42 SOCIAL SCIENTIST logical follow-up of the stiff and adamant attitude adopted by the management in handling its labour strikes earlier, particularly the one that took place in September 1922. The "Labour News" section also published information regarding strikes in jute mills, activities of the Indian Seamen's Union, Jamshedpur Labour Association and other trade unions. The seventh issue published a list of then existing trade unions in Bengal (the total number mentioned was 50). It contains, among others, Tramway Employees Associatian, Oriya Sramik Sangha, Howrah Labour Union, Calcutta Carriage and Cart Drivers' Association, etc. It also published a short note on the last annual conference (May 12, 1923) of the Bengal Provincial Trades Union Federation, which this time elected Surendranath Haldar (Swarajya party leader and a close relative of C R Das) and Mukundalal Sarkar (founder of the Federation) as president and secretary respectively. The above is a very brief account of the origin and growth of labour journalism in Bengal as seen through the pages of two very important, but not easily available, Bengali labour journals. But even from this short account one can see the contradiction between what these labour journalists aimed at and what they actually achieved. Much against their own social and political outlook, much against their desire to organise and lead working class movements away from the path of confrontation with capitalist employers of labour, their own very limited activities ultimately went against what they stood for. Because working class movements originate not from labour leaders' pious or personal desires but from the nature of the relationship labour has with capital, all talk about the spiritual tradition of the country, search for absolute justice, compassion, or God's will, failed to keep the working class activities confined within the narrow zone prescribed in these journals. Within a very short period, the much hated, so-called 'alien-trained' Indian Bolsheviks succeeded in bringing out another labour journal (though in collaboration with others like the famous Bengali poet Kazi Nazrul Islam), through which a radically different class philosophy was to be propagated and at least a substantial section of the working class geared to the path of class organisation and class struggle vis-a-vis their capitalist employers. The author is indebted to Kunal Chattopadhyay for translating into English some of the relevant passages from the journals and to Uma Majumdar, of National Library, Calcutta, for helping him to locate some relevant materials. 1 See the October Revolution Issue (1981) of the monthly Bengali journal, Sramik Andolan, organ of the West Bengal Committee of the CITU.