“Everyday, our workers are being attacked and killed by the opposition Trinamool Congress, Congress and the Left wing radicals. Efforts are on to create lawlessness in the state and bring back the landlord classes into power. Through violence, reactionary forces are trying to break poor people’s unity,” LF chairman Biman Bose told the gathering quoting a part of the resolution.
Bose expressed confidence that the march of the CPM-led Left forces could not be thwarted by launching violent attacks on them. The rally, teeming with Left supporters, choked the main thoroughfares of the city and disrupted the traffic for several hours. It also came six weeks after Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee-led TMC mobilised lakhs of people in its annual martyrs’ day rally on July 21 close to the venue of the LF’s programme.
In fact, Monday’s meeting was described by political observers as a show of strength by the Marxists in the wake of their recent electoral setbacks that has put a question mark on the Front’s ability to stretch its marathon stint in power beyond the 2011 assembly polls.
On top of that, Banerjee’s almost daily announcements of new trains and other railway projects besides new political alignments aimed at weaning away the Front base have also put the ruling coalition under severe pressure. In a written message, ailing Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu urged the Left workers to go to the people and regain the confidence of those who have turned against the state government.
“Work for the people. We should not lose faith in the people, even those of our former supporters who have gone against us. We must not think of them as our enemies. We have to bring these people back to our fold,”Basu said in the missive read out by the LF chairman. “I have confidence that the people of our state will never allow opportunistic and anti-Left forces to come to power,” said Basu, who headed the state for a record stint from 1977 to 2000, winning five successive assembly polls.
It was on this day in 1959 that the police fired on people who converged on the city during the “Food Movement” demanding food for everybody. Several demonstrators were killed in police firing and baton charge on August 31,1959.
The “Food Movement” was one of the many agitations organised by the Leftists through the 1950s and 1960s to mobilise the masses leading to the installation of two United Front governments in 1967 and 1969 and finally the uninterrupted rule of the Left Front since 1977.
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