Polish workers reach fc control

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Alexis would a British manager think if ne day s/he arrived at the office and louna d note saying that henceforth his/her "services" no longer required by the factory workers?

It would be like ation of civil war.

In Poland, the opening salvoes of such a civil war sounded over a year ago when workers on the Baltic, occupying their shipyards and factories, raised the entire working class to its feet against Stalinist rule.

From one CTISIS to another, each following the next in rapid succession, the Polish workers have kept the bureaucracy reeling, without a moment's respite.

From the factory occupations and mass strikes, the workers moved to more partial fights. Now the question of press freedom, then political prisoners, the next day fights on food shortages, price rises, democracy within the Communist Party and the elimination of corrupt bureaucrats and careerists.

The entire last year has been a series of flashpoints and struggles, affecting every aspect of social and economic life, from the countryside to the cities.

After the major demonstrations of the last few weeks against price rises and food shortages, the focal point is noW once again moving back to the terrain opened last summer workers' control.

At Katowice, steel workers have placed a wheelbarrow outside the management's office, stating that the workers have decided to run the factory themselves and that an open vote will be taken in the worktorce on this.

Management bit off more than they could chew when they immediately shut down the plant's Solidarnose newspaper, for daring to print anti-USSR cartoons.

This looks like shaping up to a new spate of attacks on the bureaucracy's control (and sabotage) of economic life. life Dockers in Gdynia foe refused load meat for shipment to the West.

Some western observers vaguely hope that the Solidarnose movement will lead to a restoration of what they term the "free world" (read capitalism, but the logic of the Polish workers' fights leads to exactly the oppesite direction.

It points towards direc: workers' power in the factories, the direct control of foreign trade and the righ:

to control the country:

means of information.

Last week, Polish paper:

were repeatedly prevented from being printed in protes! at television slanders of the workers' movement.

In Olsztyn workers still refusing to print Olszt! Glos after the media alleged that some printers were being intimidated from turting up to work The 300 printers voted ::

continue the stoppage none against and one absier.

tion.

What would Pi:::

workers make of the slantsand vitriol which the mei::

in this country heaps on:::

workers' struggle"

chaining and imprisonmer of American trade leaders!

They must be distir..

nimpresse by the orl