Polish street barricades
Socialist Organiser1982 1982-09-09Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 4 →
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AS more reports come out of Poland, the huge scale of the protests last Tuesday 31, on the second anniversary of founding of Solidamos, becomes clear.
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In Lubin, a coppermining town in the southwest of the country, the protests continued right through to Friday.
According to Polish television, barricades were put up in the streets, and fires were started at the town hall, the concert hall, and the municipal library.
The police imposed a curfew, blockaded the town, and cut all telephone A French news agency correspondent reported from Gdansk: 'At the exit from the Lenin shipyards, early Tuesday afternoon, about 5,000 out of the 10,000 workers on the day , a. shift gathered around the monument for the workers killed in the 1970 riots.
'For about an hour they shouted slogans which left no doubt about their feelings: 'Free Lech (Walesa), jail Wojciech (Jaruzelski)', 'End the state of emergency' ', 'Free the internees' 'Freedom for Poland, bread for the people', 'The pope should come to Poland' ,, 'Solidarnose will win' There was also another significant slogan: 'Break with the USSR' Then the Zomo riot police descended, with armoured cars, tear gas, and smoke bombs. The street fighting continued until the last barricade was beaten down by armoured cars shortly before midnight.
According to the Polish government itself, 34 out of Poland's 49 provinces were
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Socialist Organiser no 99 Séptember. 9, 1982 Pees ... but Begin would prefer to see all the Palestinians put on boats Tripoli in the north of Lebanon, and the 30,000 Syrian troops from Lebanon's Bekaa valley.
The Reagan administra:::92 :2904 all or part of the West Bank in exchange tor a treaty with Jordan.
at the Us plan is moed that the can be obtained.
In this dispute "between gangland hoodlums, the Reagan gang wishes not to liquidate the Arab opposiack.
Iwo more 'hardline' elements of the PLO -Nayef Hawatmeh's Democratic Front for the Libertangible support to the Palestinians — or to the Syrian forces under attack from the Zionists. If Reagan can entice these bourgeois the Zionist regime.
And, as an added bonus, acceptance of the USA 'peace' plan would produce a framework in the Middle incompatihle with the existence. of the oppressive Zionist state.
Yet US and world imperialism are committed to preserve that state: and the various Arab regimes - no matter how 'radical' their rhetoric - are too afraid of the potential strength of their own workers and peasants to contemplate any serious challenge to imperialism, or even tbe breaking of their existing Embarrassment For these leaders, the Palestinians are more or less an embarrassment which stands in the way of longer-term deals with the imperialists and an accommodation with the Zionists.
To fight Reagan's latest 'peace' strategy or Begin's butchery, the Palestinians and the Arab working classes must therefore fight for the overthrow of their existing conservative or nationalist regimes and leaderships, mobilising their mass • strength to fight for democratic and economic demands as the basis for a revolutionary solution - the Socialist United States of the Middle East.