AUGUST 1980. An enormous strike wave engulfs Poland. The workers demand the reinstatement of victimised militants like Anna Walentynowicz, improvements in living standards, and the establishment of independent trade unions. The head of the strike movement is the Lënin shipyard in Gdansk. Delegates assemble here from workplaces across the country in a mighty democratic workers' revolt. The government grant all Solidarity's demands.
AUGUST 1980. The Catholic Church offers Walesa and the Polish workers the bitter pill of compromise with the system. Cardinal Wyszinski's appeal to the workers to return to work I ignored. But the influence of the Church hierarchy remained as a block on the development of workers power.
Socialist Challenge 17 December 1981 DECEMBER 1980. Reluctantly the government has conceded the unions. On 16 December a monument to workers killed in the 1970 revolt is unveiled to a mass commemoration ceremony in Gdansk. The authorities try to turn the ceremony into one of national unity - the Church, the Party and Solidarity. Within one month another strike wave had broken out over free' Saturdays for the registration of the independent trade SOCIALIZ SolD MARCH 1981. Party hardliners organise a provocation against Solidarity. Union activists are beaten up in Bydgoszcz by the political police. The threat of a general strike
forces the government to back down and concede the registration of Rural Solidarity. Another two million people are now allied to Solidarity's ten million workers. JULY/AUGUST 1981. The rank and file democratisation current in the ruling Communist Party is roundly defeated at the party congress. Hundreds of thousands of members begin to desert the party Solidarity's congress on the other hand appeals for support to the East European workers. It calls for an end to censorship and for free SUMMER/AUTUMN 1981. The government allows the economic crisis to let rip. Queues lengthen still further and the first hunger marches take place. In Katowice the authorities attack Solidarity activists distributing leaflets.
DECEMBER 1981. The authorities use selective repression at Warsaw against the firefighters' occupation. The aim is to accustom the workers to the military police and to test their reaction.
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1981. The Polish rulers propose a government of national salvation of the party, the Church, Solidarity and others. The aim is to make Solidarity take co-responsibility for the crisis. Solidarity counterposes the development of workers' selfmanagement councils in the major workplaces. When the talks break down, the bureaucrats begin to prepare another solution - martial law and widespread repression of the union.
Many of the pictures on these oute laken from two DOOKS.
Solidarity Walesa, Dobbs, Trevisan; Pergamon £8.75. reup, well-proauced packed •WIT good good on history, Gdansk 1980, pictures of suctions Good black and white pics from August 1980, nore anti-Communist intro. ciner DOOKS worlY Solidarity Poland's dependent trade MacShane, man. £3.50. Good basic trade UnIONISIS quae to sonaarily. packed with useful info.
The Polish August, Penguin, history roush events uo io end 1900. the state OT Republic, Pluto malaise and crisis 11 50101 Road paniel ress, 8.
Press, the Duckeronic events. 'on Eastern Europe, Box Kingsland High St, best journal on the Polish events Socialist Democracy, Fourth available Other 328 Üpper Street, London N1 for 35p. rey stonary • CRETS struggle for : genuine workers' democracy. & Karole wonky on reading inSpokesNeal £2.50.
£4.95 Gdansk, Monthly Brilliant (/i6 Miner we rudo choose Londor We have to say, Inter- Soviet Union of course, 'Since the start it was clear that we couldn't avoid a struggie, and that society would understand us.
We must not shout from the rooftops that confrontation is inevitable.
"we love you, we love socialism and ihe party, and the " and preLech Walesa, , less than one week before the introduction of martial law. sent them with a fait accompli..
'But confrontation is inevitable and it will come... . I have no illuNons any more Things have gone so far that we must now tell people everything, nothing less will change reality. No change of the system will come about without trouble. The key thing is to win.
Socialist Challenge 17 December 1981
A CRISIS is gripping the Labour Party which will have profound implications future of the labour movement.
As we go into 1982 facing an increasingly discredited besieged Tory government, and the threat of the SDP. leadership of the Labour Party has started a vicious witch hunt against the left.
Unless this witch-hunt is Labour winning the next election; it threatens to wipe out all the gains for democracy and left wing policies which have been won over the past few paralyse the party's campaigning ability with a wave of local party disbandments and the expulsion of members. The stakes involved At the Tribune rally conference Michael Foot promised witch-hunts'. The fact that he made it clear that he wanted Eric Heffer to continue as ChairOrganisation Committee was also widely interpreted as meaning that he policies. But Foot's promises have been worthless.
While much of the publicity around the witch-hunt has been directed at the Militant tendency, the fact that Foot singled out Peter Tatchell for a lynchlaw attack, shows purge is directed at the whole of the left. Tatchell is far from being a revolutionary socialist; there are tens of thousands of people to his left in the party.
The meaning of the witchhunt is that the right which now includes Michael Foot and his cronies like Kinnock on the NEC, want to reassert their control bureaucratic and ministrative means. Control of the apparatus at the top is to be used to thwart the wishes of the rank and file.
Foot calculates that the left*.
wing can be defeated and the party can be 're centred'. EffecSocialist Challenge. 17 December 1981 whole tively this is a strategy of trying that his to make the party much of the political ground of the SDP as possible. would mean approaching the next general manifesto in essence no different to that of the SDP. This is formula wing, catastrophe.
The only way to counter the Tories and the SDP is to present by a programme of anti-capitalist ad- measures which can solve the economic and social crisis.
Thatcherism has failed. The socialist price of monetarist policy has been the wholesale destruction of even profitable industry. There is no end to the slump in sight.
Without a adopt as It terests with a for certain will have been lost.
stake Conservative clear socialist wing the mass holding attacked ship's through Photo: JEREMY NICHOLL fensive.
policy, Labour will fail to present a radical alternative which got can solve the crisis in the inworkers. An branch. historic opportunity to transforming the catastrophe of Thatcherism into its opposite - a bold step twards socialism -The battle over the past few years between the party's left and right has been fought by a long drawn-out war of attrition.
Now the right wing has decided on frontal assault. In doing so. it puts the whole future of the Labour Party at stake.
For years the right wing have argued that Labour is a 'broad church', in which dif. ferent currents right and left could be tolerated. But the toleration only lasted so long as the right were in control.
What is being posed now is whether socialists can continue to work and fight within the framework of the party. Now the Labour Party can go two ways. It can become a right dominated rump aping SDP or it can become a campaigning left wing party. But there is no chance of on to the left wing gains of the past period without the left itself now going onto the offensive. the Trade Unions Tony Benn got it right when he the Labour leader. moves at the London Labour Briefing rally. The right wing of the party would rather go into a coalition with the SDP than allow the left to carry socialist policies in a new Labour government. The stakes are so high that only a massive reply by the left can throw back the right wing ofThe first task is to defend Peter Tatchell and the Militant supporters who have been adopted as parliamentary candidates. Resolutions should be through every possible trade union and Labour Party Joint trade union rallies must be held in every part of the country to mobilise working class opinion.
A campaign based just on the consituencies will never be adequate. The deputy leadership election showed that the unions are still a decisive arena for the strength of the right wing. Foot and company must be attacked from the unions as well as the constituencies Every section of the Labour left is under attack. If Militant is attacked today, every part of the left wing will be under threat tomorrow. There is no time to lose.
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CZY GROUNE ULI CE TE:
What to read on Poland
Why does the leader- ship want this
The future of the Labour Party is at
Organise a mass campaign in the Labour Party and