inability to seize this issue and to use it to establish itself as the
legitimate representative of the workers should raise some fun-
damental questions as to the appropriate future of the
organisation.

Undoubtedly the task that faced NUTA when it was
established was a difficult one. An organisation in some ways
suited to a democratic socialist setting, it was established in a
capitalist context, where it immediately assumed the attributes
normally associated with a ‘company union’. While it preached
restraint and moderation in the national interest for the workers,
the employers were left largely untrammelled by such restraints, or
found ways of evading attempts at control. When the Govern-
ment’s incomes policy finally robbed the union of direct con-
nection with the process of wage determination, this compounded
its difficulties and meant in fact that the organisation had to seek
other areas in which it could operate effectively. This challenge to
re-define its role in the light of changes in the surrounding
economy went largely unmet.

Quite apart from these ‘special’ difficulties the basic task of the
organisation was difficult enough. There is clearly a paradox in
the desire both to control a movement and encourage its members
to actively assert their rights and interests; a paradox whose
resolution lies in the rank and file’s real power to ensure that the
control is exercised as a part of a coherent and ultimately justified
national development strategy, and in the achievement of a real
reconciliation between the national interest and the aspirations of
the rank and file through a two-way process of education and
debate. In spite of the fact that Tanzania does have a relatively
mass-oriented development strategy, this endeavour was doomed
to failure: in part because of the wide discrepancies between the
nation's aspirations and the reality at the firm level; in part
because of the apparent inability of the union leaders to relate
national policies to specific problems; and also because of the
structure and staff of the union itself.

This last point is of particular importance. The rigid
bureaucratic structure of the union meant that functionaries
usually knew only too well that their future was determined above
them in the hierarchy, rather than by their membership. With the
initial emphasis on ending the labour unrest that preceded the
establishment of the union, quescence on the labour front came all

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