[The Solidarnosc leaders were more right than they…]
Socialist Organiser1982 1982-10-14Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 1 →
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The Solidarnosc leaders were more right than they knew. On Monday 11th, workers struck and occupied the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk. Soon a strike committee had been formed and other yards and factories had joined the action.
The workers demanded:
*Restoration of rights to Solidarnosc.
*Freedom for all those jailed under martial *Freedom for Lech Walesa and all the other internees.
All communications were cut off from Szczecin, another militant area of Solidarnosc, but Polish government sources spoke of 'trouble' in five provinces.
By Mond ay evening in Gdansk there were barricades, water cannon, armoured cars, and tear gas on the streets. On Tuesday night Polish state television said 148 people had been arrested, and an underground radio station reported that two had been killed.
The Russian defence minister, Marshal Ustinov, sent a message to Jaruzelski, offering full support against the insurgent workers, whom he described in bureaucrat-speak as internal counter-revolution and imperialist forces"
This Solidarnosc uprising is more explicitly political and radical than the struggles of August 1980/December 1981.
Then, Solidarnosc leaders insisted that their movement was only a trade union, not out to change the political system. Now, after the lessons of the Jaruzelski coup and the months of discussion among underground Solidarnose militants since then, the Solidarnosc leadership's strike call has stated their aim in terms much closer to the programme of political revolution against the bureaucracy. They declare for a "self-governing Republic"
All the more reason for us to step up class solidarity with our Polish brothers and sisters. Workers' boycotts of Polish trade; commitment by unions to boycott Russian trade if Ustinov makes good on his promise to help Jaruzelski; breaking of links between British labour and trade union organisations and the East European state 'unions' and 'parties'; demonstrations, pickets, and every other method of working class action available should be used to give aid to the Polish workers' movement in its, fight for life. comrades at the NUR conference report that NUR leader Sid Weighell has failed to engineer sufficient support to regain his position as General Secretary. See report page 15 and Press Gang, page 3.
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Organiser no.104 October 14 1982 Page
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