satyajug" paper which called the police "shameless." Finally the government had to accept defeat and withdraw the order raising tram fares, a probe commission was instituted to go into the attack on journalists as well as the question of the rise in fares, those held during the agitation were released and we withdrew our agitation.

The commission's verdict was totally one-sided. It said that the the journalists were at fault and the police were innocent. The government circulated a summary of this verdict on November 4, 1952. However, the findings on the fare rise issue were not made public by the government. We raised this in the Assembly but Dr Roy did not budge. We learnt later that the report had not gone in favour of either the government or the Tram Company.

In 1967, during the rule of the first United Front Government in Bengal, the Tram Company was nationalised. I was then the state’s finance as well as transport minister. The Calcutta Tramways Company is now a national asset.

The agitation on the issue of tram fares will be written in gold in the nation's history of mass movements. We must also remember that the stir had an anti-imperialist angle to it. At the same time, it had also given a major thrust to the unity of Left forces and made them more powerful.

It was after 1952 that the mass organisations and movement got a fresh lease of life. These organisations had been somewhat subdued because of the Congress government’s atrocities. But after the 1952 general elections, they became very active again; many mass movements were launched by the Left organizations in 1952 and 1953 and processions and rallies were routine on the premises of the Assembly.

On March 13 1953, 25000 people assembled on the Assembly premises with demands on the food crisis and employment dole. I addressed the Speaker and said that the chief minister should meet the processionists. But Dr Roy refused to do that. We walked out of the House. On March 21 the same year, the historic conference of the Bengal Provincial Trade Union Congress (BPTUC) began. The previous one had been held way back in 1947; the interregnum had been wholly taken up by the fight against the terror tactics of the Congress government. The conference was conducted by the BPTUC president Satyapriya Banerjee.

The pages of "Swadhinata" of March 22, 1953 remind me that I had placed the secretary’s report in my capacity as the union general secretary; unfortunately, I do not remember the exact date when I became took up the post. From the same report, I see that after the conference of 1947, the trade union movement had been temporarily weakened by the various opportunistic and disinformation tactics of the British imperialists and the subsequent Congress rulers.

The secretarial report had then said that a new awakening was evident in the labour force. There was a call for greater unity and the BPTUC was successfully carrying the other trade unions alongwith it on issues like retrenchment and joblessness. The BPTUC made it clear that it was ready to take the lead in the formation of a single, combined union and that the time for a greater struggle had come. The president of the UTUC, Mrinalkanti Bose sent a congratulatory message to the conference. Satyapriya Banerjee was re-elected as president and Ranen Sen became the general secretary. A total of 523 representatives of the BPTUC participated in the conference. There were 125 member unions in the BPTUC and the total membership was 1,55,178. On March 29, a public rally was held at the Maidan.