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experiences of the past two decades (some 'vere Red Guards or Communist Youth League members, some were jailed under the Gang of Four), they have developed profound criticism of all factions of the Communist Party and of Maoism.

They declare that China cannot be a socialist country while being ruled by bureaucracy which denies the people basic democratic rights.

The best known dissident is Wang Xi-zhe, aged 33. He joined the Red Guards as a student in 1966, at the start of the Cultural Revolution, when Mao encouraged youth to attack officials in authority Control In 1968, when Mao had won his faction fight within the Chinese Communist Party and regained control, the Red Guards were forcibly disbanded and many, including Wang, were arrested and sent down to work in the remote countryside for several years.

In November 1974, Wang and three others, Li Zhengtian, Guo Hongzhi and Chen Yiyang, put up a long wallposter in Guangzhou (Canton) entitled "Socialist Law and Democracy"

signed by Li-Yi-zhe, a composite pseudonym from their names.

This 67-page document attacked the bureaucratic and violent repression in the ending of the Cultural Revolution, and demanded socialAlexis SATURDAY 5 September: Gdansk: the first part of Solidarnose's national congress opened.

912 delegates represented 9,447,000 members, and observers from all the biggest international trade union federations were also there, except of course from the Stalinist state Exactly a year ago, the first occupations and workers' committees met a deathly silence in the tightly controlled Stalinist press. Ignore it and it will all go away, was the accepted wisdom.

But within a week they could not ignore what was occurring any longer.

A year later the ruling party, the PUWP, fulminating against Solidarnose's supposed aitempt to censor it!

The state-controlled radio and television networks are being banned from the Congress. Negotiations broke down on who should have final presentation and editing rights on the transmission of the Congress proceedings.

Resorting to its • characteristically unabashed cant, the PUWP stated that, 'The silence over the airwaves is an extraordinary event which only adds to the existing social tension"!

Fearing action by the media workers, who like the vast majority of the Polish working class identify with Solidarnosc, the government has placed all television and radio installations under guard.

And the bureaucrats have already threatened to declare a state of emergency • In Olsztyn the state already faces a major challenge from print workers who have refused to print the local PUWP newspaper. The strikt also challenges the union's national leadership. Repeated calls from Solidarnosc headquarters for the workers to go back to work have failed.

The hardening of attitudes between the workers and the government is also reflected internationally in the Russian press, once again railing at the 'count'counter revolutionaries' ruining Poland. And the USSR has begun another series of military manoeuvres on the Polish border. 100,000 soldiers are involved, making these the biggest exercises in that area since the late '40s.

In Bydgoszcz hundreds of thousands of workers have been put on strike alert in protest at the Prosecutor's decision to close the case on the police brutality against members of the local Solidarnosc last May. In Katowice, the workers in the Huta Katowice steel works are persisting with their referSocialist Organiser, Thursday 10 September 1981 Pare 6 Thursday 10 September 1981 Pare 6

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