Eyewitness report by Bernard Guetta reprinted Monde Over there, some 200 metres from gate number two of the Lenin shipyard, made famous by numerous photos, the large meeting room is completely empty. The national committee which was formed on Sunday is somewhere else, carefully hid den in this vast expanse of quays, recesses, workshops, offices and metal gates which form the cradle of Solidarnosc.
Passes, obtained with great difficulty as they distrust everyone, are not enough to tell you where io go. But if people recognise you, they take you, one way then another, until you finally come across the delegates.
National strike committee' really an overstatement. There are only really delegates from the shipyard workshops, representatives Gdansk enterprises, and about members of Solidarnosc's staff who have escaped, and one member of the national presidium, Waszkiewicz. It's not much, but Ull Sunday shipyard was empty and today, Mondav 14 December. the workers are all here, with their helmets on, red and white armbands, on strike.
The day before, when there were only forty representatives here from factories and twenty other workers at most, it did not seem that anything other than token gestures could be made. It was nice to be in the refecThe occupied yards in the days after martial law was imposed Le in the country blunder. Monday morning, workers flock to work. strike meeting calm the dozens of to hear it.
«cades.
the same time they do not of the person then they hug and National Salvation is that everything calm and that everyone should go to their place of work. To make the militia occupy the yards in these conditions would be a the first working day since the state of war, the In the suburbs of Gdansk, the army nas taken up its positions, but in the town all is normal and calm. This lllasicl card authorities: to show that the one proclamation of national salvation has been enough to normalise the situation, as if each Pole was just waiting The people, on the other hand, think only about building barThey are afraid, it's true. But at believe, The first worker falls dead in the snow they do not want to believe that their liberty is over. It's a bizarre game of and THOSE which workers to enter the shipyards as if nothing has happened. In less than an hour the Polish flags, a symbol for 15 months of strikes and struggles democracy, fly over the gates. Guard rolas are organisea. rrom ine root tops they scan the horizon.
They listen politely to the factory director who, in a choking voice, calls for a return to work, insisting on the threats which go with the state of war. They like the director a lot and while listening to him, they whisper: not his fault, they made him And then, after his fruitless appeals for ten minutes or so, a young worker reads out in a loud voice the strike communiques.