Solidarity, the independent Polish trade union federation, won another important victory on March 29.
Threatening national strike action, they forced the Stalinist government to Dack down on the use or repressive tac tics against Solidarity members and Polish dissidents.
in paruculal, tne government agreed to hold an investigation into the police alton al byagoszcz waco tea to tne severe beating up of union activists involved in a sit-in of the provincial Assembly Chamber.
The Bydgoszcz action was only one of a senes ol lnug-uke lactics launchea by the government.
Making use of the 90-day no-strike period which had been agreed with union leaders, the Polish authorities had begun to arrest and intimidate union activists and launch a scurrilous anti-Semitic camara to anyde workers.
As Warsaw Solidarity spokesperson Janusz Onyszkiewicz put it, on March 7: "It looks like pressure is building up at all levels, starting at the lower level with tne narassment or our activists and ending at the higher level with the detention of Jacek Kuron."
SLANDER Kuron - a leading Polish socialist -was detained by the police on March 5 for so-called "slandering the state" and ordered to report twice a week to the local police station. Another leading dissident, Adam Michnick, was also threatened with arrest in Wroclow.
Uther reports of thug tactics bv the police on trade union activists had become known. In kaaon, lour youtns were beaten up on March 10 for telling a man not to tear down Solidarity posters.
Even more scurrilous was the distribution - obviously under government superTHE GLC election on May 7 will give Londoners the chance to show the Tories what we think of their policies.
Uver the last four vears Horace Cutler has led a Tory council and the capital has been in rapid decay.
Along with government policy nationally, the GLC has engaged in a vicious onslaught against the services of working people.
Cutler boasts, for instance, that "the present Conservative adminsiration has cut the pre-1977 (Labour) programme of 6,500 annual housing starts to almost nil."
And that's not all. The best housing owned by the authority is being sold off hope of moving into better accommodavision - of anti-Semitic leaflets.
RACIST Such leaflets and posters called upon the Poles to rise up against "Jewish" chauvinists" attempting to "usurp power" through Solidarity. They were either unsigned or signed by a previously unknown organisation calling itself the "Generation Always Faithful to the Homeland".
Calling on workers to "stand firm against this attempt at anti-semetic action", Solidarity indicted the government for it. Some CP members nad been seen sucking up tne posters ana aistrouting une readers There is nothing new in this. In March 1968, the Stalinist leaders sought to suppress a mass student struggle for democratic rights by carryme out a vicous anu-emsa wich -nunt which forced thousands to leave their country.
RESPONSE The Polish Stalinists' despicable actions, however, only served to alienate more and more sections of society. Solidarity by launching a 3000-strong demonstration on March 8 in Warsaw to commemorate the student struggle.
In Lodz, Radom and Wroclow, workers in Solidarity called strikes in protest against the victimisation of local union members and the attacks on leading dissidents such as Kuron.
Most important of all, the events at Bydgoszcz in which three Solidarity members were beaten up, unleashed a national protest. strike were made unless the government was prepared to back down on its repressive tactics.
PROVOCATION There are two main factors behind the Polish Stalinists' provocative actions. The first is that they know that their Soviet bureaucrats.
might end up in jail for their crimes if workers win control of the country.
try and crush the workers' movement. It is a question of self-survival.
frightened of the implications for their own country should the workers in Poland win. called for "urgent action" against what Polish workers fight for full democratic and political rights is under threat from jobs and special privileges - their better housing, food and country homes - are No doubt they also know they dating threat.
ANTI-SOCIALIST?
Their existence as a privileged caste is mcompaoe wan true workers acmocracy and this is why they are driven to The second factor is the continuing pressure from Moscow officials who are The Moscow Stalinists have mek recentlv.
JOBS Tries have done nothing.
doner.
changed.
so."
GAINS manoeuvres on the border as an intimiArticles in the Soviet media have presented Solidarity as little more than a front for "anti-socialist" conspirators. But nothing could be further from the truth. Solidarity brings together the most class-conscious Polish workers the best defenders of socialism and deThis was summed up by Brosniko GereAS One ol Solanty e advisers, he said: the Polish system was That time they were stopped in their tracks by the Save ILEA Campaign London's dockland is now a disaster zone. As protits fell. big business interests stripped the docks of its jobs.
ALnouan une area represents ore or con don's greatest assets, with opportunities for housing, jobs and industry, the ToAll this means less jobs. One in ten of the country's unemployed is a LonWith a purposeful programme to revitalise housing, transport and the services generally, all that could be being challenged "not because it is socialist, but because it is insufficiently Workers in Poland do not want to go back to capitalism. They want to go forward to a situation in which workers themselves democratically decide how the country should be run.
This is why Solidarity's growth has been so rapid - taking in, according to the Economist of March 14 about one million of the three million CP members themselves.
Solidarity has grown because more and more sectors of the population -workers, farmers, students and intellectuals — see it as a loice to ngni arbitrary arrests, censorship and the privileges of a small bureaucratic elite.
They identify with it against the anti-socialist forces of the Stalinist leaders Who are prepared even to use the wors racist filth to protect their own perks.
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY In an interview with Italian journalist Oriana Falluci which appeared in the March 8 Washington Post, Solidarity leader Lech Walesa pointed out: "If the government says "This is a mess, we resign', Solidarity should take the responsibility and I should take the situation into my hands."
Falluci, wanting to make sure she had understood him, asked: "Did you really say that should the government fail, Solidarity should govern and you would lake une stuaton into your own hands?"
Walesa replied: "Yes, I said it." This is what frightens the bureaucrats in Poland and their mentors in Moscow - the idea of workers taking over society and running it in their interests as they have in Cuba and are doing in Nicaragua and Grenada. It is an idea which workers in the West, faced with growing attacks on our rights, should identifi with totall!. enough of Toryism. They want a party that will defend their jobs and services.
But the Tories have one trump card. Labour councils have aroused doubt and mistrust by the way they have pushed up the rates. At a time of government strin gency measures, it is working families wio can least allora suen massive lalt Labour councuors nave sorated work' ers from the struggle against Heseltine's cuts. Instead of leading mass protest - through the unions and Labour Par ties - Labour councillors have substitutea the class lor tnemselves Since councillors cannot replace the working class in the fight against the Tories, they have effectively turned on working people instead.
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they call "imperialist and reactionary forces" and have held Warsaw Pact army