tind anvone w le Lu collaborate them OcHily.
A general strike broke out and underground television and radio networks co-ordinated a campaign of non-cooperation.
Signposts were removed and soldiers could only get a glass of water at gunpoint.
The glacial hostility of the Czechs and Slovaks, whom, they had been told, they were going to rescue from cesunter-revolution battled the Over the next few months the repeated mass actions in defence of the gains of the Prague Spring position party leaders.
From then on it was the workers and students who occupied the centre of the stage. In particular the Prague group played a major in providing political leadership to the mass movement In November 1968 Socialist Challenge, This new leadership was prepared to use repression to stamp out opposition None bam! a milllol party members were purg censorship reintroduced and all the in dependent mass organisa tions of the Prague Spring dissolved.
Then in 1971 the trials began. Oppositionist Jiri Pelikan estimates that over 3,000 were arrestec for 1971-20 itical crimes in The Prague Spring was over.
was ratified by the Communist Government of Poland.
aiding them.
4 (a) Return of former rights to:
Jan Kozlowski and Marek Kozlowski.
situation by the following means:
situation.
reform programme.
month as compensation for the recent rise in prices.
the decline in real income.
to surpluses.
special shops. regardless of age.
paid in.
menco care or worker. 17 Assurances kindergartens for the children of working mothers. 18 Paid maternity leave for three years. 19 Decrease in the waiting period for apartments.
supplemental benefit on separation.
or other paid time off.
Socialist Challenge 7 January 1982 1 Acceptance of free trade unions independent of the Communist Party and of enterprises, in accordance with convention No 87 of the International Labour Organisation concerning the right to form free trade unions, which 2 Guarantee of the right to strike and of the security of strikers and those 3 Compliance with the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech, the press and publication, including freedom for independent publishers, and the availability of the mass media to representatives of all faiths.
- People dismissed from work after the 1970 and 1976 strikes, - Students expelled from school because of their views. (b) Release of all political prisoners, among them Edmund Zadrozynski, (c) Halt in repression of the individual because of personal conviction. 5 Availability to the mass media of information about the formation of the Interfactory Strike Committee and publication of its demands. 6 Undertaking of actions aimed at bringing the country out of its crisis (a) Making public complete information about the social-economic (b) Enabling all sectors and social classes to take part in discussion of the 7 Compensation of all workers taking part in the strike for the period of the strike, with vacation pay from the Central Council of Trade Unions. 8 An increase in the base pay of each worker by 2,000 zlotys (app.f30) a 9 Guaranteed automatic increases in pay on the basis of increases in prices and 10 Full supply of food products for the domestic market, with exports limited 11 Abolition of 'commercial prices and of other sales for hard currency in 12 Selection of management personnel on the basis of qualifications, not party membership. Privileges of the secret police, regular police and party apparatus are to be eliminated by equalising family subsidies, abolishing special stores, 13 Introduction of food coupons for meat and meat products (during the period in which control of the market situation is regained). 14 Reduction in the age for retirement for women to 50 and for men to 55, or after 30 years' employment in Poland for women and 35 years for men, 15 Conformity of old-age pensions and annuities with what has actually been 16 Improvements in the working conditions of the health service to insure full of a reasonable number of places in day-care centres and 20 Increase in the commuter's allowance to 100 zlotys from 40, with a 21 Day of rest on Saturday. Workers in the brigade system or round-the-clock jobs are to be compensated for the loss of free Saturdays with increased leave just strikes their the The tre ANNA Walentynowicz was a veteran activist of Poland's free trade union movement and a crane driver at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk.
Many times management had victimised Anna for her union activities. On 31 January 1980 a hundred workmates led a four hour strike for her reinstatement after she had been moved from the yard.
In August later that same year the management moved to sack her again, and opened the door to the mighty strike movement that rocked the whole of the country.
But the shipyard strike was not in defence of Anna Walentynowicz. It also concerned a cost of living rise in wages. On 1 July the government had raised the price of meat, sparking off a series of and walkouts by across the country.
In Lublin there was a general strike, and by mid-July more than 51 plants and enterprises in the country had successfully tought Iol pay rises. A hundred more had taken action before the Gdansk shipyard workers' strike.
Nor was this the first strike wave against price rises. Dozens of workers were killed in riots over prices and wages in 1956, the year that Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian uprising. There were similar revolts in 1970 and 1976.
Each time the workers achieved some economic success, but government promises of greater union and political freedoms were broken.
There was a profound sense of anger among the Polish workers in the summer of 1980. They disgusted by the corruption and injustice of the system they lived under, and they sensed that they alone had lne power to change I They had learned the lessons from previous struggles. became the guiding principles of the 1980 August strike wave and for the subsequent development of Solidarity itself: the need for an independent working class movement, for unity of workers and of other groups behind the workers, and for the fullest workers' democracy.
movement interfactory strike committee •established in the Gdansk shipyards drew up a list of 21 demands on the authorities (see box). These ranged from improvements in pay and pensions, freedom of speech and the right to strike, an an ena co repression But the first, and most important de. mand, was for the right to form independent trade unions.
The old national trade union cen(CRZZ) was completely bureaucratscu and incapable defending the workers' interests. officials were nominated by the ruling Communist Party and it concerned itself mainly with social facilities and improving production. Above all the wanted iC W unions to fight for their interests.
When the government signed the Gdansk agreement and similar ones across the country in August 1980, it accepted the principle of independent unions with the right to strike. It spent the following months desperately trying to stop the workers from plementing that principle.
It attempted to prevent Solidarity being legally registered, it arrested the virtual always were Anna Walentynowicz Solidarity — a mass working class union activists, and placed as many obstacles as possible in the way of the development of Solidarity. But by the end of 1980 the new union movement had almost ten million members, the overwhelming majority of the Polish workers.
More significantly, Dowel bases regions and in the large enterprises the Lenin shipyard at Warski shinvard in of Katowice mines, the Huta Warszawa steelworks and the Ursus tractor plant both near Warsaw, and the industrial regions of Lodz and Krakow.
under thirty and one third of all its intrade dustrial workers under 24, it was not surprising that militants were also in their early twenties. The leader of Solidarity in WarSaW. Zbigniew Bujak, and Jan Kulaj, Solidarity, only 23 Solidarity im- workers' rights: rights which workers in country granted. It fought for and won more Saturdays be local justice econote Solidarity Solidarity's were in the industrial after Gdansk, the Szczecin, the million As half of Poland's population is many of its leading Solidarity.
was only 26, authorities. the head of Rural Narozniak fought for basic would for LaKe work-free established the workers' right to stri and not to be victimised by management As the economic crisis intensifi it campaigned for fair rationing a anreaucratic spee Tre work ors bureaucratic The workers Jelenia Gora held a long strike ea last year for the removal of corru officials and for the spec hospitals of the military and police become part of the health service TV and debauched lifestyle. More th members figures in the national and local a paratus were sacked for corrupti Solidarity's pressure Solidarity also challenged the r ing party and the government to gi the full facts to the workers about t economy. Workers' councils for se management sprang up across country in the major enterprises the workers attempted to devel control of the economy and to run in the workers' interests.
In the factories and the mines t workers argued for re-organising t priorities. As Silesi leader Rozplochowski said: 'In the futu there will be no planning without u Solidarity demanded the right have its own newspapers and jol nals. The army and party newspap and the radio and TV were all run the party apparatus and subject to heavy bureaucratic censorship.
In April 1981, some eight mon LD C Gdansk government reluctantly agreed to establishment of Tygodnik Solid nosc (Weekly Solidarity) with a hal print-run, and Jedne (Unity) in the Szczecin region witl print-run of some 100,000 copies Solidarity was also allowed to p duce local newsletters and its own ternal news agency, AS, which ser out news reports from each region But even these officially tolerat journals came under fire from In November 1980 Solidarity printer in Warsaw, arrested publishing a state document outlini the authorities' plans for harassi and undermining the union ment. He was only freed after a ma strike threat.
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'7 January 1982 page 7 Gdansk shipyard
The 21 demands of the Inter- factory strike committee at the