TRADE UNION MOVEMENT 35 to the other extreme in analysing these leaders' role. Thus, writing in 1973, SA Dange made the following comment on the presidential speech of Lala Lajpat Rai at the first session of the AITUC: "To put before the Indian worker the role of Russian revolution and to denounce its imperialist detractors and draw lessons from its successes for the benefit of the ideological and political attitudes of the Indian working class and trade union movement—was all done in the AITUC in its very founding session. The finest statement on this subject came from the presidential address of Lala Lajpat Rai."30 Were Lajpat Rai's subsequent social and political activities consistent with the above analysis? Had trade union leaders like Lajpat Rai sincerely believed in what they said and worked accordingly, then the task of the Indian communists in building up trade unions would have become much easier. While one should not minimize the significance of the heroic struggles of Indian workers during the period under discussion or the attempts to organize and coordinate these struggles through a central trade union organization (AITUG), one should also try to understand their limitations^ neither the working class nor its leadership had reached that level of class consciousness and maturity where the impact of the Soviet revolution and the Gomintern would be considerable and could bring about radical reorientation in the aims, objectives and organization of trade unions. So with all his efforts, Roy failed to bring any of these trade union leaders closer to the Gomintern. Since the leadership of the AITUC (or most of the affiliated unions) was not favourably disposed towards the Comintern from its very inception, and since this leadership had the greatest influence on the Indian working class, the possibilities of communist ideology percolating to the latter from the top through the existing leadership were very remote. Neither was it as yet capable of producing leaders from its own class who could successfully challenge ^£. aims and objectives of the existing leadership of the AITUC. This difficulty could have to a great extent been overcome by the activities of an organized communist party with a correct strategy and tactics of mass struggle (against imperialism and colonialism) embracing simultaneously the entire oppressed section of the society. In the absence of such a party, a few scattered groups of communists (whose number could be counted on hand) having hardly any inter-group cohesion, naturally failed to rise to the occasion demanded wrongly by Roy or the Gomintern and make a dent in the ongoing trade union activities of the Indian working class.