In a statement, I said that that the government had waged a war against its employees and that this was a dead giveaway of the fact that it had become increasingly isolated.On signals from the Delhi power centre, the Governor is using semi-fascist methods to finish off lawful trade union and other democratic movements.The need of the hour, I stressed, was a sustained and powerful agaitation against such tactics.

Government employees throughout the state gave vent to their anger and indefinite stoppage of work resulted right from Writers Buildings down to the block level. A successful general strike was observed on October 13.

But the Governor was not interested. Instead of softening his stand, he came down even more heavily on the employees.On October 5, 32 defence employees were sacked by using Section 310 (1) and CRPF personnel were given the responsibility of ensuring that no trouble took place when the sack letters were delivered at the Ichhapur, Dum Dum and Kashipur factories and the retrenched employees thrown out of the factory premises.Our party secretary, Pramode Dasgupta, while condemning the sackings, said that this was the ``result of a deeprooted conspiracy against the state government employees.’’

During the general strike, four persons, including two farmers, were killed in the joint assault on us by Congress supporters as well as the police.At least 250 of our supporters were arrested and shanty areas of Dum Dum owing allegiance to us became the victims of arson. But despite the attacks and widespread incidents of violence against us, the strike was significant as it served to expose the character of the Congress and once again proved that the democratic-minded people of the people could not be cowed down by sheer terror.

I remember the mass killing at Kashipur in August 1971.The genesis of the incident lay in the killing of a Congress supporter by Naxalites; in an act of unprecedented vengeance, Congressmen, with total support from the police, launched a gory assault on the area for a full 24 hours. There were 40 deaths and the cases of arson went uncounted. This was another example of how far the Congress and its regime could go to perpetuate its rule.